$750 per pirated book?

Back in March, I posted a link to help authors to discover whether or not their works had been pirated by various AI-developing folks.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Two of mine showed up, but one had its title horribly mangled.

Now, I have a link to a lawyer (class action) to share. This one is against Anthropic.

https://www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-author-contact/

The SWFA states:

"If you have friends or colleagues who are not part of SFWA and may be impacted by this lawsuit, we encourage you to share this website with them:https://www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-author-contact/

The sooner they get in contact, the better.

If you are receiving this email, you will also be receiving information about the lawsuit from Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP in the following weeks. We encourage you to follow up. 

After the settlement is finalized, we will update you on the full details. "

I thought that I saw somewhere that the class action suit might be worth $750 per book illegally exploited, but I cannot be sure where I saw that.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday   

Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 2 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner 

E-books and e-publishing have really advanced in the last three decades. When I first entered this arena in 1998, e-books were the ugly stepsister of "real books". Fast-forward thirty years, and it's a whole different world now than those early pioneering days in the industry. Last week, I posted the first part of an article I wrote in 2003, when e-books and e-publishing still hadn't made much of an impact. Back then, universal acceptance of them always seemed out of reach. Reflecting on changes keeps history relevant. To that end, this week, I'm posting Part 2.

 

WHO CAME FIRST?

by Karen S. Wiesner

© 2003 as featured in ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, 2003 Edition by Karen S. Wiesner, published by Hard Shell Word Factory OOP

 

In the Beginning…

 

The question "Who were the first electronic publishers?" can never be answered with any real degree of accuracy, although I’ve attempted to shed as much light as possible on this mystery with this essay. The foremost reason it would be impossible to pinpoint such a thing is because, while several e-publishers have been around for a long time and continue to do business to this day (though perhaps not publishing e-books any longer), there could conceivably be hundreds of e-publishers who originated with the advent of the computer in the 1940s that have either gone out of business or the owners died themselves. (Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg says: "I only ever heard of one Etext from the 40s…some religious thing.") Because we can’t include these defunct or deceased e-publishers, we can’t pinpoint true accuracies.

Also, how can you ever pinpoint a "first" when all aspects of the publishing industry are based on growth—building on what was already there?

Multiplying the confusion, you might ask what the definition of an ’electronic publisher’ is. It could mean a company that publishes original e-books (like Hard Shell or New Concepts). Or it could mean a content provider—basically, someone who secures the rights to works out of print and converts them to e-books (like Project Gutenberg or Alexandria Digital Literature). An e-publisher could also be one who puts out e-zines, newsletters, or publishes articles, etc. online and so on. For purposes of this essay, I focus only on e-book publishers that publish original electronic novels or novellas, as well as those that publish out of print titles/re-prints of novels and/or novellas.

In addition to these things, complexities arise when you take into account that, of late, e-publishing is becoming more like traditional publishing and traditional publishing is becoming more like electronic publishing. As the heroine in the futuristic thriller The Terminator said, "A person could go crazy thinking about this."

Nevertheless, it is a fact that electronic publishing was happening in the 1970s, in what some of us will find fascinatingly "primitive" ways.

Project Gutenberg began in 1971 when Michael Hart was given an operator’s account with $100,000,000 of computer time in it by the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois. "In the overall point-of-view, you could say I invented e-publishing," Michael states. He decided that the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries. Ironically, Michael points out, "Instead of embracing the possibilities, governments around the world have extended and re-extended copyrights to keep the vast majority of information off the internet." The philosophy Project Gutenberg was based on was: anything that can be entered into a computer can be reproduced indefinitely...what Michael termed "Replicator Technology"—once a book or any other item (including pictures, sounds, and even 3-D items can be stored in a computer), then any number of copies can and will be available. Everyone in the world, or even not in this world (given satellite transmission) can have a copy of a book that has been entered into a computer. In fact, Project Gutenberg is available on several satellites, as well as various versions of the metal disks being sent into space. Shannon Lucid also took one of Project Gutenberg’s CDs on her record stay aboard Mir. Says Michael of the beginning of Project Gutenberg: "Once I realized what could be done with the internet, that it could be the start of the "Neo-Industrial Revolution," that it was, in essence, a very primitive combination of the Star Trek communicators, transporters and replicators, I just had to keep on providing an example of "Unlimited Distribution."

"When I entered this, there were only about 100 people on the entire internet. The dot-coms didn’t really come along until 20-25 years later... The first other Etext collection I heard of was the Oxford Text Archive, but they only believed in "Limited Distribution" of the most elitist manner, as you might well imagine. Our first Etexts we made so long ago that THEY WERE ALL IN CAPS, since computers didn’t do lowercase yet, and with a limited supply of punctuation marks."

In the ’70s, Bob Gunner (Cyber-Pulp Houston/USA ePublishing) published "fan-zines" for comic book collectors as a hobby. He was also the SYSOP for the local BBS called "The Comic Crypt" and used a Commodore 64 OS and a bunch of daisy-linked disk drives. Additionally, he’d been writing his own horror/fantasy stories and wanted a way to distribute his work to readers. To that end, Bob began creating ASCII Text files and distributing them originally from his BBS, and then, when America Online and Prodigy were introduced, through their member downloads library. When Mosaic-based (or graphic) web browsing became popular, he moved his operations to a local internet provider service and built a homepage for the company.

Serendipity Systems was started in 1986 by John Galuszka to promote the, then esoteric, idea of electronic books. John says, "Keep in mind that computers typically had 64K of memory, ran at 4.77MHz, and had floppy drives of 160K capacity; most monitors displayed 80 characters by 24 lines of text, graphics were rare, and color was very expensive. Hardware limitations were a critical factor. For example, when I couldn’t find interactive hypertext fiction, I designed one, only to discover that the hardware (1985) could not support such a large and complicated program."

Galuszka created and sold an electronic book display program called PC-BOOK in 1990. It created a stand-alone book program—press the PG DN key and the next screen of text appeared. This program, written in Turbo Pascal, featured numbered pages and also a bookmark so that the reader could keep track of where he was in the book. Other early e-publishers distributed their work in the form of word processor files, or generic ASCII (a la Project Gutenberg) files which required a word processor to display. Serendipity Systems decided to concentrate on publishing and let others do the programming.

By the early 1990s, like-minded enthusiasts gathered at Genie’s Digital Roundtable, and/or were members of the Digital Publishing Association (DPA) founded by Dr. Ron Albright. Galuszka was a member of the Board of Directors of the DPA. In 1992, the world of electronic publishing numbered a few hundred planet-wide pioneers. By the time GEnie folded, the internet was becoming popular, and "Windows" was replacing "DOS." Enthusiasts abandoned GEnie for "The Net." The DOS-based e-books in Serendipity System’s growing collection were converted to Windows-compatible editions, then morphed into HTML documents for the internet.

When asked about other early pioneers in the e-publishing field, John points out the following: "Ted Husted’s DOS program IRIS may have been the first commercially available electronic book publishing program (1989; shareware; $8.00). Our program PC-BOOK was available in 1990, but at that time Husted and I did not know of each other. Husted also published several books using his program. Husted later created the DART program (shareware; $24.00) which had expanded multi-media features. Both programs also worked with 'text reader' programs, so that vision-impaired readers could access the books.

"Shortly thereafter, others began doing the same thing: programming electronic book engines and publishing books. There may have been as many as a dozen different e-book engines available by the early 1990s.

"Jeff Napier published a variety of non-fiction works with his programs.

"Charles Wiedermann offered a number of titles and programs.

"Rod Wilmot created a hypertext poem, "Everglade," and authored the hypertext ORPHEUS program."

When Eastgate Systems was founded in 1982, it was publishing/producing mostly computer games and small software goodies like Fontina (which organizes long font lists spatially). In 1987, Eastgate published its first hypertext fiction: Afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce. The story was originally published on floppy disk and packaged in a printed vinyl casing. Eastgate editor Diane Greco says of that sentimentally archaic offering, "Very incunabular—I bet that original packaging is worth some money now!"

J. Neil Schulman began distributing books via computer media in December 1987 via SoftServ. The short answer as to why he turned to e-publishing: "…because traditional publishing always placed the interests of the author dead last. Everyone else in the bookselling pipeline—editors, artists, marketing people, sales representatives, typesetters, printers, shipping clerks and bookstore clerks—made enough off an author’s book to be able to support their families and make regular payments on their cars and mortgages. Except for a small number of anointed 'bestselling' authors, all the others were being marginalized and suffering financial catastrophes… As an author, I decided this was a bad thing and started looking into ways of getting past the existing publishing industry." Schulman’s latest venture is Pulpless.com, began in 1996.

BiblioBytes was founded in January 1993 by Glenn Hauman (dubbed a "young Turk of publishing" in the New York Observer and "a Silicon Alley veteran" by Crain’s, was a founding board member of WWWAC and a consultant for Simon & Schuster Interactive and Ballantine as well as a co-founder of Hell Kitchen’s Systems), Todd Masco and Andrew Bressen with the purpose of selling electronic publications over the internet. As they began to prepare books, they came to the realization that nobody was preparing a way to conduct commerce over the ’Net in time to meet their scheduled launch date, so they also began to pursue the creation of a financial exchange system for the internet. They conducted their first giveaway in August 1993 in collaboration with Ace Books and conducted their first sales in July of 1994. Their web page went up in October of 1994. Their business model is based on the philosophy of allowing readers to read a book free with ads, or without ads for a price. BiblioBytes obtains rights to place books on the Web, and sponsors buy ad space inside the online book. BiblioBytes prepares the book for publication on the Web and the advertisers are charged for each banner displayed on the pages for that book. BiblioBytes shares this advertising revenue with the author. Their first offerings came as 800K floppy disks. Glenn remembers some of the early publishers in electronic books were: "Laura Fillmore of the Online Book Store (now Open Book Systems (OBS), began published in 1992); Brad Templeton at Clarinet (now ClariNet Communications, began publishing in 1989); Voyager, J. Neil Schulman at SoftServ (distributed books via computer media starting December 1987) and Pulpless.com (began in 1996) and, the grandpappy of all of us, Michael Hart at Project Gutenberg (began in 1971)."

Nancy McAllister, of C&M Online Media, Inc., has had a long history in print publishing and also in multimedia, e.g. film, filmstrips, slides, microfilm—sound and images and text working together. She began online publishing on the internet in 1990 as the managing editor of a peer-reviewed journal in the humanities. In January 1994, she began to acquire books to publish on the WWW. Nancy says, "I wanted to see how print publishing would move to the internet. What skills were valuable and what new skills would have to be learned." Other than for academic publishing, informational exchange, self-publishers and vanity publishers, Nancy knew of no other e-publishers at that time. "Publishing online is, even minimally as a self-publisher or vanity publisher, labor intensive. It is also somewhat expensive. And in those days, ISPs were very unreliable and domain names were not common. After the third ISP crash, a publisher might give up. Also, books were sold without benefit of credit card capabilities. Shareware or modified shareware was the only way to sell, and most people didn’t pay for what they 'bought'. It was nearly impossible, too, to protect intellectual property in any satisfactory way. Encryption was either nonexistent or too soft. At that time, the government didn’t allow the use of tough encryption codes."

Ray Hoy had been a professional editor and writer for 40 years, so starting his own publishing company seemed like a natural thing to do. He established The Fiction Works in 1994 with the idea of producing strictly audiobooks (full theatrical productions, no less). As to why he turned to e-publishing, Ray says "Author Patricia White was responsible for getting me into the electronic publishing business, so I’m going to blame her. The third or fourth audiobook that we released was Patricia’s fantasy yarn, THE SEVENTY-NINTH PRINCE. Pat called me after she received her author copies and asked me if I’d given any thought to producing e-books. Frankly I hadn’t, as I was busy with the audiobooks. I thought about it later that night and realized how easy it would be to get into e-publishing, since I already had a pretty good selection of scripts. So, I jumped into the e-book business with both feet, and it has been a wild ride ever since." It didn’t take Ray long to figure out that publishing e-books was anything but easy. They followed the evolutionary trail along with every other e-publisher, by presenting their books in text format, then RTF, then HTML, then Adobe Acrobat, then on and on. "Until one file format proves superior, producing e-books will continue to be your basic publishing nightmare," Ray says. "It’s expensive enough to pay for readers, editors and artists, but then the real costs come into play when it comes time to convert the scripts to the various file formats needed." Currently, The Fiction Works publishes their books in text, HTML, Adobe Acrobat, PalmOS, and XML file formats.

The Great American Publishing Society (GR.AM.P.S.) was founded in 1975. According to Stephen Ellerin, publisher, "Although we began using desktop computers to create paper-based (conventionally-bound) books in 1981, our first fully-electronic book-on-CD came in 1994."

Marilyn Nesbitt, CEO of DiskUs Publishing, says, "I had a desktop publishing business called DiskUs Publishing that I opened in 1995 and we sold booklets, CDs and works on disks. I didn’t call these e-books but that’s what they were. (I just didn’t realize at the time that there were actual things called e-books) when I got my business license for DiskUs which was back in 1995. We put an author’s book on a computer disk for them and also made them a bound book of their work (spiral and then later VeloBind). We sold these in our shop for them. Then we expanded and started a web presence in early 1997 where we had e-books that could be downloaded for free while we were reading submissions and we sold our first e-book in early 1998."

Other small press electronic publishing companies became to emerge more rapidly toward the latter half of the 1990s. In 1999, mass market publishers began to take notice of this growing trend and dipped their own toes in the constantly churning waters known as electronic publishing with strategies that wouldn’t really allow them to fail as they experimented, as we’ve seen and will continue to see throughout the timeline, provided next.

 

Next week, I'll post the timeline. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog 

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor 

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

The Dracula Tape

The fanfic impulse often expresses itself by a flip of perspective that turns the villain of a classic work into the protagonist -- an antihero or maybe even a hero. I love stories like that, if done well.

When I first read DRACULA, at the age of twelve, I wondered how the title character felt about all those incidents in which he was portrayed as the villain. Fred Saberhagen’s THE DRACULA TAPE (1975) was the book I’d always wanted to write. Count Dracula (having faked his alleged death in Bram Stoker's novel) records his side of the story on tape in a car belonging to a descendant of Jonathan and Mina Harker. While Saberhagen's Count isn't an unbelievable paragon of virtue, he's an honorable warrior rather than a caricature of diabolical evil. According to Dracula, he never intended any harm to Jonathan during the latter’s stay at the castle. Like most vampires, the Count lives mainly on animal blood; drinking human blood is an erotic experience. His encounters with both Lucy and Mina were completely consensual. He didn’t cause Lucy’s death. That ignorant fanatic Van Helsing did, by transfusing her with blood from four different men several years before the discovery of blood types. Oh, and that stuff about crosses and holy wafers? Dracula still considers himself a Catholic, even if not a very good one; he retreats from holy objects partly to maintain the illusion of their effectiveness and partly to avoid desecrating them with his enemies’ blood.

Saberhagen plays fair. Aside from fudging the date of Mina’s pregnancy, he stays faithful to all the “facts” of Bram Stoker’s novel. It becomes a different story through the Count’s interpretation of the facts. Intelligent, witty, and occasionally sensual, THE DRACULA TAPE definitely ranks as one of the top vampire novels of its decade, if not of the second half of the twentieth century. It has several sequels, of varying quality. For me, the best of the later books is the second in the series, THE HOLMES-DRACULA FILE (1978). Told in the first person alternately by Dracula and Dr. Watson, it’s effective and memorable as both a vampire novel and a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. (Clearly superior, in my opinion, to Loren D. Estleman’s SHERLOCK HOLMES VS. DRACULA, published in the same year.)

THE DRACULA TAPE predates a certain bestselling novel of a vampire’s tape-recorded autobiography by a year and deserves similar recognition.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Rude Words

It's not what you think... if you clicked through for a discussion of expletives and profanity, this isn't it. 

Recently, I am bothered by two words, and they are both Proper Nouns, or names. Mispronouncing a person's proper name is rude, would you agree?  Some people don't mind. Some do.

My name is Rowena. Ro-wee-nah. Because I am British (or was when I was born), the emphasis goes on the penultimate syllable, so it is Ro-WEE-nah. 

When someone with different speech habits calls me Ro-wen-NAH, I correct them. Often, they then "correct" me, by insisting on stressing "Nah" in my name, or the "wen". A wen is an old English word for a wart, by the way.

There is a cleaning product that we have enjoyed in England for years. It has recently migrated, but its pronunciation has not migrated. I grew up being told by TV pitch persons "Persil washes whiter, and it shows". That is PER-sil.

Here and now, the pitch persons call it per-SIL 

Why do I find that rude?  "Per" means "through", "with respect to...", "according to..".  What is "Sil"?

According to Merriam Webster, "sil" is yellow ochre. That is surely not what you want in your tidy whities... "through yellow ochre".

The Secretary of the Treasury's last name is Bessent. According to the internet, the name has English or French roots, and its meaning is associated with gold coins.

How very appropriate! 

Anyway, the etymology of his name explains why it is proper and polite to speak of him as BESS-sent. Some financial pundits, who presumably do not approve of his way with money, insist on calling him Bess-ENT, as if he were a female tree herder named Elizabeth out of Tolkien's fabulous world, and they will stick to stressing his supposed Entishness even after the host of the financial news show pronounces the name correctly, and does so multiple times.

I find it very rude and unattractive of a guest on a show to dual with the host over someone else's proper name.

There is another proper name that some people who should know better mispronounce for effect. Everyone stresses the penultimate syllable, European style. It's POO-tin, (and we know this because apparently after Alaska, someone left a protocol guide where it could be found). Poo is amusing enough, but some insist on saying PEW. Like Pepe Le Pew. That seems rather childish. Also rude.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 1 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Who Came First? {Astounding Advances in Electronic Publishing}, Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

 

Oh, we have come a long way, baby, when it comes to the leaps and bounds e-books and e-publishing have advanced in the last three decades. When I first entered this arena in 1998, e-books were the ugly stepsister of "real books". Traditionally published authors, mainstream publishers, and nearly every reader encountered didn't have a clue what electronic books were, let alone what to do with them. When physical copies of the books were introduced, floppy disks and then CDs complete with cover art, astounded and nearly always repelled those who frequented bookstores and book signings. The electronic reading devices were as alien as Star Trek technology, and very expensive, to the point where few could imagine such an investment just to read books. Even the compelling arguments that countless trees could be saved, eye strain could be drastically reduced, and an e-reader "suitcase" could hold thousands of books had little or no effect on the audiences e-published authors attempted to persuade to our cause. 

Fast-forward thirty years. Printing paperbacks has now become an "on demand" practice and scarcer. Almost every reader I know enjoys and even prefers their books read on a phone or electronic device in a wide range of inexpensive models. Every publisher now offers a variety of electronic formats and huge strides have been made in making book files secure. Almost all newspapers and magazines have an electronic component--in fact, it's the only format most now offer. You can also check out e-books from libraries. Wow is it a whole different world now than those early pioneering days in the industry. 

In late March 2025, while I was completing the "legacy" compilation of a comprehensive list of details about the 156 books I've had published in the timespan since my first book was released electronically, I came across an article I wrote in 2003 that became a chapter in my annually updated ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, which, in its heyday was truly the most complete reference for non-subsidy e-publishing available in the industry. Compelled to relive such a pivotal part of my publishing history, I read it, and found myself even more astounded by all that'd come to pass. Mind you, in 2003, e-books and e-publishing still hadn't made much of an impact on the whole. Most of us clung to hope that someday the possibilities would just explode while a small voice inside whispered that we and our products would never see universal acceptance. For that reason, this article seemed even more amazing to me, almost like a prophecy about the future that always seemed out of reach at that time. 

I believe looking back and reflecting on changes is an important part of keeping history relevant, so, for the next four weeks, I'm going to post this 2003 article I wrote. I took out the many, many links that were in it, since all/most of them were broken anyway. In fact, most of the publishers mentioned are defunct--so I took out most of the references to publishers who closed their doors already then and now. I also updated the spelling and grammar of some words that were written differently back then. Other than that, I'm posting the article in its entirety and intact, without revising any part of it. I think you'll marvel just like I did when I dragged this article of the ruins and saw that the world as we know it when it comes to e-books and e-publishing has been turned upside down in only three decades. 

And, now, without further ado, here's Part 1 of that article.

 

WHO CAME FIRST?

by Karen S. Wiesner

© 2003 as featured in ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING The Definitive Guide, 2003 Edition by Karen S. Wiesner, published by Hard Shell Word Factory OOP

 

Since electronic publishing became the ultra-popular buzz word of the industry, there’s been a lot of talk going around about who first came up with the idea of e-publishing and who the first e-publisher was. We hear things like "It was 199-; there was no such thing as e-books" and "We only see futuristic things like e-books in episodes of Star Trek."

Mass market publishers have been claiming they broke new ground with publishing since Simon Schuster released Stephen King’s novel Bag of Bones in both print and electronic formats (April 1999) and Pocket Books announced on July 19, 1999 that it would release an e-book and print-on-demand edition of one of their titles prior to hardcover publication (KNOCKDOWN: The Harrowing True Account of a Yacht Race Turned Deadly by Martin Dugard). This "leap into the electronic future" was touted as a "first time venture."

On March 14, 2000, Simon & Schuster went one further and published Stephen King’s novella Riding the Bullet in electronic-only format. It was said of the venture: "This innovative publication strategy takes the e-book from the realm of novelty and directly into the very mainstream of today’s culture…" But was this a leap? Was it actually innovative or fantasy-made-reality? Ironically, it was also Simon & Schuster that asked authors for 15,000-40,000 word works for e-books and offered advances of $1000 (2.5 cents a word on the low end; 65 cents per word on the high end) in exchange. An S&S spokesperson said of the deal, "We’re a traditional publisher. We don’t have dot-com dollars to throw around."

Random House established Modern Library e-Books, which published 100 works of classic literature from the Modern Library backlist in electronic form, beginning July 2000. In September 2000, Random House claimed it "has just become the first major trade publisher to announce publication of a complete editorial list of original electronic books, commissioned expressly for this publishing format." The first 20 e-books, both fiction and nonfiction, appeared in January 200l under the new imprint, AtRandom, and were offered as trade paperbacks as well as in digital format. Yet at least one mass market publisher beat them to the punch as the first trade publisher to offer their editorial list as original e-books. In 1997, Denlinger’s Publishers Ltd. produced original titles in both electronic format and print-on-demand paperbacks from their Emerging Technologies Department.

On October 6, 2000, Thomas Nelson, Inc. announced they’d become "the first Christian publisher to launch a comprehensive e-book publishing program." However, MountainView Publishing Company had been publishing Christian books in electronic format since July 1998.

The media has accredited Stephen King with the (supposedly) never-before-attempted venture of offering a book via installment chapters (a.k.a. serial), though King himself claimed he was trying "out a concept so old it may seem new." The Plant was experimentally self-published in e-format in July 2000 by Stephen King, chapter by chapter (and remains at the time of this writing unfinished), with readers paying a dollar for those chapters, on an honor basis. The Plant brought in an astounding (by e-publishing standards) net profit of $463,832.27. In the ’70s, Bob Gunner (currently the owner of Cyber-Pulp Houston/USA ePublishing) became aware that another e-publisher was using a name similar to his first e-publishing venture, Mind Eye ePublishing. That company was Mind’s Eye Fiction owned by Ken Jenks. According to Gunner, even back then, Mind’s Eye Fiction used a free-sample/buy-the-rest-if-you-like-it system: "He would let them read a page or so, and then the reader would decide if they wanted to read the rest of the story and pay for the key." Mind’s Eye Fiction remains in business to this day, having been purchased by Alexandria Digital Literature in November 1999. In the late 1980s, Bob Gunner published his e-books as "Donationware"—if the reader enjoyed it, they could send a dollar to the author. "I never received too many of those dollars," Bob says. "We felt the writing was most important; the money really did not matter at the time. We always believed the money would come later." Suddenly Stephen King’s solo venture with The Plant in 2000—profit aside—seems very clichéd, doesn’t it?

Even small press electronic publishers are vying for the "first" title—first e-publisher, first 5 star review of an e-book, first bestselling e-book, and on and on.

So who’s right? Who’s confused? Who’s taking credit that isn’t due them? Who’s quietly going about their business without ever realizing they’ve started a revolution?

Next week we'll really get into the meat of this article. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog 

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor 

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Attack of the Bloodsucking Plants

The September-October issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER contains an article about the "Vegetable Man of West Virginia." This alleged cryptid barely qualifies as a legend, having been encountered by only one person, with the incident publicized by a notorious UFO hoaxer. Still, the peculiar tale has points of interest, even though (like most "true" alien encounter stories I've come across) it reads like an attempt at science fiction by somebody who doesn't know much about science fiction. In 1968, a man named Jennings Frederick, while hunting in the West Virginia woods, claimed he was accosted by a humanoid creature about seven feet tall, with yellow eyes, pointed nose and ears, and arms "no bigger around than a quarter." It communicated, perhaps telepathically, a need for medical assistance. It then grabbed him with its long, thin fingers, pierced his skin with their "needle-like tips," and used their "suction cups" to draw his blood. Its eyes paralyzed him with a hypnotic effect. After possibly no more than a minute, the being disappeared into the surrounding woods, and Frederick heard a "humming and whistling sound" he suspected to be a spacecraft taking off.

In the drawing shown with the article, the creature looks like a grotesquely thin humanoid with wood-textured skin, a weed-like tuft on top of its head, and ears and nose like gnarled carrots.

Of course, blood-draining plants go back at least as far as H. G. Wells's classic 1894 story "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid." Numerous other authors have imitated that premise. It's not totally implausible, given the existence of carnivorous flowering plants such as Venus flytraps. Most memorably, the musical LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS presents the giant, sapient, talking (and singing) plant Audrey II, which turns out to have an extraterrestrial origin.

If we stop and think about the premise, however, bloodthirsty plants shouldn't be terribly frightening. Unlike the Vegetable Man of West Virginia, Audrey II, Wells's orchid, and other similar flowers described by SF writers are rooted in place. If you have the presence of mind not to get too close to them, they can't hurt you. They would have to either catch victims off guard, maybe by entangling them in vines, or lure them with hypnotic perfumes.

There's another flaw in the notion of hypothetical bloodthirsty vegetation, such as the West Virginia cryptid, invading from a different planet: How could the body fluids of Earth animals nourish them? Our biochemistry would surely be incompatible with theirs. Granted, though, SF writers regularly ignore this inconvenient problem. Wells himself wrote about Martians that live on the blood of Earth-human victims.

"Eripmav," a humorous story by vintage science-fiction author Damon Knight, avoids the issue by making predators and prey inhabitants of the same extraterrestrial world. On this planet, ambulatory, intelligent plants comprise the dominant species. Meat, on the other hand, grows on trees. The vegetable vampire in this story is destroyed by driving a steak (sic) through its heart.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

 

Beware spoilers lurking in a novel with more shadows than were probably intended! 

Wow, did I not know what to make of this dark, medieval fantasy novel, The Starving Saints, the newest (published May 20, 2025) from Caitlin Starling. This author is firmly on my to-buy list--and, in fact, I purchased the hardcover almost as soon as it came out. Even as I did it, I realized it was a risk, as I seem to react to Starling's books as either a ravenous fan or a reader irrevocably repulsed. Her novels The Luminous Dead and The Death of Jane Lawrence (both reviewed previously on this blog) are favorites of mine. That said, the stories I tend not to like by her are still uniquely, unmistakably Starling works. I'd want to read them, even if I ultimately hated them. Her handling of certain subject matters horrifies me…and probably not the way she would have preferred in this case. I'd have to put this particular novel firmly on the list of those by her that I didn't like. The reasons are as complex as the story itself. So let's get to it. 

The basic story here is that Aymar Castle (set in a made up, medieval fantasy world) has been under siege for the past half a year. With food stores running low, hope dwindles, and desperation becomes the order of the day as there's seemingly no way out of this place. Then, out of nowhere (readers are never really told or made to understand how or definitively why), The Constant Lady and her three Saints (a twisted take on established religion that cruelly portrays bees--unequivocally summum bonum in the world of insects!--as villains) appear. The so-called divine offer sustenance and healing in exchange for adoration, but the price is far too high--at least for three main characters. Having a trio of points of view offered a 360-degree rendering of this dire situation. Whether or not these viewpoints are adequately well-drawn is, to my mind, a moot point. 

Phosyne was a nun who's become a sorceress of sorts (no idea what brought that about). At the king's command, she somehow--even she doesn't know how she did it--turned fouled, toxic water into potable drink for the survivors. He's now tasked her with conjuring food out of nothing and nowhere, a known impossibility. But kings in any universe are always petulantly and imperiously demanding miracles of their underlings. That said, Phosyne wasn't a character to champion. In the latter half of the book, she speaks her true goal, and it's not pretty. Phosyne accuses the Lady of "playing with her food", and the evil deity shrugs off any guilt about seasoning her meat, keeping it occupied, and providing fertile fields for it to gorge itself. Soon Phosyne would understand the gratification of "having everything available to" her hungry teeth. It's at that point that this dubious heroine realizes she is hungry. "But it's not the hunger of an empty stomach. It's the need to taste. To chew. To consume. She wants to indulge." So, that's her angle in all its potentially ugly facets. 

Ser Voyne is a knight, a war hero pledged to the Constant Lady as well as to her king, even if she doesn't exactly respect him. Voyne is trying to keep order over a place plunged into utter chaos. She has to decide whether following orders is wise when the leaders no longer know or are willing to do what's best for the people. As a character, Voyne is wishy-washy. When she finally answers the question about who to "worship" (because that's precisely how she loyally obeys), it's little more than transferring her disturbing adoration from one unworthy target to another. 

Treila is a noble pretending to be a serving girl who refuses to admit to herself that she'd lusted after the big, beautiful knight who'd murdered her father. Now she longs for revenge. Or does she long for something far darker? Imagine someone willing to do anything, no matter how depraved, to survive. In Treila's world, it's literally eat or be eaten. And she's fully capable of doing whatever needs to be done to help herself. Not exactly noble or worth rooting for from my perspective. 

All of these protagonists were weirdly complex and equally superficial. (Trust me, I think you'll understand that contradiction if you read the book.) One reviewer described the main characters' lack of development as "flip-flopping like a dying fish". True, we learned little more about them than what was necessary for the plot, a failure that struck me as sloppily convenient. That's just part of it though. None of these women were precisely good nor precisely evil--a complication that led to my lingering frustration over this book. If there's no one to root for, what's the purpose? Naturally, I couldn't champion the Lady or her saints--they were full-on evil. But the three heroines had agendas and motivations I didn't feel comfortable getting onboard with either. Starling's own definition of them as "complicated and sometimes terrible" was accurate. At least two of the protagonists were portrayed as selfish and abnormally self-serving while the knight seemed short-sighted and foolish with her blindly loyal veneration of unworthy beings. 

Starling is noted for her lesbian fiction, which is generally well crafted. But the three-way attraction between these women came off as forced and far-fetched. There was nothing sexy or authentic about it. Again, why? What purpose did it serve to force them to ally when few compelling, let alone strong, connections actually bound them? 

Unequivocally, The Starving Saints failed as the horror novel it was hailed as in everything I read about it. In an interview, the author said that she's a "big believer in limiting the narration of a story to what the characters perceive and comprehend, or don't. I keep my 'camera' very zoomed in." She asserts confidently that that enhances the horror. I found it did exactly the opposite. Not knowing what to be afraid of or to dread was my biggest disappointment with the story. Starling knows how to create atmosphere. She's effortlessly brilliant at it. However, as promising as this slow, plodding novel started out, the unnerving undertone quickly became mired in too many instances of dense fog. Should I have been horrified by the cannibalism (it was an unrestrained, gore-strewn, grotesque ick), the monsters (which ones were good or evil? who knows), the corrupt agendas of all, the shocking misuse of power by everyone who wielded it at various times as the story progressed? All hints at creepiness fizzled out because nothing came into focus clearly enough to scare the crap out of me--you know, my deepest longing when reading a horror novel. The author drowned readers with characters flagrantly telling, not really showing us, wild theories about all these hazy, shadowy things, but none were convincing enough to be presented as more than abstract methods of confusion. Ultimately, there was nothing scary, beyond that a writer would indulge in writing something like this without developing the plot and characters on a concrete foundation that helps ground readers from start of story to what I wanted to be a dazzling finish. (As to that, I didn't trust the hands left wielding all the power so it was the exact opposite of a happily ever after. But I guess those are no longer what readers are looking for.) In the end, it all came down to floundering for answers that were kept away--because the author herself didn't have any; hadn't even bothered crafting them. That stinks of laziness, not deliberate cleverness, to me. 

Long years ago, I remember going on my first ever fantasy LARP quest before it became a big deal or was in any way well-done. No one on my team knew how to get started, what we should be doing, what was, frankly, going on. We spent a lot of time racing around, searching for clues that providing little more than added uncertainty, and looking at each other, expressing our confusion in these glances as well as in our increasingly frustrated words. That's what I felt like I was doing alongside fellow readers while reading The Starving Saint. Readers need, at the very least, veiled, skillful directions, just as LARPers (especially beginning ones) do. My LARP team members were all thinking, Do you know what's going on? What that's all about? Is it important? What is important? Who should we be rooting for? Is that the bad guy? What should be paying attention to? Where are all these unformed details going? Is there a purpose to this or anything? I never really found out the answers to any of these questions before closing The Starving Saints for the last time. I felt lost and unsatisfied for most of the disturbing events in this massacre of a story. 

If I had to guess at the purpose of The Starving Saints, I'd throw out the nebulous theory that the author was playing with the ramifications of absolute power corrupting absolutely. Even someone who starts out altruistic will eventually fall to the hypnotizing lure and potential of power. But, as no one in this story qualified as a bona fide hero, that lesson didn't really come across. A wanna-be hero doesn't have far to fall themselves. There's little difference between them and the villain. Seems to me a waste not to set the stakes higher. But these days, it seems no one wants a hero in their fiction, something I'll probably never understand. 

The setting itself was deliberately sketched to be obscure; on the whole, a bubble world set nowhere in particular to deflect attention from it. However, this isn't an insult. In this, I felt the lack of development fit the needs of the story. None of the characters in the castle realized the outside world no longer existed because the indeterminate antagonist(s) had enclosed it in a honeyed hive, where nothing could touch or steal its prize. In soft echo, I was harkened back to Poe's brilliant "The Masque of the Red Death" with this tale. To me, that was its saving grace. 

A lot of minor things bugged me while reading this: 1) How often Starling fell into modern slang so out of place in a medieval setting, 2) how randomly and inconsistently the author used contractions, and 3) the use of cliffhanger chapters without adequate picking up of the threads once that particular point of view was revisited.

In the author's defense, (she tells us in the acknowledgements in the back of the book) she wrote the initial draft of this book during the COVID lockdown. She wrote it in a messy, out of order way--an attempt to mirror and/or sort out her anxiety. I remember the book I wrote myself during the lockdown--what I, to this day, call my COVID book. While I ended up really liking it, it's hard for me to read it now without concluding it was written a bit too perfectly. During that time, I was so hollow and unable to feel anything that layering emotion into the story was a brutally exacting exercise of my skill with the writing craft. Everything the story needed, it has, and yet I was distanced by my own experiences during that suffocating time. I know I'm not the only author who suffered deeply and yet didn't want to lose my heroic feats at continuing my profession during such a dry period. My publisher and I decided my efforts were worth releasing to the world, and, in that way, something good did come out of a terrible circumstance. I never envied other authors and publishers the task in trying to decide what was worth saving from that time for them either. If nothing else, Starling created something unique with The Starving Saints that leaves an indelible impression. If you're like me, you'll have to read it because she wrote it and it could be one of the best books ever written, though, unfortunately, I didn't find it to be worthwhile, as several others of hers are. 

All this said, I'm still eagerly looking forward to Starling's brand new release, The Graceview Patient, (released October 14, 2025). 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

The Vampire as Alien

In horror fiction and dark fantasy, we encounter two main types of scientifically explained vampires -- vampirism as an infectious disease or as a hereditary condition. In the latter case, if the vampire belongs to a naturally evolved different species or human subspecies (as opposed to, say, a mutation in one family line, although in many stories the distinction is fuzzy or left unspecified), that's what I mean by "vampire as alien." They might either originate on Earth or migrate here from another planet.

In my opinion THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY, by Suzy McKee Charnas, is one of the best vampire novels of the twentieth century. It’s one of the earliest book-length works of fiction to explore the question, “How would nature design a vampire?” (as the vampire himself rhetorically asks in the first section of the book). The inimitable Dr. Weyland, the sole survivor of his species, so old he remembers no parents or childhood, holds an acerbic view of the human race, the “cattle” he preys on. Although he can’t digest animal blood and therefore must feed on people, to avoid unwelcome attention he usually refrains from killing or seriously harming his victims. He has great physical strength and endurance and extremely keen senses, but no overtly “supernatural” abilities such as transformation or mesmerism. THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY chronicles a series of events that open him unwillingly to an emotional connection with some of the short-lived creatures he prowls among. He periodically renews himself by withdrawing into a state of suspended animation, to rise decades later with his clear-eyed predator’s perspective restored.

The naturally evolved vampire occasionally appeared in short stories of the classic pulp era, e.g., the vampire child of Richard Matheson’s “Dress of White Silk,” the family of “monsters” in Ray Bradbury’s “Homecoming,” the pragmatic predator in Jerome Bixby’s “Share Alike.” With the veritable explosion of vampire fiction that started in the mid-1970s, however, especially with a new emphasis on vampires as sympathetic protagonists, natural vampires proliferated at novel length.

Miriam in Whitley Strieber’s THE HUNGER, like Weyland, is the last of her species (as far as we can tell in this novel; the sequel, published years later, reveals otherwise). Unlike Weyland, she admits to being lonely, treats her human companions like pets, and tries to transform some of them into creatures like herself -- with consistently disastrous results. Elaine Bergstrom in SHATTERED GLASS introduces the Austra clan, subjects of several later novels. They can interbreed with human beings, and they have tremendous powers, including regeneration from severe injuries, telepathy, and the hypnotic compulsion common to many literary vampires. The nonhuman creatures in FEVRE DREAM, by George R. R. Martin, combine traits of the traditional vampire and werewolf, since they go into a frenzy of uncontrollable bloodlust for only a few days each month. They can’t reproduce with our kind, and their race is dying out because of the infrequency with which their females go into heat. Jacqueline Lichtenberg presents a race of extraterrestrial vampires in THOSE OF MY BLOOD. Stranded on Earth, they’ve interbred with humanity. One faction, the Tourists, regards human beings as simply prey, while the other group, the Residents, has a moral and emotional investment in the welfare of the people around them. These vampires can exert powerful influence over unsuspecting human minds. Octavia Butler introduces a child vampire whose family has been wiped out in FLEDGLING. Her vampires live in symbiosis with human companions who often fill the role of lovers as well as food source. S. M. Stirling's Shadowspawn trilogy, beginning with A TAINT IN THE BLOOD, features a human subspecies underlying all the darkest myths and legends of vampires, werewolves, incubi, ghosts, and sorcerers. It's a homage to and updating of the same concept in Jack Williamson's classic DARKER THAN YOU THINK.

In the design of a natural vampire, many questions have to be answered, leading to practically endless intriguing variations: Can they breed with human mates? Are they solitary or pack predators? Can they consume any food besides blood? If not, does the blood have to be human, or can it come from other animals? Do they have to kill when they feed? Do they have any adverse reaction to sunlight? (Daylight didn’t destroy the classic nineteenth-century vampires such as Carmilla and Dracula, nor were all folklore vampires limited to nocturnal activity.) Are they immortal or only long-lived? What can kill them? What powers do they have? Any psychic abilities?

Many other authors besides the few mentioned here have explored these possibilities. I analyze this theme in fiction from the mid-nineteenth century to the early 1990s in my nonfiction book DIFFERENT BLOOD: THE VAMPIRE AS ALIEN:

Different Blood (This mini-essay first appeared on a now-defunct blog called VampChix. I plan to continue reposting these retro-reviews of older vampire fiction here in the near future. Since they're all over ten years old, and VampChix was taken down quite a while ago, they'll probably be new to our readers.)

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Finding Time (To Write Or Not To Write)

Writing is a gift, a skill, a compulsion, a talent, a solace, and much more. 

This morning in Church, the youth pastor spoke about the tiny little book of the prophet Habbakuk. Very loosely, Habbakuk lived in a time when the early Israelites (no saints themselves) were being punished by having Assyrians as their overlords. The Assyrians were sinful (according to Habbakuk's complaint) but their doom was to be defeated by the Chaldeans, which --as far as Habbakuk's people were concerned-- was a case of Meet The New Boss, same as the old boss...

Habbakuk believed that God told him (Habbakuk) to write down his vision, which Habbakuk obediently did, and so Habbakuk is forever famous... in a very minor way.

Also today, I read a lovely article about Jane Austen by one Walker Larson of Wisconsin. Now, I cannot give freelance journalist and cultural writer Walker Larson a link, because he writes for a publication that cannot be cited here on pain of being bot-consigned to the equivalent of the blogging oubliette.

Walker explains that Jane Austen lived in a time when writing for profit was considered to be the literary equivalent of prostitution. Men could do it openly. Ladies risked reputational damage, so had to write in secret.

The difficulty for Jane Austen was to find time to write without friends, neighbors, domestic servants and others discovering her work and work product. Fortunately, Jane Austen had a supportive family, and presumably had no lack of ink, quill pens,  small pieces of paper (easy to hide if visitors turned up without prior notice), a writing nook by a window (for daylight), and an in-house critique group (her mother and sister.)

Depending on ones circumstances, one can write for publication, or posterity, or one can write for one: a distant lonely parent, a son or daughter in need of encouragement, a faraway friend... By letter, email, or whatever the means, by all means, keep ones hand in. 

By the way, the Post Office in the USA will be putting up the cost of Priority Mail and other delivery charges between October and mid-January. If you have a manuscript to mail, plan to do it sooner rather than later!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

https://www.spacesnark.com/  

https://www.rowenacherry.com

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review Subseries 2: The Liveship Traders Trilogy (The Realm of the Elderlings) by Robin Hobb by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review

Subseries 2: The Liveship Traders Trilogy (The Realm of the Elderlings)

by Robin Hobb

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Robin Hobb is the author of The Realm of the Elderlings. Within this umbrella series, she's written five "miniseries" and numerous short stories. In previous Alien Romances Blog reviews, I covered The Inheritance & Other Stories, which contains a couple Realm of the Elderlings offerings. I also reviewed the first trilogy of novels within this series, The Farseer Trilogy. After recovering from the intensity of that first offering, I took a month or so off before I could get myself to read anything else the author has written within this overarching saga. Following that break, I was able to read two miscellaneous novellas in the series, "The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince" and "Words Like Coins", and those reviews have also been posted previously on this blog. 

Almost immediately following that, I started reading the second trilogy set, The Liveship Traders Trilogy. Technically, I'm reading the subseries in The Realm of the Elderlings in order of publication, not the suggested reading order. The reason I'm doing that is that I sometimes feel like an author makes the most sense of a series by writing the installments as they come to her--even if particular stories don't fit in chronologically with what's come before. I figure if the author gained understanding of it that way, then it's also how I as the reader will best piece it together as well. 

The Farseer Trilogy was focused on Fitz, the illegitimate son of Prince Chivalry of the royal line presiding over the Six Duchies. In that first subset, we learned something of the Elderlings (including dragons) and their ancient cities and settlements around the world, especially in the Rain Wilds. 

(The) Liveship Traders Trilogy includes:

Ship of Magic, Book 1 (published 1998)

(The) Mad Ship, Book 2 (published 1999)

Ship of Destiny, Book 3 (published 2000) 

In this second subseries, we move away from the royal Farseer lineage and problems within the nobility to something very different. The main setting is Bingtown, a colony of Jamaillia, and deals with "liveships". Liveships are built from wizardwood, which isn't actually wood but the outer cocoon of a sea serpent that was in the process of transforming into a dragon. These logs were buried in the destroyed city of the Elderlings in the Rain Wilds and found by traders who excavated the ruins for valuable, magical artifacts. After three family members die on board, a liveship ship "quickens" and becomes a living, sentient ship. From that point on, these merchant ships have consciousness all their own. With supernatural properties, liveships are the most coveted of all in the realm. The liveship of the family that paid to have it created becomes deeply bonded with all generations of their owners. Once upon a time, owning such a rare and special ship all but guaranteed prosperity for a trader. Not so any longer. 

Liveship traders have fallen on hard times because of the war in the north (detailed in The Farseer Trilogy). Trade is the lifeblood of Bingtown and it seeks independence from Jamaillia and Chalced in particular, not wanting to deal in raiding or slave trading. But a selfish, short-sighted, pleasure-seeking Satrap who controls trade for the realm demands that tradition must change with the times. Meanwhile, pirates, migrating sea serpents, a slave rebellion, and a newly hatched dragon complicate things. 

In Ship of Magic, Book 1, the main focus is on Althea Vestrit. Her family holds to their contracts and traditions with a death grip until the male head of their family passes away. Althea is the younger daughter and has given her life to their liveship Vivacia. She fully anticipates becoming the captain of the ship someday. However, her mother talks her father out of it, something she soon regrets, just before his death. The eldest daughter is married to a Chalcedean sailor, Kyle Haven, and he gains control of Vivicia after the elder male Vestrit's death, turning her into a slaver vessel. Kyle forces his oldest son Wintrow, who has been training as a priest of Sa for years, to become a sailor because a direct line of the family must always be aboard when a liveship sails. 

When she's forced off Vivacia permanently by her sister's pompous, boneheaded husband, who's also been given complete control of the family fortune, Althea leaves Bingtown to find a way to retake her ship. Her family scrambles in her absence. Malta, the manipulative, self-seeking young daughter of Althea's sister, insists on being treated as a woman of marriageable age though she hasn't had the proper training and is barely old enough to be out of pigtails. A series of greedy, spoiled choices on her end have her abruptly being wooed by Reyn, the youngest son of the Rain Wilds trader that provided Vivacia. Althea's family remains indebted to them for the ship, but a marriage between the families could mean the Vestrit's financial situation doesn't prove as dire as it's rapidly becoming. 

Althea is wroth at all that's befallen her. Her only allies in regaining control of Vivacia are her old shipmate, roguish Brashen Trell; a mysterious Bingtown woodcarver named Amber; and the Paragon, a notoriously mad liveship owned but essentially abandoned by the Ludluck family. Paragon can't remember how he got the way he is--insane and beached at Bingtown for the past thirty years. 

Meanwhile, Captain Kennit is a pirate following a prophecy that tells him he'll become King of the Pirate Isles if he can capture a liveship. But first, on the advice of his first mate, he becomes the hero of slavers when he begins capturing slaver vessels and liberating them. 

As with the subseries that came before, these books are undeniably massive, and very introspective and slow-moving. The sheer number of characters thrown in almost from the first page of Book 1 became a chore to keep track of easily. Even the points of view of a tangle of sea serpents following the liveship in search of "She Who Remembers" are included in these books. 

While reading the first book, I kept wondering how in the world these seemingly disparate plotlines could possibly converge and make any sense. But they actually did--and explosively. Ship of Magic established the plots, and they were all just the first brutal wave of a hurricane of events and players. As intense as the first 832-page mass market paperback (mmp) was, it was also wholly gripping. I was immersed in each and every aspect. As soon as I finished it, I jumped headfirst into Book 2 despite that I was rapidly becoming exhausted. 

(The) Mad Ship starts where Book 1 left off, continuing all the plotlines. Althea learns from Brashen that Vivacia has been claimed by Captain Kennit, and she determines to retake her. Althea and Brashen's relationship is strained due to unresolved feelings between them. Further complicating the situation is her recent marriage proposal from the son of another liveship trader. She's been working aboard that family's liveship Orphelia in order to prove she has what it takes to be captain of her own ship. Meanwhile, Amber is determined to save Paragon with help from Althea and Brashen, and the mad ship begins to remember the traumatic events that led to his madness. 

In an attempt to save himself and his father, who are hostages aboard the Vivicia, Wintrow heals Kennit. The pirate captain begins to recover from having his leg bitten off by a sea serpent. Kennit's bond with Wintrow and Vivicia increases. Elsewhere, the Jamaillian Satrap intends to sail to Bingtown and force the traders to bend to his will. The corruption in Bingtown is forcing Old Traders to compromise on nearly every front but rebellion is afoot and one of the Satraps own "heart companions" (traditionally, advisors) schemes to deal fairly with Bingtown traders, though a trauma experience en route changes her for a time and makes her self-protective at any cost. Readers also begin to learn more about Captain Kennit's past, his connection to Paragon, and why his pirate heart is so justifiably black. Also, Althea, Brashen, Amber, and other Bingtown traders begin to outfit Paragon for sailing once more in order to retake Vivicia. 

Finally, Malta becomes even more nefarious in her quest to secure the rich, extravagant life she feels entitled to and manipulates on many fronts to see her selfish ends achieved, playing two men in seeking her hand at once and doing her bidding by saving her beloved father Kyle. 

Reyn has fallen for Malta, but part of his mind is ensorcelled by the very last dragon in existence. She remains cocooned in the wizardwood trapped in the Elderlings ruins. Reyn longs to free it, but to bring it out of where it's all but buried would be a monumental task requiring many men. No one else wants to see a dragon reintroduced into the world for fear it'll seek to destroy instead of coexisting or even helping them. Malta is also able to communicate with the dragon through the trinket Reyn gave her from the ruins. The dragon promises Malta anything she wants in exchange for her help in freeing her. A schemer like Malta thinks of nothing beyond her own desires. If she unleashes a volcanic explosion upon the world in the process, what does it matter to her as long as she gets what she wants? 

At 864 pages in the mmp, this middle story was both even more overwhelming than the last and impossibly more engaging. 

The final book of the trilogy, Ship of Destiny, had another daunting 800 pages (mmp). All the twists and turns that have been playing out in the last two books slowly resolve in a way that I heartily approved of and had been hoping for. The bad guys got what they deserved, the good found victory, and many characters realistically made a transition to become heroes instead of villains in the course of the trilogy. The climax wasn't a single action scene but a process that took at least a full quarter of the end of Book 3, including exciting peaks and emotionally satisfying valleys. 

As mind-blowing as this trilogy was, I won't deny that I was almost too tired to enjoy the final tale the way I would have if the endeavor hadn't been so daunting. How I wish the author had chosen to divide each installment into three or four books instead of one massive, overwhelming tome! A twelve to sixteen book series of manageable volumes would have been much more enjoyable for me, not to mention less mentally (and physically--the huge paperbacks became hard for me to hold for any great length of time, cutting down on my ability to read faster) taxing. There's simply so much here, I sometimes felt while reading the three books that my head might explode with it all. 

While I originally thought I wouldn't be a fan of this second trilogy because the main character Fitz in the first subseries doesn't really factor into them, I ended up liking The Liveship Traders Trilogy even more than The Farseer Trilogy, which is saying a lot. I loved them both. I'm apparently not the only one who feels that way. George R. R. Martin describes it as "even better than the Farseer Trilogy—I didn’t think that was possible". It's apparently also a favorite of author Orson Scott Card. 

Not surprisingly, this series has been compared to A Song of Ice and Fire--not in content, but in execution. (The two authors are friends.) Hobb has a similar manner as Martin of writing a story almost as if she's setting down the facts in a history book and not flinching as she establishes every last, excruciating detail just as raw and painful as it gets. Her characters are so realistic and life-like you can't help becoming enmeshed in their lives--sometimes, whether or not you actually want to be. There are a lot of villainous characters in this trilogy, but they're not through and through evil. The reader is given not just a one- or even two-dimensional portrayal of them, but the full three dimensions. Some of those aspects aren't particularly pretty or redeemable, which might be difficult for some readers to stomach. Nevertheless, always, the characters are made understandable. And that's even better. You may dislike or even hate them, may be shocked or sickened by the things they do and say, but you can at least understand the makeup of the characters and what drives them. I do have to warn you that there were several rapes in this series. None of them was detailed or gratuitous--the author handled them skillfully--but beware those who are sensitive. 

I can't wait to find out where all this is going in the wider world Hobb has created in The Realm of the Elderlings. I'm open to any direction at this point, as long as there's more of everything I've come to love. All this said, I do wish entertainment producers would make a series of this. Like A Song of Ice and Fire, The Realm of the Elderlings would be amazing in the form of several movies or a TV series. 

Incidentally, I read in many articles posted on Wikipedia concerning The Realm of the Elderlings that the character of Amber in Liveship Traders supposedly played the part of the Fool in the Farseer Trilogy (though no sources for where they came by this information are given), but I will say that I didn't see actual reference to that being definitively the case in the specific books for this subseries. In other words, it didn't explicitly spell out, "I'm Amber in The Liveship Traders Trilogy; previously I was the Fool at court in The Farseer Trilogy." Maybe I missed something because there was simply too much here for that not to be a possibility. Make of this what you will. Maybe it becomes important later on in The Realm of the Elderlings. I'm really not sure at the point I am in traversing this world. 

In this second subseries trilogy, I learned much more about the Elderlings and the Rain Wilds than previously. That's definitely the overarching plot in all the subseries that keeps me coming back eagerly for more. Here, dragons are reintroduced into the world with humans aiding them. There's also a bit of a disturbing implication that the dragons so influence humans that they're physically and mentally changed as a result--possibly outside of their own wills. In any case, I look forward to more expansion on all of this in further installments of The Realm of the Elderlings. 

Unfortunately, I just read in excess of 2400 pages with this subseries. I'm finding I need another lengthy break before I can start on the third subseries, The Tawny Man Trilogy. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

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