Fragments of Life interviews me about my favorite books from 2011, and what I've been reading, and what's in my library.

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The Midwest Book Review sez:

The Sorceress Morgan Le Fay is often painted as a villain in Arthurian legend, but what painted her in this role? "The Circle Cast: The Lost Years of Morgan LeFay" follows the young woman after she swears vengeance on Uther Pendragon who killed her father. With vengeance in mind, she masters sorcery and makes her own way, only to have her plans for revenge derailed by what may be love. "The Circle Cast" is an excellent work of Arthurian fantasy, highly recommended.

Nice!

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Roof Beam Reader reviews TCC:

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is not just that it is about Morgan Le Fay, which is a fascinating subject; in fact, one of the most interesting elements was the conflict between the budding Christian culture and the well-established but threatened pagan religions. Added with the various nationalities – the British, the Irish, the Saxons, and (in some relative respect) the Romans- the book becomes a fascinating culture study. It also tackles aspects of family, revenge, and forgiveness. This is certainly an appealing and creative re-imagining of the young life of Morgana, and one can only hope that it will be the first book in a series that will expand further on her life and times. The book’s website also contains some great background and historical information on Morgan and this era, which is a great benefit to readers who have a deeper interest.

Thanks, Roof Beam Reader!

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Saw IRONCLAD last night at Fantasia. It's essentially a samurai movie, but set in England under the reign of King John. After signing Magna Carta, John treacherously hires Danish mercenaries to retake control of his kingdom and murder all the barons who forced him to sign it. A small group of knights seize Rochester Castle and must hold it against the Danish mercs and King John's siege weapons to give time for the French (!) to come to the rescue.

It's a very good, grade-A samurai movie. Lots of hack and slash. James Purefoy (ROME's Mark Antony) is the broody Knight Templar at the center of the story; he's terrific to watch. Kate Mara is the doe-eyed young wife of the castle's cowardly lord (Derek Jacobi) who falls in love with him. (Emma Watson better watch out. She's rocking the same basic look, but rocking it harder.) Paul Giamatti is in actor heaven playing the unbelievably cruel, smart, treacherous, arrogant king.

I really enjoyed it. If you like samurai movies, you will too.

(I reviewed TROLL HUNTER on my screenwriting blog.)

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My Reading Room has me answering This or That today...

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I'm off in a few hours to see THE WICKER TREE at Fantasia. It's the long-awaited sequel to THE WICKER MAN. Tell you all about it when I'm back.

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The Fiction Enthusiast asked me what books I would recommend to 5 year old me, 11 year old me, 16 year old me, and 20 year old me. What do you think of my answers?

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As part of my blog tour, Anime Girl interviews me. The catch -- I have to answer in tweets. Check it out.

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Strangely, there is no Kindle Store on Amazon.ca. So if you want to buy The Circle Cast on Kindle from Canada, you have to go to Amazon.com. (See link at right.)

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In the past few days (and especially since my computer died), I've been reading Tim Powers books. I really enjoy his mix of history and fantasy. The historical bits give a sense that he's done a tremendous amount of research into the times he's writing about, whether it's 1529 (THE DRAWING OF THE DARK) or 1987 (THREE DAYS TO NEVER). The fantasy bits feel right, too. Of course getting the history right helps the fantasy too. As he says in an interview in the Guardian:

One advantage of rooting his stories in the real is, he hopes, that readers will be more likely to suspend their disbelief. "It gives a lot of real-world lumber to support my crazy supernatural business. I'm always very aware of the risk that a reader will blink and say wait a minute this is all made up crap, isn't it?" he says. "But if I talk about carriages and shoe buckles and George III and commerce between London and Amsterdam, the reader will be a little more tilted towards thinking this is happening in the real world. If I wrote about the magical kingdom of Ding Dong and the lost prince and the dark lord, I would have ceded a whole lot of territory as far as plausibility goes. There is a speed bump to credulity, when you ask readers to take seriously things like ghosts and vampires, and I want to make it as low as possible. I want to be able to have them go over it without any kind of jolt."

Where he lost me on both books was the endings. Some novelists have a talent for weaving multiple threads that all come together at the finale. Not so much Tim Powers, not in these two books. The characters and the worlds are well wrought, and Powers' powers of invention is strong. But the endings fizzled a bit.

(I'll try not to spoil anything, and I won't tell you whether Harry Potter finally gets to hook up with someone, but if you're thinking of reading these very fine books in the next few months, go ahead and read them first.)

THE DRAWING OF THE DARK gives an occult reason for the 1529 assault on Vienna by the Turks. Vienna must hold out until October 31, or the West will fall to the East! Yet, for some reason, the finale occurs about two weeks earlier. It's sort of Plotting 101 that if you "set a clock" on the action, the finale should reach its climax just as the clock is about to strike. That's the moment everything should come together.

In THREE DAYS TO NEVER, two spy groups are trying to get their hands on a Device, while a father with a Past and a daughter with an Ability are caught in the middle. As you might expect from the title, the Device has apocalyptic powers. But you only find that out in the last five pages of the book, and then it isn't so much explained as nodded at. You don't know what the Big Bad was or what it would have done; and you don't know what the heroes did to stop it. C'mon. If the jeopardy is going to be The End of the World, then we should know that by midway through, don't you think? And at least one of the heroes ought to know it by what screenwriters would call the beginning of Act Three.

Damn it, where are his editors? Because surely he is not so famous a fantasy author that he no longer has to listen to his editors?

Now I'm not saying these are bad books or that I didn't enjoy reading them. I'm just a little disappointed in the endings. After all the world-building and mythology-construction that Powers is so good at, I hope for a better finale.

THE ANUBIS GATES didn't have this problem. DECLARE definitely didn't have this problem. I think I need to go read some more Tim Powers.

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My friend Michael Zaidan posted this great John Steinbeck quote on Facebook:

“We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say -- and to feel -- ''Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought.''

I once asked my friend Shoshana Marchand why we write. She said, "because you can't possibly make love to everybody."

I'm not sure which I like better.

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Sasha Watson, writing in the East Hampton Star, just gave TCC a spectacular review:

Mr. Epstein’s originality is in how deeply he goes into Morgan’s mind and how vividly he renders her voice...

... Mr. Epstein writes deftly and movingly of the young girl and her perspective on her parents and the events that will change the direction of her life. ...

Mr. Epstein’s tale ... provides a canny view of the lore as a whole, and in elegant and poetic writing he makes the thoroughly researched settings as real as can be. As with all the best adapters of myth, he makes Morgan’s story relevant to our times as well, skillfully joining contemporary language to the ancient settings and tales...

The magic is another innovation of Mr. Epstein’s. He has undertaken not only a rigorous research of ancient Celtic paganism, but he has also, with great success, crafted the magic out of contemporary Wiccan practices ...

This blend of the ancient and the modern works seamlessly, all of it linked by the deep connection we feel to Morgan, who, bridging the pagan and the Christian worlds, ultimately falls on the side of the old, choosing the vengeance and honor upheld by her father over forgiveness. Whether or not we can entirely agree with Morgan’s choices, Mr. Epstein makes sure that we sympathize with and understand them. And it is this addition to the lore, the creation of a conflicted and determined young woman in the space that was left by Morgan and the “lost years” between her departure from England and her furious return, that Mr. Epstein offers.

Those with a longstanding love of Arthuriana are sure to take pleasure in this new vision of Morgan, and those who are new to it will no doubt be drawn into the pleasures of this multivoiced literature after reading “The Circle Cast.”

Wow. Thanks, Sasha Watson!

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We're on vacation. Right now I'm in my parents' apartment overlooking the Hudson River. New Jersey is still shrouded in fog. I'm looking through the books I read this year for part of my upcoming blog tour. I'm struck how many times I read books by authors I love that were disappointing. I couldn't get through ANATHEM by Neal Stephenson, whose Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books ever. Neil Gaiman's GRAVEYARD BOOK was fine, but I wouldn't rave about it, as I would rave about his SANDMAN graphic novels, or AMERICAN GODS, or NEVERWHERE. (Though I never get tired of reading BLUEBERRY GIRL to Jesse.) Charles Stross's FAMILY TRADE didn't even feel like the same author as ACCELERANDO or THE JENNIFER MORGUE.

Meanwhile, I'm on a Tim Powers rampage. I found LAST CALL hard to get through, but I loved ON STRANGER TIDES and I loved rereading THE ANUBIS GATES. I've got THE DRAWING OF THE DARK cued up. It's his Arthurian book. I'm psyched.

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I thought Tim Powers' biography on IMDB was pretty funny. I wonder who wrote it?

The greatest fantasy writer of his generation, Powers has lived in southern California since 1959. ... Powers, who takes more time and care writing novels than his fans would like, went on to sell "The Drawing of the Dark" (1979, a supernatural fantasy about King Arthur and beer-drinking) ... A very accessible writer, he has often taught the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop at Michigan State University and the Writers of the Future Workshop, and chats regularly with his fans on the Tim Powers discussion list on yahoogroups.

I've just started ON STRANGER TIDES, which is apparently the basis for the new PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movie, though I doubt the two have much to do with each other except for a fascination with Voodoo.

In a less fantastical vein, I just finished EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON, a beautiful history of the rise and fall of the Comanche nation. For some generations they were the most powerful of the horse tribes in the southern Great Plains, and actually rolled back the frontier for a while, until they succumbed to six-shooters and buffalo hunters. The book feels fair: both the settlers and the Comanches have their moments of glory and brutality. It's always hard to read about how the Native Americans got crushed, but the Comanches gave as good as they got for a fair long while.

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Very thoughtful review by Old English Rose:

Morgan, or Anna as she begins the story, is a surprisingly complex character who develops convincingly throughout the course of the novel. She starts out curious, questioning and vulnerable but quickly acquires a steely resolve and an adult mindset as she is forced to mature by her circumstances. She’s so controlled and self-sufficient for much of the book that I don’t find her a particularly sympathetic character, but she’s still really interesting and a great strong female protagonist for a young adult story. I thought it was particularly poignant and a clever touch that what she works towards in Ireland, unification under one High King, is exactly what Arthur later works towards in Britain.

She objects to my putting pelicans in the Irish sea. She's probably right about that. I was trying to show the Irish Sea before it was fished out, and I'm pretty confident there were flocks of sea birds out there in 500 AD. But they were probably not pelicans, which tend to keep to the Mediterranean in Europe.

However, I did not put Morgan's three-toed horse in recklessly. Caesar had a three-toed horse, according to Suetonius, and Alexander's horse Bucephalos was supposedly three-toed. Snakes are sometimes born with atavistic hind limbs, and sperm whales rarely (1 in 5000) with hip bones. The genome has the information, but other genes suppress its expression. Presumably horses have the genes for three toes, but also genes that suppress the expression of any but the middle toe.

Here's a good article on polydactyly in horses. And here's a Scientific American article from 1892.

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If you're looking for the details of The Circle Cast's Blog Tour, check out the Teen Book Scene Tour Details!

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Jules Jones has some nice things to say about THE CIRCLE CAST:

Once I got into the rhythm of the writing I was hooked. Epstein has taken the historical period of 500AD as the basis for his story, a time when the Roman legions had long withdrawn from Britain but many of the British still thought of themselves as Roman. He's drawn on Irish mythology and blended it with modern Wiccan practice to create a believably consistent picture of magic, in a time when both Druid priests and Christian missionaries can draw on the power of the earth, and a young exile can learn to use it to protect herself and the people she loves. The result is a solid addition to the Arthurian legend, covering an area not much touched on, and giving a plausible reason for the adult Morgan le Fay to be who she is. Here she is a strong and sympathetic character, and it's only too easy to understand why she makes the choices she does.

The book's been written in such a way that it can be enjoyed both as a free-standing novel suitable for someone not familiar with any of the mythology and literature that has accreted around Arthur, and as a fascinating new contribution to that ongoing literary conversation. An excellent YA fantasy novel that should appeal to adults as well.

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You can now buy Circle Cast schwag!

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I understand there is this thing called Facebook? And books have their own pages on it?

Anyway, there is now a Circle Cast Facebook page. I hope you like it.

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This is probably what is going through the mind of your star as you craft a show for her.

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Fantasy Writer A. F. Stewart (Chronicles of the Undead) had some nice things to say about The Circle Cast:

... an excellent addition to the genre of Arthurian folklore and legend. The author crafts worlds past with a deft hand, easily pulling a reader into the story...

The author has a nice take on the magical aspects of the story, weaving a mysterious aspect in to the narrative by his effective use of Celtic religion and myth.

The writer also does an exceptional job at creating the main character, making her a full person with fears, doubts and weakness...

Being a devotee of the Arthurian legends, I’ve read many books on the subject, both fiction and non-fiction, and this delightfully enchanting novel is a welcome complement to the mythology.

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At the used bookstore, I picked up Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time, which I remember liking as a kid, and the nice old lady there said, "When you read it as an adult, it's so much better."

Mmmmm, well, no, that was not my experience.

The main character, Meg, is a good YA heroine. She gets picked on for being smart. She acts out. She's impatient. I can dig it. I spent most of junior high not living up to my potential.

But she never gets to do anything with that personality. In fact, she barely gets to do anything at all. The real hero is her telepathic savant five year old brother, Charles Wallace, and possibly a guy from her school, Calvin, who she essentially bumps into. Charles Wallace has been in touch with three supernatural entities, who know where her missing father is.

And when the entities whisk Charles Wallace off, she's along for the ride. I don't think she makes a single decision other than "hold on!" until 80% through the story, when she decides to risk her life to save her kid brother.

Which, granted, is pretty important. But pretty late, too. You couldn't write a YA novel like that these days. Your publisher would say, "But your heroine is passive!"

I guess there weren't a lot of kickass young female heroines in 1962. The book won the Newbery Award and a slew of others.

I'd like to say, "And yet it has something." But it disappointed me. It has a typical 1962-ish equation of evil with conformity. (After I grew up, I discovered that the 1960's lied to us about conformity. It's sort of important.) It has a Big Bad that amounts to a Big Black Cloud.

I sort of felt that it was the kind of science fantasy that someone writes when they don't actually like speculative fiction. I'm told Madeleine L'Engle's favorite book is Anna Karenina. Beware of speculative fiction authors whose favorite books aren't spec fiction. Personally, much as I enjoyed War and Peace, my favorite books -- the ones I would most like to read again for the first time, if I could, and the ones I reread when I can -- are all spec fiction, by Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson.

What books have you read that didn't hold up?

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I know that Game of Thrones is a big deal to a lot of people. And I have to admit that I only read the free Kindle sample, and watched the first two episodes of the miniseries (which seemed to follow the sample fairly faithfully). After all, there are people who've read all of the GoT books ten times.

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The Circle Cast is on the British Fantasy Awards Long List, so if you are a British Fantasy member, please vote for it!

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Laurie Rezanoff of Historical Novel Review just posted this lovely review of TCC:

I thoroughly enjoyed Alex Epstein's look into her life, in Ireland and how that exile helped her to become the driven and powerful woman she was later known to be...

Alex has captured the raw energy of the land, the people of that time in history, and the mythical person who we know as Morgan Le Fay. Her encounters with power-hungry figures influenced her decisions and ensured her survival to become the Sorceress of legend. Her thirst for revenge against the man who killed her father and changed her life forever was never quenched, yet it certainly was later transferred onto Arthur.

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