Recommended Reading: An Assortment

I look out for lists of recommended reading for two reasons:

1. I am looking for recommendations for new books to read in general. As someone who stopped reading most SFF for a few years, I am especially looking for pointers to writing that I missed during this period.
2. I am trying to broaden my reading horizons, especially in light of K Tempest Bradford's challenge (which I have not signed up for, but am bearing in mind as I select new reading material).

Three recent listicles of favorite books have caught my attention recently.

In the first, Silvia Moreno-Garcia continues Tor.com's tradition of interesting recommended reading listicles with Five Weird Books by Women.

Her list:

1. The Cipher by Kathe Koja
2. Kissing Carrion by Gemma Files
3. Don’t Look Now And Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier
4. The Woman with the Flying Head and Other Stories by Yumiko Kurahashi
5. Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa

I particularly like the emphasis on short fiction, which I am trying to read more of.

The second is entitled Through the Looking Glass: Adult Fantasy Novels for Voracious Readers and is by Kameron Hurley. I did not love Hurley's book The Mirror Empire, but have been keeping an eye on her as I thought it still showed the promise of evolving into a great fantasy series. Here is a list of her favorite tales by category:

1. Modern Adult Fairytales
1. Ash, Malinda Lo
2. Uprooted, Naomi Novik
2. Fun, Humorous Fantasy
1. The Paladin Caper, Patrick Weekes
2. No Hero, Jonathan Wood
3. Geekomancy, Mike Underwood
3. Military Fantasy
1. Control Point, Myke Cole
2. American Craftsman, Tom Doyle
4. Silk Road Fantasy
1. The Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed
2. The Desert of Souls, Howard Andrew Jones
3. Range of Ghosts, Elizabeth Bear
4. The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu
5. Secondary World Fantasy
1. Updraft, Fran Wild
2. The Cloud Roads, Martha Wells
3. Barsk, Lawrence M. Shoen
6. Epic Fantasy
1. Promise of Blood, Brian McClellan
2. Cold Magic, Kate Elliott
3. A Crown for Cold Silver, Alex Marshall
4. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
5. City of Stairs, Robert J. Bennett
7. Dark Epic Fantasy
1. Ash: A Secret History, Mary Gentle
2. Gardens of the Moon, Steven Erikson
3. Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie
4. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin
5. Empress, Karen Miller
8. Dark Fantasy/Horror
1. Miserere, Teresa Frohock
2. Chapelwood, Cherie Priest
9. Contemporary Fantasy
1. The Library at Mount Char, Scott Hawkins
2. Darker Shade of Magic, V.E. Schwab
10. Historical Fantasy
1. Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho
2. The House of Shattered Wings, Aliette de Bodard
3. Bitter Seeds, Ian Tregillis

I have read six of these and loved some while only liking others and hating one. Nonetheless, I will keep them in mind as I hunt for new reading material.

Lastly, Hurley has another blog post 8 Fantasy Novels Every Writer Should Read in which she lists "selections of fantasy titles that made me question what it was to write fantasy."  The list:

1. Kushiel’s Dart, Jaqueline Carey. Says Hurley:

   Viciously underappreciated for its intricate politics, bold worldbuilding, and tricksy plot, Kushiel’s Dart will challenge the way you think about fantasy fiction. Most importantly, it’s unafraid to address topics that are often treated poorly in epic fantasy: sex, sexuality and consent are explored deftly here.

2. Sword Dancer, Jennifer Roberson. Says Hurley:

   One of the most slyly subversively feminist adventure stories I’ve ever read, Sword Dancer gave me a template as a teen for how to write a story that was engaging and meaty without being preachy. The transformation of the worldview of its wise-cracking hero is a must read.

3. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin.
4. The Etched City, KJ Bishop.
5. The Price of Spring, Daniel Abraham.
6. A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Somatar.
7. The Female Man, Joanna Russ.
8. The Labyrinth, Catherynne M. Valente.

Facts About the Fiction Market

There are have been a couple of recent articles on the market for fiction that I have found quite interesting. The first, entitled Tyler is top-selling Man Booker longlisted title, by Kiera O'Brien and Sarah Shaffi, looks at literary fiction and in particular the sales figures of the 13 titles longlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year. The story is interesting both for informing us of the relatively low sales figures for literature, as well as giving us a sense of how much an appearance on the longlist is worth in terms of sales.

The key points by title (all sales were as of 10th September):

1. Anne Tyler A Spool of Blue Thread (Chatto & Windus) is the bestselling of the 13 longlist titles selling 20,102 copies in total across all editions through Nielsen BookScan. It sold 7,680 copies since the longlist was announced.
2. Anne Enright The Green Road (Jonathan Cape) sold 2,355 extra copies since being longlisted, for a total of 8,938. 
3. Hanya Yanigahara A Little Life (Picador), which was published three weeks after the longlist announcement, has sold 7,542 copies
4. Marlon James A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld Publications) has sold 6,694 copies, which is 3,471 more than before the announcement. 
5. Andrew O’Hagan’s The Illuminations (Faber & Faber) sold 457 copies since the longlist was announced, for a total of 3,273 copies. 
6. Marilynne Robinson Lila (Virago) has sold 12,184 copies, but only 625 copies since the longlist. 
7. Tom McCarthy Satin Island (Jonathan Cape) went from 922 to 1,511 after the announcement. 
8. Sunjeev Sahota The Year of the Runaways (Picador) went from 413 copies to 1,302.
9. Anna Smaill The Chimes (Sceptre) went from 411 to 1,008. 
10. Laila Lalami The Moor’s Account released on 27th August, has sold 1,783 copies. 
11. Bill Clegg Did You Ever Have a Family (Jonathan Cape) released 1st September, has sold 885 copies. 
12. Chigozie Obioma The Fishermen (One, Pushkin Press) had not charted when the longlist was announced and has now sold 1,252 copies.
13. Anuradha Roy Sleeping on Jupiter (MacLehose Press, Quercus) had not charted and has now sold 604 copies.

These are startlingly small numbers for the best books written in English last year. And while sales will continue to grow, particularly as some of the books are released in paperback, it underlines the fact that most literature (which does not receive this sport of acclaim) does not sell very well. This is true even when the book is by a previously acclaimed writer, such as Anne Enright (a previous winner of the Mann Booker Prize).

The second derives from an NPR report that also looked at literary fiction. In When It Comes To Book Sales, What Counts As Success Might Surprise You, Lynn Neary. According to this report, success can be defined as follows:

So what is a good sales figure for any book?

"A sensational sale would be about 25,000 copies," says literary agent Jane Dystel. "Even 15,000 would be a strong enough sale to get the publisher's attention for the author for a second book."

But if that second book doesn't sell, says Dystel, odds are you won't get another chance.

The third report is by SFF writer Kameron Hurley who discusses her own book sales in The Cold Publishing Equations: Books Sold + Marketability + Love (which follows up on a previous report 2014: Some (Honest) Publishing Numbers, and (Almost) Throwing in the Towel) as well as some average figures for publishing as a whole:

The average book sells 3000 copies in its lifetime (Publishers Weekly, 2006).

Yes. It’s not missing a zero.

Take a breath and read that again.

But wait, there’s more!

The average traditionally published book which sells 3,000 in its entire lifetime in print only sells about 250-300 copies its first year.

But I’m going indie! you say. My odds are better!

No, grasshopper. Your odds are worse.

The average digital only author-published book sells 250 copies in its lifetime.

Regarding her own publishing success, Hurley writes:

my first book, GOD’S WAR, which I was paid $6,500 for and which earned out its advance and started making money in its first 6 months – after selling only its first 5500 copies. It has since gone on to sell over 20,000.

And

MIRROR EMPIRE did even better, with a $7,000 advance and sales in excess of 13,000 copies already. It’s in its second printing and now has a mass market version as well. It’s also sold audio rights and foreign rights to Germany and the Czech Republic. It’s not making me or my publisher millions, but it’s keeping the lights on.

 Hurley also reports on some more unfortunate outcomes for authors she knows:

So while all this sounds mid-list rosy, I want to talk about the not-so-rosy stuff, because I have seen sales numbers that would leave you sobbing your guts out on the sidewalk (ha ha if you’re already sobbing at the ones I’ve shared YOU ARE IN FOR A SURPRISE). There are authors – authors you may have heard of – who have sold a couple hundred copies of a title in its lifetime. I’ve seen publisher spreadsheets that show some authors selling just a dozen copies over eight months. I remember one author had sold four copies in twelve months and I thought for sure it was a typo but it wasn’t.

These things happen. They happen to great writers, and exceptional books.

And they fuck up people’s careers. Many of us don’t come back from it.

I nearly didn’t.

In the case of numbers this bad, there are usually a lot of things that go wrong all at once – publisher fuck-ups, poor timing, bad pitching to bookstores, no author-driven marketing, bigger books moving to the top of reviewers’ piles, big news events that drown out signal, and yes, sometimes it’s just not a great book either, etc.

These are striking facts. I am very grateful to Hurley for sharing them publicly. While I did not love her book The Mirror Empire (see my review here), I will read the next in the series and wish her nothing but the best in her career.

The facts are also more than a little depressing. As a consumer of SFF (and fiction more generally) I am concerned whenever I hear that the economics of publishing may be discouraging potentially good writers to write. I can't help but wonder if we are moving towards a system of micro Patronage through sites such as Patreon?

Book Review: Kameron Hurley The Mirror Empire

Kameron Hurley is the author of the soon to be published Geek Feminist Revolution and a prominent social justice activist who uses both her blog and twitter as a platform. Her new series, The Worldbreaker Saga, of which this is the first volume, has been cited as an exemplar of “diverse” science fiction and fantasy and so I thought it a reasonable window through which to view the current state of SFF as it related to the Hugo Controversy.

The conceit of this epic fantasy is that there exist a series of parallel worlds. A person can travel between these worlds only if the version of themselves in the other world is dead. With one of these worlds on the brink of collapse, and with a large number of people eager to escape the catastrophe, a lot of people in a neighboring world are going to have to die to make this happen. Plans to make them die are already quite advanced when we join the story.

Given what I knew of Hurley, I was expecting something a little bit different. I was not disappointed: this is not your run-of-the-mill fantasy set in some version of medieval Europe. There are walking trees and carnivorous plants. People ride bears and dogs (no horses appear) and live in dwellings made from crafted plants. At least one culture practices ritual cannibalism. Magical powers derive from satellites whose presence in the sky waxes and wanes. And the social structure ticks all of the social justice boxes: most characters appear to be black or brown of skin; there are multiple genders with their own pronouns and some characters can transition between genders; polygamous and polygynous relationships are common; many possible sexualities are represented; at least one culture (the Dhai) requires explicit consent before any physical touching.

Into this rich and complex environment are thrown a large cast of viewpoint characters. There is Lilia, born in the collapsing world, and sent to the other by her mother for reasons not initially clear. There is Zezili, a half-Dhai general charged overseeing the murder of large numbers of Dhai slaves. There is Ahkio, brother to the ruler of the Dhai. And Roh, a friend of Lilia. There is Maralah, a warrior in service to the Patron of the country of Saiduan, and Taigan whose similar service post-dates some earlier disgrace. There is Anavha, Zezili’s husband/sex-slave. And then there are Kalinda, Ghrasia, and others I am probably forgetting.

If all of that sounds overwhelming, that is because it is. Trying to keep all the details of this world in my head, wondering which, if any, were going to be essential to the story down the line, I struggled to get into the story for the first 75% of the book. The process of immersing myself in the book was further frustrated by some issues of craft. There is an old rule of thumb for science and fantasy writing that when you are inventing terms and names you should try to make them distinctive; one way to do this is to have names start with a different letter. Hurley, unfortunately, seems to be obsessed with the letter ‘d’: there are the country and people of Dhai, who are called Daijin when enslaved in the country of Dorinah whose empress is Daorian. One of the clans in the country of Dhai is Daora and another is Dasina. Roh falls under the influence of a character named Dasai. Ahkio ascends to the position of Kai (OK, it doesn’t start with ‘d’ but it appears to rhyme with ‘Dhai’), head of the Dhai nation. Zezili owns a slave named Daolyn and rides a dog named Dakar. Another character is called Driaa. The prose is also lacking in sparkle. In fact, reading it can be slog, as in the opening to chapter 17 “The churning mud sucked at Zezili’s boots as she slogged across the remains of the camp.”

I also struggled to suspend my disbelief about the world. There is a reason why carnivores are not used as beasts of burden in our world: the economics of feeding them would make it prohibitively expensive. The dogs in Hurley's world eat meat, but where does it come from? Where are the large herds of herbivores that would need to be slaughtered to keep the bears and dogs that carry everything around fed?

I kept plugging away at this book hoping that it would get better ... and it did ... significantly in the last 50 pages. Finally, I was able to keep all of the characters and places straight in my head (it helped that the focus narrowed to a smaller number of viewpoints). And the book ended with some hints at exciting developments in the next book. Since this means I will probably give the sequel a try, it elevates the rating from 4 out of 10 ("bad") to a "not bad" ...

R⁴ Rating: 5 out of 10.