#aww2014

As the year draws inexorably to a close, it's time for me to admit that I'm not going to finish any more AWW books this year. I'm still halfway(ish) through one, but it's an audiobook, and I won't be commuting anywhere until January. So. The time has come (the Walrus said) to speak of bookish things. And for my Australian Women Writers Challenge wrap-up post for 2014. I read a bunch of books, where "bunch" can be defined as 32, assuming I didn't accidentally miss any (and depending on how you count). In the past I've put a little blurb/mini review with these posts, but all of these books will or have been covered by one of my Australian genre round-ups (horror, SF, fantasy), so I'm jut going to leave you with the list and a genre descriptor for each book.

The Dreaming Volume 1 by Queenie Chan (review) horror manga

The Dreaming Volumes 2 & 2 by Queenie Chan (review) horror manga

Stained Glass Monsters by Andrea K Höst (review) stand-alone fantasy

The Other Tree by DK Mok (review) contemporary fantasy with religious supernatural themes

Carrier by Vanessa Garden (review) post-apocalyptic set in Australian outback

Bespelled by Dani Kristoff (review) paranormal romance

Peacemaker by Marianne de Pierres (review) outback-themed SF

The Lascar's Dagger by Glenda Larke (review) epic fantasy, book 1

North Star Guide Me Home by Jo Spurrier (review) epic fantasy, book 3

The Bride Price by Cat Sparks (review) short story collection, mostly fantasy and horror

The Year of Ancient Ghosts by Kim Wilkins (review) novella collection, horror and fantasy

Innocence Lost by Patty Jansen (review) short fantasy, Dutch-inspired setting, book 1

Chasing the Valley: Borderlands by Skye Melki-Wegner (review), YA gaslamp fantasy, book 2

Razorhurst by Justine Larbalestier (review) YA historical with ghosts set in 1930s Sydney

Chasing the Valley: Skyfire by Skye Melki-Wegner (review), YA gaslamp fantasy, book 3

Dagger of Dresnia by Satima Flavell (review) epic fantasy book 1

Guardian by Jo Anderton (review) the kind of fantasy some people think is science fiction, book 3

Prickle Moon by Juliet Marillier (review) short story collection, fantasy

Shatterwing by Donna Maree Hanson (review) dark fantasy, book 1

Langue[dot]doc 1305 by Gillian Polack (review) time travel SF

The Ark by Annabel Smith (review) near future epistemological SF

Secret Lives of Books by Rosaleen Love (review) short story collection, mix of fantasy and SF

Loving the Prince by Nicole Murphy (review) SF romance

Zac & Mia by A J Betts (review) YA contemporary

Small Shen by Kylie Chan and illustrated by Queenie Chan (review) mix of manga and prose fantasy, part contemporary Hong Kong, part historical China

Phantazein edited by Tehani Wessely (review) short story collection of folkloric fantasy

Drowned Vanilla by Livia Day (review) cosy crime with food

This Shattered World by Amie Kaufmann and Meagan Spooner (review) YA SF

How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier (review) younger readers fantasy dystopia

No Need to Reply by Jodi Cleghorn (review) contemporary flash story collection

The Autumn Castle by Kim Wilkins (review) contemporary (sort of portal) fantasy

Clockwork Gold by Jenny Schwartz (review) Australian steampunk

And those are my books for the 2014 Australian Women Writers Challenge. I will be continuing on with the challenge in 2015 — and indeed will continue contributing to the AWW blog. Roll on 2015 and a bunch more excellent Australian fiction!

(Embarrassing Moments and Editorial Bylines…): The Intern by Gabrielle Tozer

The Internis a fun contemporary novel featuring Josie, a first year journalism student about to start an internship at a fashion magazine. Wanting to be a serious newspaper writer and having no idea about the glossy world of magazines (I have a feeling Josie would consider herself about as glamorous as a garden gnome), Josie is out of her depth. But she’s determined to succeed at her internship…

Clockwork Gold by Jenny Schwartz is a romance novella set in a stempunk gold rush Western Australia. I think it's set in the same universe as her other WA steampunk books (Wanted: One Scoundrel and Courting Trouble), but the characters and plot are completely unrelated.

There’s a conspiracy in the Goldfields of Western Australia, and the money men of London don’t like it. Dirigible pilot Rebecca Jones likes it even less. She has a messenger service to run, justice to pursue in a lawless land, and she can do without Special Agent to the Crown, Nathan Burton, hijacking her dirigible—and her heart—and disrupting her carefully laid plans. The result is adventure, romance and explosions.

Being a novella it's a fairly brief story with a reasonable plot centred on various shenanigans happening in the gold fields. There's a conspiracy that Nathan is investigating — which leads him to impose upon Rebecca for a dirigible lift — and there's Rebecca's personal vendetta to punish a corrupt and generally terrible policeman. On the latter front it deals with some heavy issues, but with a comforting happy ending. I've said before that I'm not a huge fan of capital-R-omance, so it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that I was less enamoured with the romantic plot than I was with the steampunk elements. (What romance could trump mechanical echidnas designed to protect chickens from foxes?) I didn't particularly buy the premise — estranged-ish foster siblings — but I suspect others will feel differently. Clockwork Gold was a quick fun read. I recommend it to fans of steampunk and romance. In particular, I would definitely recommend it to readers who enjoyed Schwartz's other books. This might not have been my favourite steampunk read ever, but I will be checking out her other new steampunk novella. 3.5 / 5 stars

Impulse by Vanessa Garden is the perfect follow up to Captivate! .@HqnTeenAus

Miranda Sun has a big decision to make. It has been a year since Robbie returned her to the surface and to her life with her grandparents and older sister, Lauren. Not a day has passed since leaving Marin that she hasn’t thought about the underwater city – and their handsome king, Marko. Making the decision to return to Marin isn’t an easy one but at least this time Miranda will be there on her…

The Autumn Castle by Kim Wilkins is the first novel I've read by the author, though I did enjoy a novella collection of hers earlier in the year. I can also definitely state it won't be the last novel I read by the author. I should also note I read it as an audiobook borrowed from the library

Berlin in autumn: Christine Starlight lives in an artists' colony with her lover Jude, whose patience and beauty have eased her battle with chronic pain. But Christine begins to be haunted by childhood recollections of a little girl's disappearance and the flapping of a blackbird's wings. Then her world is rocked by the return of a childhood friend... Mayfridh rules over a land where a wolf is the queen's counsellor, fate turns on the fall of an autumn leaf and mortals feel no pain. As Christine becomes addicted to Mayfridh's world, so Mayfridh grows addicted to Christine's, falling dangerously in love with Jude.

The Autumn Castle is sort of a portal fantasy in that there is the real world (Berlin in the early 00s) and there is fairyland, but a larger part of the action takes place in the real world. It's also more of a character driven story than a lot of the books I've read recently. There's no Quest and the world doesn't need saving from the start. There is a Bad Guy but several of the other characters are of dubious morality at one point or another. There are secrets, lies and conflicting desires. At a few points, I honestly wasn't sure how some issues were going to be resolved. Christine is probably the easiest character to like. She means well and not in an offensively misguided way like some of the other characters. The chronic pain aspect was also a nice layer and I liked how it was portrayed in the book. It was something Christine was always aware of and something she wanted to avoid having define her. The other characters were more difficult to like. Mandy, the serial fairy killer, was obviously reprehensible and irredeemable from the start. The sections from his point of view — mostly extracts from his memoires — are suitable icky and I enjoyed the way they were read in a German accent. In fact, most of the accents were pretty good in the audiobook although I was probably least convinced by the US accents of Christine and her boyfriend. Mayfridh was an interesting character but one I increasingly lost respect for, especially towards the end. Having lived in fairyland for most of her life as a princess and then a queen, she's quite spoiled and, when she first comes to the real world, naïve about how things work. Both traits evolve as the book progresses but there were many reasons I wanted to tell her off towards the end. The secondary characters all added significantly to the story and I appreciated the layers of complexity which we learnt as the story progressed. Several people turned out to be not quite what they seemed and there were a couple of revelations I really didn't see coming. A well-crafted story. And I liked the fairytale epilogue at the end. That was nice. I highly recommend The Autumn Castle to fans of character-driven fantasy books. I think readers who usually don't read much fantasy would also enjoy it since, although the fantasy element is inextricable from the plot, the character-driven narrative is the more complex aspect. Assuming you like that sort of thing, anyway. There are some dark elements, so be warned: vicious murder and light torture within (but no rape, if that helps). The Autumn Castle is the first book in a "suite" of three unrelated novels (set in the same universe? I'm not even sure) and I intend to read the next one in the near future (probably as an audiobook as well; I have it in paper on another continent). 4.5 / 5 stars

How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier is a book I've been meaning to read for a while but have had trouble finding at the right moments (ie when I was looking to buy a book). I ended up borrowing the audiobook from the library, having finally set up that whole thing.

"Rochelle gets a clothes-shopping fairy and is always well attired; I get a parking fairy and always smell faintly of petrol. How fair is that?" For Charlie, having a parking fairy is worse than having nothing at all - especially since she's not old enough to drive. Enter The Plan: swap fairies with her archenemy! But Charlie discovers that you ought to be careful what you wish for - and she'll have to resort to extraordinary measures to set things right. From the author of the acclaimed Magic or Madness trilogy, this is a delightful story of friendships, fairies, and figuring out how to make your own magic.

I found this to be a really fun read. It's a book for younger readers (as in, the younger end of YA or lower) with the main character only fourteen years old. She — Charlie — has a fairly frivolous voice and generally acts like a fourteen year old with a crush and a keen interest in sport. But the book itself turned out to be much less frivolous than I expected. For example, there are some issues like the "make all the boys like you fairy" and the very clear problems that poses. There's also a lot of background world-building weirdness, some of which is discussed, some of which really isn't. Kids in this world (or at least this city) can go to high schools tailored to their interests. So Charlie and most of the characters go to what I would otherwise call a sporting academy and her sister goes to an arts school. Some of the more disturbing aspects of Charlie's life — like how she and her peers all had to log calories and protein eaten — are a specific product of her sport-oriented schooling. But other aspects — like how PR (public relations) and sporting match statistics are part of the education system — are alarmingly unexamined. I strongly felt that these less expected aspects of the world-building added extra depth to the story. As a final side-note I was amused that while a significant portion of the slang words in the glossary were made up/repurposed a lot were just Australian. I suppose that fits with the foreword which tells us that the setting is a parallel world with a country that's a vague amalgamation of Australia and the US (I felt it was mostly more Australian, although not completely). I really enjoyed How to Ditch Your Fairy. I would recommend it to younger readers who maybe haven't yet gotten into the slew of darker YA with older main characters which is popular at the moment. Unlike some younger readers' books I've read, I didn't feel How to Ditch Your Fairy was talking down to its audience or was unnecessarily simplified. For those reasons I would also recommend it to adults looking for a fun read (especially those that don't mind reading lots of teenage slang). 4 / 5 stars

This Shattered World by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner is the sequel to These Broken Stars, which won an Aurealis Award this year. It is about a different set of characters on a completely different planet and the connection with the first book does not become apparent until about half way through.

Jubilee Chase and Flynn Cormac should never have met. Lee is captain of the forces sent to Avon to crush the terraformed planet's rebellious colonists, but she has her own reasons for hating the insurgents. Rebellion is in Flynn's blood. Terraforming corporations make their fortune by recruiting colonists to make the inhospitable planets livable, with the promise of a better life for their children. But they never fulfilled their promise on Avon, and decades later, Flynn is leading the rebellion. Desperate for any advantage in a bloody and unrelentingly war, Flynn does the only thing that makes sense when he and Lee cross paths: he returns to base with her as prisoner. But as his fellow rebels prepare to execute this tough-talking girl with nerves of steel, Flynn makes another choice that will change him forever. He and Lee escape the rebel base together, caught between two sides of a senseless war.

Drowned Vanilla by Livia Day is the second Culinary Crime novel, following A Trifle Dead which I reviewed last year. I think Drowned Vanilla is a bit less geeky, but I think I enjoyed the twists and turns of the mystery more. This isn't spec fic, by the way, it's firmly realistic crime/mystery.

It’s the beginning of a hot, hot summer in Hobart. Tabitha Darling is in love with the wrong man, and determined to perfect the art of ice cream. Playing amateur detective again is definitely not on the cards—not even when her friends try to lure her into an arty film noir project in the historical town of Flynn. But when a young woman goes missing from a house full of live webcams, and is found drowned in the lake outside Flynn, Tabitha is dragged into the whole mess— film crew, murder victim, love life and all. There were two girls using the internet pseudonym French Vanilla, and only one is dead. So where is the other one? Why is everyone suddenly behaving like they’re in a (quite specific) Raymond Chandler novel? And how the hell did the best kiss of Tabitha’s life end up on YouTube? Even ice cream isn’t going to get them out of this one.

This is another mystery story in the same vein as A Trifle Dead. If you enjoyed that book, definitely read Drowned Vanilla. I believe this is what's known as a cosy mystery. Tabitha is called up by a friend of a friend to help find a girl who's mysteriously disappeared. The disappearance turns out to be only the beginning (of course) and soon Tabitha is haring back and forth across the Tasmanian country side trying to get to the bottom of things — or trying unsuccessfully not to get more involved. As well as the mystery elements, the story involves Tabitha's quest to make all the ice cream flavours (except vanilla) and inflict them on her friends (several recipes included). And her ongoing love-life confusion. The love triangle set up in the first book continues to be a source of angst for her and slight confusion for the reader (or, well, me anyway). I don't find it an annoying addition to the story, but I found her choices odd (I'm on Team The Other One, is what I'm saying). But basically, Drowned Vanilla was an excellent book and I pretty much read it in two sittings. There were only two things I didn't like: the dearth of dairy-free frozen deserts (somewhat inevitable), and the fact that the Greek family celebrated Christmas in December (with no comment as to why, which made me a bit sad). I feel confident most readers won't be bothered by either of those elements. Drowned Vanilla is a gripping and entertaining read and I recommend it to anyone who likes crime novels, banter and/or Tansy Rayner Roberts' other writing. If you enjoyed A Trifle Dead, I don't think you'll be disappointed. 4.5 / 5 stars