book review: Throne of the Crescent Moon, by Saladin Ahmed.

 
So there's this series of podcasts over at the Escape Artists websites: Escape Pod, for science fiction, Podcastle for fantasy, and Pseudopod for horror. I listen to them a lot, and recently a lot of fantasy authors who debuted on the podcasts are beginning to make their mark with critically acclaimed fantasy novels. The most prominent to date is probably NK Jemison, who's had great success with her Hundred Thousand Kingdoms trilogy, but my easy favourite is Saladin Ahmed. His whose thoughtful stories set in diverse but still recognizably Islamic settings tick all my favourite fantasy boxes- fleshed out, non-European worldbuilding, main characters that aren't royal, and a beautiful style of writing.

So when I learned his first novel, The Throne of the Crescent Moon, was due to be released, I got very, very excited.

Fortunately, I wasn't disappointed. Throne is not a long book, but it managed to pack a massive amount of characterisation and world-building into its pages. And there's more than a touch of the Assassin's Creed videogames, with a heroic character who can jump up walls using magic. Ahmed's blogged about Islamic themes in videogames in his series Muslims in My Monitor before over at the Escapist , so I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise. The villain- a shapeshifting mage-is deliciously creepy, and I loved the way that the wide variety of environments-marsh-dwelling pseudo-Arabs, fantasy Bedouin, and the inhabitants of the swarming city of Dhamsawaat were so well rounded.

The most critical thing I can say about the book was simply that it wasn't long enough, but there's more going on here than in epics twice this book's size. I'll certainly be continuing to read anything Ahmed writes and I'm looking forwards to the proposed sequel.

back to the word-mines, part two.

 So I mentioned a few days ago that I'd signed up to the scifibigbang challenge again. Since finishing AC3 I've started to play Dragon Age 2, and the Anders' centric fic (working title: Seven Hundred Ways to Sing the Blues) that's resulted is fast becoming The Fic That Ate My Brain.

I decided to set myself a challenge based on yuki_onna 's article on narrative machinery, more specifically how to create interesting and/or sympathetic characters.

The rules are simple.

1/ Take one unformed character.
2/ Give them something to want.
3/ Give them something to hide.
4/ Give them something to fear.
5/ Give them something to obsess over.
6/ Then hurt them. 

On a subconscious level I think it's something I've been doing for years as both a reader and a writer. Putting characters through hell is what makes a story interesting-certainly when I wrote my Assassins fics they were never so interesting as when they were backed into a corner. But I am slightly disturbed how easy it was to do n a conscious level. I've written 11,000 words in three days-over half the total story. I've used these words to give Anders a life outside the Tower, friends, a job, a pet.

And now it's time for the fun part. Of course, it'd be more fun if I just didn't feel so damn evil. 

How have you hurt characters in your stories (fanfic or original), and why did you do it?