Wilce, Ysabeau S. - Flora Segunda

(subtitle: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog)

I have no idea how to describe this book. The plot itself isn't that original: per the subtitle, Flora gets into assorted mishaps with her best friend Udo while discovering more about her House and its Butler. But the worldbuilding and the prose!

The only reason why I recognized it as an alternate fantasy California was because both oracne and rushthatspeaks had mentioned it before. It still took me half the book to figure things out -- some parts read like turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe (I think), some like Aztec culture, some like Spanish, and some that can't be explained by anything. This is not to say that the worldbuilding was a mess; it is exactly the opposite. The world feels so real and so complex and jumbled that I wanted to spend time just reading about it, figuring out the lingo and the clothing and the holidays and the history. It's been a while since I've read a fantasy book with worldbuilding that wasn't "Oh, yeah, that's alterna-France" or "Yup, fantasy Renaissance Italy," and this was awesome.

The prose is also great. I've been flipping through to look for a passage that encompasses it, but nothing quite does. But there are Butlers and courtesies that signify Abasement before a Superior So Superior That No Abasement Is Abased Enough and a Dainty Pirate and a yellowback novel titled Nini Mo vs. the Flesh-Eating Fir Trees. I would read and burst into laughter every so often just from the sheer pleasure of the prose.

I did have a small twinge when it came to the portrayal of the fantasy Aztec Empire, the Huitzils -- must all portrayals of the Aztec be of heart-ripping sacrificers? I mean, clearly that has basis in history, but it's not really anything new. On the other hand, I loved that Wilce's Califa has tamales and stir-fried rice and saloons.

rushthatspeaks has a nice summary of the nifty gender politics, which made me very happy because like Laurie Marks' Elemental Logic series, it's just sort of there in the background.

And did I mention that the world is made of awesome?

Links:
- oracne's review
- rushthatspeaks' review
- mistful's review
- gwyneira's review

Vande Velde, Vivian - Companions of the Night

Several people recced this to me, particularly after I read Twilight.

This is up there with Annette Curtis Klause's The Silver Kiss as one of the more interesting takes on vampires, particularly if you're a bit fed up with the Anne Rice-an broody angsty vampires (Peeps is also a cool take, but I think the Klause and this will appeal to the same people). I am a huge vampire fan, but because of that, I am rather sick of the usual romantic, dark and painfully emo vampires that I usually get in fiction.

Kerry accidentally gets involved with the affairs of vampires and vampire hunters one night at the laundromat, and she ends up spending most of the book attempting to be helpful enough to a vampire so he won't just kill her.

I really loved the vampires in this book; they actually feel like they've lived for quite some time, as opposed to psychologically being a high school student for centuries. I particularly loved the moral ambiguity of the book, that the threat to Kerry felt real and immediate, and the lack of romanticization. This is what a vampire-human relationship might work out if vampires were real.

Kerry herself is also a neat character; she has realistic reactions to the reveal of vampires, and Vande Velde does a great job of portraying how shock has Kerry both terrified and strangely pragmatic, often at the same time.

On the other hand, I'm not quite sure if I completely buy the ending, but I did enough to enjoy the book, or as much as you can enjoy a tense thriller that never holds back on the sense of danger. I think I'll be looking for more of the author's books now.