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Sam Hawksmoor and his debut children's novel. Photo: Petersfield Post Sam Hawksmoor is a debut YA writer with a backlist in adult novels. A Canadian, he ran the Portsmouth University writing courses at BA and MA level until relatively recently. Sam also ran an award-winning hackwriters website 'The Repossession' came out in March. A Dream of Books blog described it as a difficult book to

Fantasy children’s author Catherine Fisher will be officially named Wales’ first Young People’s Poet Laureate later today (18th October).

The Newport writer will be given the title by Literature Wales, which was established in April this year when the authors' society Academi joined forces with the north Wales writing centre, Tŷ Newydd. The ceremony will take place in Cardiff's Literature Lounge, presented by Welsh singer Charlotte Church.

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The winner of Kody's The Duff ARC is....

Carolina Valdez Miller!

(congrads, email me your address at [email protected])

Don't worry, I have 2 more copies of The Duff to giveaway this month and Kody is stopping by next week :) Here is just a sample of what else is coming this month:

• Firelight
• Paranormalcy (2 ebooks)
• Matched
• Nightshade
• The Duff (2 more copies)
  
• 13th Reality (James Dashner)
• Replacements
• Virals
• The Enemy
• and much much more! (you saw the pile!)
  

• You must be a follower of my blog (sorry but this is for those who visit me more than once :) I'd love to meet you if you are just stopping by)
  
• You must follower her blog too. (which is really just a bonus reference for you! :)
  
• You can only enter one pitch - be sure it is something she is looking for.
• Your pitch can only be 1-3 sentences long. (not long run on sentences!)

• 1st place winner can submit the entire manuscript
• 2nd place winner can submit a partial (first 3 chapters)
• 3rd place winner will get a query critique

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher. Dial Books, an imprint of Penguin Books. 2010. Reviewed from ARC from ALA Midwinter.

The Plot: Finn, seventeen, is a prisoner in Incarceron. A prison created generations ago, a prison that runs itself so needs no guards, a prison so large that no one knows all its secrets. Rumors and myths exist of one person, Sapphique, who escaped to Outside.

Claudia is the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron. The technology that created Incarceron is almost lost, because of the Protocol to create a Tudorish time period for the world to live in and freeze time at that moment. She is to marry the heir to the kingdom, but finds that the politics and machinations of her world includes lost heirs and conspiracies she doesn't fully understand.

Finn finds a Key. Claudia finds a Key. He wants a way Outside; and she is looking for answers in Incarceron.

The Good: Catherine Fisher does not disappoint!

The dual stories of Finn and Claudia twin each other; both prisoners, Finn literally, and Claudia a prison to her familial expectations. Both have pasts they don't quite understand. Finn is "cell born," with no true memories of his life before three years past when he awoke in a cell. Claudia is the Warden's daughter, with a mother never mentioned; she has been groomed to wed the Prince, the heir to the kingdom.

And Incarceron -- a prison unlike any other. Prisoners, descendants of those who first were condemned to Incarceron, live knowing Incarceron is always watching; it needs no guards. Sometimes the inmates are left to their fights and schemes and battles, other times it interferes to keep some type of order. Imagine dumping criminals into a prison and locking the door? Yes, it turns out about as well as you would imagine. Interestingly enough, Incarceron was created to be a paradise, to contain those the world did not want but not to punish. Whether it's peoples natures that cannot be changed, or that Incarceron operates outside its initial programming, the fact remains -- Incarceron is a hell of survival and brutality.

The Outside world is "frozen" in time, under the belief that somehow, by stopping progress, by removing fear of future, all will be well. While Fisher names no specific time, the descriptions seem to be that of the Tudor world, including the politics and double dealing of the Tudor court. One wonders if the person who selected that time only looked at paintings of castles and lush outfits and ignored the history of double-dealings, betrayals, and constant struggle for power.

Because there are two narratives, two stories, there is a fairly large cast of characters. Each one is fully drawn; very real; and I have to say, while Finn and Claudia are the main charactes, the two I really love are Finn's oathbrother, Keiro, and another of his companions, Attia. Keiro is charming and brutal, yet dedicated and loyal to Finn. Oh, I'll just admit it.... Keiro is the ultimate bad boy! And while Finn asserts some bad boy

I love Catherine Fisher. I looked up some of my reviews of her other work, and it's sort of interesting (to me, maybe boring to you) to see the growth in my reviewing style over the years.
Darkhenge, March 2006

Sphere of Secrets, November 2006

Corbenic, December 2006

Day of the Scarab, June 2008

And she has a new book! Incarceron. There's a trailer at the publisher's website.



It looks awesome.

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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

Catherine Fisher's Incarceron was kindly loaned to me by Lady_Shrapnell of So Many Books.

Incarceron is a prison - the only prison - of the future. Sealed away, it is a closed system which nothing can enter or leave. It's believed by those on the Outside to be a paradise, the ultimate in rehabilitation therapy. When all criminals and dissidents were sent to Incarceron a century and a half ago, along with seventy of the Sapienti (the scholars/scientists who designed it) they thought they were creating a paradise from a hell. However, the Sapienti plan didn't work and Incarceron has become a sealed world of savagery where dreams of Escape are the only crumbs of comfort anyone has. To make matters worse, the prison has taken on a life of its own and become sentient.

One young prisoner, Finn, is different to the other prisoners. He has visions which Gildas, the Sapient who belongs to the same tribe as Finn, believes will lead them out of Incarceron, although Finn believes they are memories of his life Outside Incarceron.

Outside is also a prison. Technology has been rejected in favour of an authoritarian and feudal regime (similar to our 17th century) which insists on everything being in Era, a peculiar regression to which the world moved following the Years of Rage (it's hinted that the world went through a major war, which in part led to the decision to build Incarceron and regress to the past. The royal court is a place of intrigue, plots and politics, but Claudia, daughter of the Warden of Incarceron is due to be married to the royal heir, an arranged marriage that was organised after the first heir died of a fall from his horse at a young age. Claudia's intended husband, Giles' step-brother, is a useless brute to whom she dreads being married.

However, both Finn and Claudia find a pair of identical crystal keys that allow them to communicate with one another and they set on a path that will make the worlds of Incarceron and Outside collide...

This was a fascinating book. It's a mixture of historical, Science Fiction and fantasy elements combined. The historical elements are those that relate to the Outside; the SF elements relate to Incarceron, which it turns out, is a vast prison that's been compressed into a tiny cube that hangs from the Warden's watch chain; and the fantasy elements are related to the sensibility that Fisher has adopted. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but the story feels like a fantasy tale but it's got strong SF elements in it.

Incarceron is not a stand-alone novel - Fisher is apparently working on a second book - which is just as well, because the ending of this one is rather abrupt - a cliff-hanger in fact. Claudia manages to use her father's Key to enter Incarceron and bring Finn Outside (she believes he's not really a cell-born prisoner, as others have suggested, but Giles, the royal heir to whom she was originally betrothed), but Finn's oath-brother Keiro and a slave girl named Attia (who had helped Finn and owes him her life) are still trapped inside Incarceron as the Key can only take one person Outside at a time.

I don't think this is Fisher's best book - I've enjoyed others (such as Corbenic) far more, but it is intriguing and thought-provoking.

James McCune Smith was one of the foremost black intellectuals in America, the first to receive a medical degree and the most educated African American before W. E. B. Du Bois. McCune Smith publicly advocated the use of “black” rather than “colored” as a self-description and he, like James Weldon Johnson and other successors, treated racial identities as social constructions and argued that American literature, music, and dance would be shaped and defined by blacks.

John Stauffer, the editor of The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, has organized McCune Smith’s writings around genre and chronology. Stauffer, along with three other distinguished historians will discuss Smith’s life, work, and legacy at The New York Historical Society on Wednesday, April 18th at 6:30 pm. Below is a video from The Historical Society’s current exhibition “New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War.” The video is of letters written by McCune Smith read by the actor Danny Glover. (more…)

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