Crowned: The Sign of the Dragon: Book 1 by Mary Soon Lee

0. Because this book is so unique, I will briefly describe what this book is: it is part novel and part poetry collection; it is narrative and trying to balance all this at once.

1. First things first: never have I wanted to judge a book by its cover more than I want to judge this one. The book is the first part of a narrative fantasy poem cycle. The cover illustration is fine, sure: it looks expensive and it’s two of the main characters. It’s certainly a nerdy illustration stuck awkwardly between photorealism and stylistic abstraction. But the audience aren’t artists, so the illustration is probably fine, I guess. That font though, every time I see it I laugh. Oh man, that font. It’s one of the worst things I’ve seen since art college. Is that supposed to be hot lava? Is it just a pattern? What is that? What is it trying to communicate? I asked a friend who does book covers for a living and he doesn’t know what that font is trying to do. So I showed this cover to a friend who also writes fantasy poetry and has been published alongside Mary Soon Lee, and their initial response was that it looks like it’s from a vanity press—which I don’t believe it is. Granted, my poet friend had one and a half beers in them at the time, but fantasy poetry is what they write—who else is the prime audience for this? Yet even my friend found this cover laughable. Another friend said, “if I saw that in the bookstore, I’d pick it up to see if the writing was as bad as that cover.” So the cover makes everybody laugh. It’s rough. But I read some of the poems in this book that have been published in online magazines, and they were great, so I sat down to read this book and I devoured it. I read this book like my life depended on it. And now I simply have to figure out why: that’s what these notes are for.

2. The writing straddles a line between legible efficiency and beautiful language. It’s conversational and uses common words, but it works with the poetic tactics of assonance, consonance, listing, repetition. For instance, in the opening poem, certain phrases stand out:

He walked half-blind; sleet kissed
his forehead. The wind said sleep.

He sang to drown it, sang hymns,
nursery songs, drinking songs,

dirges, ballads, marching tunes,
the love songs his mother had favored

(she who was bartered for peace
to a man she’d never met).

This example indicates the whole fairly: using common words and sentence structures in ways that create the mood exceptionally well. Sleet kisses. The young boy scared and sure of impending death desperately sings to stave off the temptation to lie down and die. The shift in focus at the end (more on this later).
—This isn’t all of it though: the book typically communicates by shifting back and forth between explicitly telling the reader what’s happening, “sleet kissed his forehead”, and showing the reader things:

She landed beside him, her breath ash,
snow steaming from her wings.

Instead of saying, “a female dragon landed beside him,” or describing the detailed event of “suddenly: some huge wurm descended from the shivering snowstorm and shook the ground with its landing;” this passage describes the effect she has on the context: she takes up space near the boy, her breath scents the air with ash, and the snow that falls on her steams and melts. This technique evokes the mood of her landing, the surprise of it and the senses assaulted by it. There is strangeness to a dragon coming out of the snow storm sky and speaking to a boy, and by showing this, Lee communicates the wonder that could have been lessened by telling: the situation, the description, and the word choices work together to give the reader this sense of the fantastic and the situation. This is strong writing.
—And then, at the end of that first poem, it shifts focus to much later, with the king and queen in bed, where Lee reveals the influence of this episode on the king’s personality:

(Years later, on a spring morning,
his queen asked, greatly daring,

about the woman whose name he cried
in his sleep. “Not a woman,” he said,

his heart on the mountain
where he entered his kingship.)

There is a profundity to the poetry in these focus shifts. Lee peers under the surface of fantasy to spot motivations that seem truer than typical writer’s—especially speculative writers who rely so much on violence as a motivator when most readers’ lives really aren’t that physically violent.
—In brief review, the writing: uses common words and sentence structures matched to poetic tactics to make the reading of words enjoyable; effortlessly switches back and forth between showing and telling to capture wonder and still keep things understandable; and grapples profoundly with normal motivations from abnormal situations to tell a story that feels mostly honest to human psychology. Let me be clear that I’m not calling this groundbreaking poetry: it’s not pushing the envelope or cutting an edge. But it’s solid. I would liken her poetic voice to those who use common language and never stray too far from making sense on first reading. At the end she writes, “I am unhappily aware that many of these poems are deficient in poetry.” And I agree, but the book is not a book of poetry: it is a narrative that uses poetic tactics to tell the story. In this context, these poems work.

3. At the end, Lee states that she thinks the main character is too perfect: “I have been warned repeatedly that Xau is too perfect.” This is something that writers talk about a lot. A perfect character, with no faults, is lackluster to read and ensures the author will face accusations of writing for wish-fulfillment. Xau is almost faultless, or at least we do not see many of his faults here. Because of Xau's lack of faults, other characters grab the reader’s interest more: the Red King, some of Xau's guards, the unnamed soldier on the other side, the unnamed soldier who claims to have killed a dragon, the Red King's woman. But for such a short book, Xau’s perfectness doesn’t reduce my enjoyment significantly. Now if he remains so perfect throughout the coming books, I’ll be annoyed. However, real faults exist in the disconnect between an era of horses and the contemporary context: for instance, Xau is kind, but it often comes off like egalitarianism. There is a tiny nod towards propriety being a key element to interacting with Xau, but egalitarianism in a king who willingly took a crown to rule over his people is incongruous. I do not get the sense of the time period attempting to be portrayed. Rather, it's ambiguously stuck somewhere between now and then.

4. But the plotting somewhat excuses the perfectness: Xau is impulsive and his impulses drive certain portions of the plot, he is tempted to imperfect actions, he rebukes and supports minor characters in intriguing ways, and the growing relationship with his wife looks at arranged marriages through a slightly sardonic lense. These plot developments help keep messianic Xau from being too overpowering in the book’s readability.

5. Lee tackles themes of duty, respect, and mystery. Xau’s coronation ceremony on the mountain is left mysterious and his connection to horses and cranes never gets fully explained. The chapters about his guards, or the courtesan, discuss duty and it’s implications. But I think respect is a driving theme throughout—the Red King attacks to knock the new king down a head from his honeymoon with his country; the interactions of his council and his wife also deal distinctly with respect and how to act on it. And I think that’s probably Lee’s main theme: discussing how respect is earned and given—even to one’s own self.

6. So, the main character is too perfect while the poetry isn’t, the plot sustains the story while the disconnect between the medieval mind and contemporary culture threatens to break the reader’s interest. But in all, I really enjoyed this book. The cover will scare most readers off, but the book itself, for what it is as a poetic fantasy narrative, actually works better than I expected. I look forward to the next one. You can read many of these poems here, or find where many of them were published here.

Dragonslayer by Mary Soon Lee

Published here in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #25, available to read for free online.

1. Having tried my hand and speculative poetry, I can honestly say that it's beyond me right now. It is not beyond Mary Soon Lee: I like this page-and-a-half poem. I especially like the flowing pattern of stresses, which allows the poem to carry a reflecting, around-the-campfire feeling that I imagine Homer has in the Greek. I think the first line really shows this well: "It's true enough, / I killed a dragon— / an old dragon with the maimed wing, mind you[...]" It comes off like a practiced storyteller grasping for a new story, and the stress patterns are what give it that impression. It flows for a couple lines, and then there's a small short aside, before the narrator gets back to the flowing narrative. Another example: "I remember women screaming. And men. / The smell of roast meat. / Then the dragon came up to my smithy / and fired the roof, / and I filled up with fire myself / and ran at it with an axe in one hand, / a spear in the other." It's this patterned back and forth between short phrases and longer action sentences that really give it the feel of a good storyteller.

2. The humor is well placed, and well done. Like in the opening line quoted above, the humor helps characterize the narrator as valuing humor over boasting. This helps explain him as a character, so when he reacts to the king being humbled in front of him, it is in line with the rest his character, even with his admiration for the King's ability to perform his duties. In essence, he admires that the king performs his duties and does more, doing that more like a human. Really, the character is fascinating, and he is explained mostly through the humor. We see three or four sides of him in this poem, each interesting, and I'm interested in how they fit together. I think we get enough in the poem itself to make some guesses, and that's what helps the poem last past the page.

3. Some of the wording in here is quite beautiful. "Oh, I've done well enough, / but most of that's luck—". Though there are a couple of end-rhymes, she's instead working with a few sounds and allowing them to drive the poem forward. F, W, D, L, E, and R often show up within here to draw the poem on and give it a musical lilt: "but he rode at the front of the charge / in his first battle / like a King should, / and afterwards he got down off his warhorse / and walked in the mud,". She is not sticking to alliteration or rhyme with these sounds, but rather she's using them throughout the poem, allowing them to fall within the word wherever they do. She isn't getting picky and making sure that every word starts with a W, rather, she is allowing the W in afterwards to help carry the pattern of that sound forward. I think this variety in using specific sounds strengthens the poem's impact and beauty.

4. I think the strongest thing about this poem is that it is a wonderfully engaging narrative, but it doesn't lack a interesting reflection on the characters within, or duty. This isn't a pulp fiction poem focused only on the plot. Rather, it expands from the plot in contemplating the culture surrounding the titular character, and specifically focusing on that character's feelings about his leader. This allows the poem to be more important, interesting, and relatable than simply a tale about a Dragonslayer.

5. The one thing I would change is to focus it more. There are a couple of things in here that do not add to the narrative thrust or the philosophical bent of the poem, but seem like asides and do not add anything for the reader. For instance, the first two stanzas read:

It’s true enough,
I killed a dragon —
an old dragon with a maimed wing, mind you,
crippled by some foreign prince.

The dragon came down the mountainside
after it was injured,
right into our village.
I remember women screaming. And men.
The smell of roast meat.
Then the dragon came up to my smithy
and fired the roof,
and I filled up with fire myself
and ran at it with an axe in one hand,
a spear in the other.

To me, the fourth line in the first stanza is at best pointless, at worst distracting, at most probable referring to something else in Mary Soon Lee's writing. Either way, from the poem itself, I don't understand why it is in there. Similarly, the mountainside and the timing of when the dragon came into the village: in the first, what does this mountainside add to the poem? Nothing. In the second, I've already learned from the first stanza that the dragon has a maimed wing, so the entire line "after it was injured" is redundant, and doesn't add anything to the poem, at best. At worst, it feels heavy handed, which can be insulting to the reader when done much more than this. So, if Mary Soon Lee asked for my advice, I would send her back a copy of her poem that starts like this:

It’s true enough,
I killed a dragon —
an old dragon with a maimed wing, mind you.

It came right down into our village.
I remember women screaming. And men.
The smell of roast meat.
Then the dragon came up to my smithy
and fired the roof,
and I filled up with fire myself
and ran at it with an axe in one hand,
a spear in the other.

A couple of stanzas can be made more concise like so. But this is a strong poem as it is and I'm very happy to have read it. I look forward to reading more.

6. After Worldcon this year, I decided to read Mary Soon Lee. This is a strong start and makes me very excited to read more of her works. I found this poem because it is next to a poem by my friend Cullen in the 25th issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. Another friend is currently writing a poem about a dragon as well, and I'm definitely sending him this one so that he can learn from it. [Edit on 9/9/15: he loved it! I hope it inspires him to finish his.]

73rd World Science Fiction Convention: Worldcon 2015: Sasquan in Spokane, Washington

Panel 1:
The Future of Short Fiction: Online Magazines Today

1. This panel was interesting, but more from a business perspective. Since I don't find business informative to my writing process, there's not much I can say here about this panel. The only take away is that the science fiction magazine is still alive and well, it's just online now.

2. My reading list from this panel:
Lightspeed Magazine, which won a Hugo later that evening.
Clarkesworld Magazine
Strange Horizons Magazine

Panel 2:
The New Space Opera

1. This panel was packed. Standing room only, and very little of that. The first argument was that space opera never fell out of production. The authors assembled believe there is not an inherent difference between old space opera and new space opera. Though much space opera fell out of popularity after the space operas of the 1930s and forties were deemed not literary enough, there were still authors writing good space opera and bridging the gap between then and now. Iain M Banks was a major bridge, and all the authors agreed.

2. Space opera was typically defined as exploring human emotions appropriate for opera, the story and writing serving to foster a sense of wonder, a large physical scale, a broad time period, and adventure and drama. I rather liked this definition that they gave, I think it's useful and informative. It fits my conception, and expands it as well: I hadn't previously thought about the emotional content of many space operas.

3. A theme of some of the comments was how to get away from the fascist or regal galactic empire so commonly a backdrop in space opera stories. Jokingly, one of the authors suggested the next new thing in science fiction would be "committee punk". But Ann Leckie quickly pointed out what they all agreed to: that she does not enjoy overly complex political committees in her day-to-day life, so why does she want to read about them? The conclusion was simply that we need a backdrop more honest to humans and life, but not boring or dreary. We have complex democracies, and yet the space opera is still caught in the feudalism of the past. At this point, a fan pointed out that from a long-term perspective on the history of humanity, really feudalism is king and has been the major governmental force for well over 90% of history. So, the problem I was left with was how to create a system that is honest to the complexities of human politics, but not bogged down in essentially reading minutes of committees.

4. There was a brief discussion about hard science fiction space operas. With Charlie Stross on the panel, that discussion was on point. He stated that he never finished his earlier trilogy because he had realized that there were inherent inconsistencies in the science behind his story. He walked away from it embarrassed, despite both volumes being nominated for Hugos. However, he acknowledged that he is attempting to use science that humans believe is possible in his new planned space opera trilogy. He intends to stay as scientifically rigorous as possible, to avoid the inherent contradictions of his last series. He made no value judgment between his scientifically-rigorous work and the work of others—he actually seemed to support other authors treating future science as if it was space magic. He felt that it was honest for somebody to include faster than light travel in their space opera, but exclude a pseudoscientific attempt at explaining it. We simply don't know how it would work if it could, therefore if you want to use it use it, but don't try to explain it.

5. In a lot of ways, the space opera comes out of the horse opera. This is most apparent in the series Firefly and Star Wars—especially A New Hope, which steals some shots from John Ford's The Searchers. A lot of the early space opera simply switched the horse to a spaceship, the six shooter to a blaster, the ten-gallon hat to a space helmet, and Main Street to Planet OK Corral. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but to me it seems lazy because it shows authors not really exploring the potential effects of their set pieces. For instance, I think a large part of the characterization of some of the major characters in science fiction comes from their interaction with their environment: whether that's being predisposed to keeping to themselves because they spend a lot of time on a very small spaceship, or Paul really learning who he is through experiencing and understanding the desert of Dune, or Elijah's life in the titular Caves of Steel creating an outlook in him that is negatively insular and xenophobic. These are just three examples, but there are hundreds of other examples of authors exploring, thinking about, and theorizing about their set pieces, their window dressing, to the point where it isn't a set piece or window dressing anymore: it's an integral part of the story, driving philosophy and ideas, and it has effects. For Charlie Stross, this means being as honest with science as he can. For Frank Herbert this meant allowing the desert to inhabit his characters, to change them deeply, rather then just having it be a desert planet because deserts are cool.

6. My reading list from this panel:
"Anything published by Iain M Banks will be worth your time and interest." Charlie Stross said this and much of the crowd and panel agreed. It seems the consensus is to read Excession, Inversions, Use of Weapons, and The Player of Games at least.
Charles Stross' own books Saturn's Children and Neptune's Blood (These are the ones that contradicted themselves), and his forthcoming novel, where he claims he doesn't mention singularity once.
Ann Leckie's Ancillary Blank series, which was already on my list.
Doc Smith (EE Smith) for the pulp foundation of the Space Opera.

Panel 3:
Demigods, Chosen Ones, and Rightful Heirs: Can Progress, Merit, and Citizens Ever Matter in Fantasy?

1. This was one of the worst moderating jobs I've ever seen. The moderator actively discouraged much of the more interesting questions and discussions because she couldn't allow others time to think—the silence of the room seemed to drive her mad and she kept trying to move things forward. She missed so much. All this after admitting at the beginning, "My day job is writing award winning historical fiction, like The Pirate's Secret Baby, available soon from such and such a press. So I don't know much about this topic and I'm going to let the other four really take the show." Then she proceeded to ask every question, time every answer, and allow only the minimum of discussion, as well as inadvertently insult two of the four panelists, shut down panelist comments, go off on tangents from statements its obvious that she didn't understand, and generally be in the way of the panel. That said, the four others on the panel had some fascinating ideas and opinions. I only wished that I could watch them all talk, rather than this sort of speed dating panel thing the moderator attempted. These notes will be short because the authors weren't allowed to really explore any of the ideas that they brought up.

2. One interesting idea was that humans are never existing alone, they're typically in a group. Therefore, perhaps narratives of a chosen group would be more honest to humanity then narratives of a chosen one. Because everybody works together, there is some complexity to a group dynamic that just isn't there in the typical chosen one narrative. Because everybody could work to their strengths, this could allow a wide diversity within the group. This seems much more based on reality than the chosen one.

3. Another interesting idea was that ensemble casts were a simple way to get away from the chosen one narrative. Different points of view would also effectively entice the writer to humanize some villains, demonize some heroes. This would effectively get away from a messiah, or the typical story ending of the hero taking back the throne that is theirs.

4. Katherine Addison was up for a Hugo that evening. Though she didn't win it, she had great comments: she finds it difficult to get away from the chosen one narrative, because it is so prevalent. It seems that in her mind, and the mind of most fans, the setting of fantasy is synonymous with a messianic narrative. This is fascinating, but was entirely unexplored. She ended with saying, "Think about what you read, think about what you write." And boy did that ever need to be said now.

5. Annea Lea stated that she was prickly with any rules in fantasy that something has to be done a specific way. She advocated variety in everything: story arcs, characters, settings, writing styles, etc. It was awfully exciting and persuasive because she argued that fantasy today does not embrace the variety and reality of humanity or history. By being so focused on the chosen one narrative, fantasy is digging its own grave.

6. Of course the elephant in the room that nobody talked about was A Song of Ice and Fire: instead of the chosen one, this is the chosen none; he has variety through an ensemble cast and different points of view; and it's revitalizing and repopularizing fantasy.

7. My reading list from this panel:
Katherine Addison's Goblin Emperor
Setsu Uzume's anthology Happily Never After
Mary Soon Lee's short stories & poetry

Panel 4:
Seiun Awards and Science Fiction in Japan

1. This was sad: at a time when the science fiction community is spending too much time spilling pixels over issues like merit, diversity, and how to judge a book, the international presentation of the Seiun Awards were attended by 21 people, including myself. I expected a ton of people in there simply to support the diversity inherent in Science Fiction. But no, it was a large, empty conference room capable of housing probably 300. Yet there were only 21 of us. The discussion was great though!

2. The Japanese government is currently studying science fiction, anime, and mecha by giving grants to the universities to establish departments to historically collect, collate, and document, as well as study these through the scholarly tactics of comparative literature, cultural anthropology, and human psychology. This has been going on for some time now. This scholarly research is prioritized and highly-regarded in Japan. They didn't really have time to talk about much of the actual research findings, but they did mention that where the western world calls the cyberpunk of today post-cyberpunk, lumping everything together, the Japanese scholars see at least three distinct generations of cyberpunk, and some argue for four.

3. There was the general agreement, as with all cyberpunk of the last 20 years, that we're living in the future that cyberpunk predicted for us. The example given was left-behind construction projects and buildings in the video game Second Life. These were simply left-behind because the players moved on to other games. Because of the textures, they still look brand new and sparkling and clean, but there is no habitation, no age, no pattern of memory worn into the textures, and their abandonment is completely strange.

3. A characteristic of cyberpunk today appears to be a focus on tangibility. But more important than that, is this sense of cyberpunk pushing itself out of its comfort zone. "It's one thing to write your strengths, but it never pays to get too comfortable in your writing," said 2015 Seiun award winner and founder of cyberpunk Pat Cadigan. And of the three stories that were discussed from this year's Seiun awards, at least two showed this. In brief, cyberpunk can be loosely classified by about five characteristics: a street smart anti-hero, an earthbound or near earth culture, a depressing dystopian future run by corporations, rain slicked neon-lit streets, and body modifications with invasive interfaces with the internet. Pat Cadigan's winning story, "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi", takes place on Jupiter, breaking the earth-bounding typical of cyberpunk. Taiyo Fujii's Gene Mapper explores a happy future earth, instead of the dark, depressed dystopia typical to cyber punk. This shows cyber punk growing and embracing new tactics, techniques, and variety. How exciting!

5. My reading list from this panel:
Pat Cadigan's "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out to Sushi", which was already on my list.
Taiyo Fujii's Gene Mapper
Andy Weir's The Martian
More cyberpunk from today.

Hugo Awards Ceremony:
Watch them here, they're uploaded online. We were all laughing and in tears at points, there were some very funny people on stage. The winners are listed here. George RR Martin said, "I wish the internet did not have this horrible effect on the discourse. It tends to political toxicity and hardened battle lines."

Wired's post-award breakdown and recap of the kerfuffle.