Jennifer Stevenson -- Best Literature Picks of 2007

The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic by Dion Fortune. I hadn't read these in maybe twenty years, because I remembered them as slow-moving and short on dialogue. I was surprised to find that they are very strong on character. Fortune's style is to narrate character exposition, and use dialogue for relationship-in-motion events, a technique Jane Austen uses. She kept my interest this time; I couldn't put 'em down. Fortune also traces meticulously the progress of a character's emotional travel through the magical adventure. One's emotional state, particularly maintaining positive tension, she says, is vital to the successful working of her sort of magic, which also happens to be a recipe for good fiction. Her nonfiction is heavily larded with the post-Victorian equivalent of a piece of black tape over the naughty bits, but in her fiction one seldom finds a sentence like "I cannot tell you more, for this is one of the Inner Mysteries, and only for initiates."

In both these stories, a man is magically seduced by an age-old priestess who appears young, and who needs his help in working a specific magic whose purpose is to heal some ill in the soul of the world. He moves from being a soul-sick but latently powerful person to becoming her priest.
I think in 2008 I'll revisit The Winged Bull and The Demon Lover, and also her most famous fiction, a collection of stories called The Secrets of Dr. Taverner, about a psychic psychiatrist who heals past lives.

Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau S. Wilce. The subtitle is, Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spriit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog. That doesn't begin to say it. Terrific, terrific voice, invoking an alternate 19thC San Francisco with a Spanish culture, under the domination of Aztec flayed priests, with street cars and demonic eagle-women and anarchic rock stars and a magico-military oligarchy and way down at the bottom, the narrator, a fourteen-year-old girl living in a crippled magical palace with her broken alcoholic father, her rigid army-general mother, a hobbled house-daemon, and a lot of scut work. The narrator's voice is a mixture of spanglish and Victorianisms and army-brat-speak and pure kid.

PS, I got to read the second book before it came out. It's even better.

Blackheart Man, by Nalo Hopkinson. This is another one strong in voice, a variant on Hopkinson's creole voice (one of her many voices). In an alternate past, on a Caribbean island I can't name, a bad magician is stealing the souls of children to perform a tremendous magic: to melt the lake of tar in which the islanders' ancient enemy's army was drowned and fossilized, and bring the enemy back to conquer the island. If you've ever heard Hopkinson read aloud, you'll hear her voice, round and powerful, making sense of the unusual words in a way I can't explain. Heartstopping action in a world I guarantee you've never seen the like of.

The New Moon's Arms, by Nalo Hopkinson. I cheated: I read most of this in manuscript, but the finished version is fabulous. Her most accessible and personal novel, a rich character study of a Caribbean woman who finds that menopause is bringing back the magic of her childhood, and then some. For every woman who ever felt that a hot flash changes things.

Wolf Tales, by Kate Douglas. This is the first in a series of the hottest werewolf stuff I have ever read. I had no idea hairy and smelly could be so sexy. Douglas employs the psychology of the pack to justify the kind of sex that usually has me rolling my eyes. Not this time. >whew!<

Word of Mouth Marketing, by Andy Sernovitz. Sernovitz founded the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, and according to him this stuff is going to kill conventional advertising dead. For the sake of all those glossy magazines I certainly hope not. But as an author myself, I know his basic point is right: people trust recommendations that come from people they know. Word of mouth marketing gets ordinary people talking about your stuff, for free. A groovy idea, and one I'm hoping to learn more about.

Thud! by Terry Pratchett. This one I reread every year. Damn, it's good. For the troll poem at the beginning alone, it's worth a hardcover price. A Sam Vimes story that goes big on him.

Alan Mendelsohn, The Boy from Mars, and The Afterlife Diet, by Daniel Pinkwater. I had a Pinkwater binge during the winter. His combination of zen, yiddischer grosspapas, and reverence for good eats leave me all warm and yummy-feeling in a cold, cold world.

I Capture The Castle, by Dodie Smith. This was put into my hands by a bookseller who told me frankly she would never read anything I wrote, but I tried it anyway, and found it a gem of its type: the adolescent girl emerging into sexual adulthood and taking charge in her life. The setting is rural England, very lovely and misty, and the heroine is a bit of a goop, but I read it all and enjoyed it. The book's been around since 1948.

RealLiveNudeGirl: chronicles of sex-positive culture, by Carol Queen. I read this as research for a manuscript I was writing called at that time The Haunted Porn Factory, and found it energetic and uplifting. A window onto a world that defines itself according to sexual preferences.

Chicken: A self portrait of a young man for rent, by David Henry Sterry. Also read for the porn factory book. The narrator finds himself drawn into teen prostitution through a series of accidents and bad situations, and then struggles his way out again, with much enlightening and fascinating detail, particularly of his emotional travel, if I can use a writer's craft term, from an suburban kid to a successful prostitute and then back ... some of the way back anyway.

The Harlot's Daughter, by Blythe Gifford. Really good Medieval romance. For readers who love good old fashioned historical novels with terrific detail and adventure.

Agnes and the Hitman, by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. I liked this second collaboration by this oddball pair even better than Don't Look Down, maybe because I identify with Cranky Agnes and her perpetual bad mood. Plus, the cooking. Mmmm!

Under My Roof, by Nick Mamatas. Gonzo futurism at its nuttiest and most deadpan.

All the nerd books, by Vicki Lewis Thompson. I have a soft spot for beta males and other unconventional heroes, so her nerds get me where I live. Talk Nerdy To Me may be my favorite. For 2008 I'm licking my lips for Overhexed, on my TBR pile.

Before Midnight, by Julie Kistler. Her usual zany stuff--I love Kistler's bad guys. When she goes over the top, I just melt. This online e-read made me go back and reread Just A Little Fling for the plaid wedding, the evil stepsister, the underwear models, oh, just all of it.

Black Locusts, by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. This is a really weird guerilla fantasy, political spec fic like the stuff we used to see coming out of the USSR and eastern Europe: angry, beautiful, twisted, apocalyptic. Her sensory details are always powerful, and she doesn't hesitate to torture her characters. Get ready for a firestorm.