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

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

by Karen S. Wiesner

In the 2019 sci-fi horror The Luminous Dead, Caitlin Starling's first novel, the protagonist, 22-year-old Gyre Price, has risked everything to join the Lethe expedition, supposedly tasked with mapping the cave system, performing mining surveys, and restocking the camps set up along the way. This job will require top-tier cave climbing and diving skills. Because of the extreme danger involved, a hefty reward is promised once the task is completed at the end of the allotted weeks. Gyre's not only lied  by embellishing her work history, but she's also had medical procedures that bolster her credentials as an expert instead of the rookie she actually is, providing physical evidence of prior experience she doesn't actually possess.

Growing up on the mining colony Cassandra-V, Gyre had spent most of her time in slot canyons and pseudocaves near her home (avoiding her dad), teaching herself the ropes of climbing. She has no actual experience diving, something she'll need as this cave system is partially underwater.

In order to qualify for this mission, she was required to have intestinal rearrangement surgery and a catheter put in, custom-fitting her to a drysuit that becomes her home for the duration of the mission. What she's wearing and has to keep on and sealed at all times during her trek is what allows a life-and-death voyage like this to be possible, as it's capable of keeping her alive and protected in numerous ways. The suit maps the terrain, takes and stores samples, along with providing details far superior to human eyes in absolute darkness. Additionally, it allows for the administration of nutrients, water, and medication, but can also be accessed by the handler on the surface, providing real-time communication and intervention, and so much more.

Gyre grew up without a mother. This conflict and motivation is at the core of the plot in this story. It's the reason Gyre signed on for this deadly expedition and what keeps her going even when all logic tells her to abandon her contract with Lethe and haul ass out of the cave ASAP--at the risk of losing her payout in part or the whole, as well as being sued for breach of contract, which will destroy her chance of ever finding future work again in this field.

Gyre quickly learns as this story opens that her handler isn't a team of professionals on the surface working together to keep her alive but a single person: Em, who owns the company and has poured a fortune into this cave and investing in perfecting a suit capable of functioning on so many levels to keep cavers alive. Having a single handler is suicide, as at least two are needed to allow for sleep and downtime.

Before long, Gyre learns Em isn't what she seems, nor is this mission or its endgame. Em has hired on cavers like Gyre often in the past, losing 34 to the horrors of the cave. Her justifications for her actions parallel Gyre's own for signing up in the first place. Their mothers. Em lost both her parents to this cave. Her mother escaped the first time without her husband or the rest of her team, but she was never the same afterward and never healed from her traumatizing losses. Yet the cave called her back, forcing the child Em to endure the loss of her mother all over again.

In this tale, the labyrinthine cave is very much like the third main character, and most definitely a villain with death written all over it at every level, not the least of which includes a humongous monster called a Tunneler that calls the mine its home. This creature is attracted to living beings, the sounds they make, the scents, the very air they breathe. The suit has been designed to mask the person wearing it from its sensors. A Tunneler travels through solid rock, forcing the ground around it to give way, expanding and distorting and exploding it. If a human is nearby, death can be instantaneous as spaces, tunnels, and caves collapse, shatter, and are reformed in incalculable ways. The horror angle of the Tunneler was a very nice touch in this story, adding another layer of tension when it was most needed. But it's not the focus of the story, just a "fun perk" to ratchet out a little more suspense throughout.

From the very first page of this book to the last, I found it hard to put the story down for any length of time. Gyre isn't the kind of character I'd normally root for. She's a head case with mother issues so deep, disturbing, and violent, it's hard to feel sympathy for her, even as I could understand the pain she felt having her mom walk away when she was just a child and also finding out in the course of the book exactly who her mother is--and how selfish. Gyre's whole point signing on to this mission was to get a huge payoff to fund her ability to leave Cassandra-V, find her mom, and kick her in the face. While I get the gut reaction, Gyre was so badly twisted by this driving force that is nearly her entire focus and motivation as a human being that she was forever making impulsive decisions with no basis in logic or reality.

In large part, this was needed for the story's suspense. It was the beauty of it. As Gyre descends further and further into the black hole, it was hard to know how much the darkness, silence, and loneliness; the vast and mysterious abyss all around her with strange, unnatural creatures, flora, and fauna; her complete reliance on the technological marvel of her suit that, at the end of the day, was little more than a fancy cage; and the uncertainty at any given moment about whether her handler Em--her only connection to the surface--was friend or foe contributed to Gyre's growing insanity. The combination of a defeatist attitude toward life was at complete odds with Gyre's extreme will to survive. And that is, oddly, one of the major selling points of this story. In any other story, I'm not sure it would have worked, but the tension it created here was amazingly propelling. I literally never knew from one moment to the next what would happen.

In pairing this main character who lives her life on the knife's edge every second with secondary character Em, who's just as much of a lunatic, the story went back and forth between these two pitted against each other on one end of the spectrum and then fighting together tooth and nail to ensure survival on the other. I consider that the very definition of a nail-biter. At the end of the day, though, crazy plus crazy equals psycho all over the place, not a match made in heaven, as I got the impression it was supposed to ultimately be. 

The author clearly knew a considerable amount about diving, climbing, caves, spelunking, and just about every scientific topic she delved into within this story. I loved every aspect of those breathtaking descriptions. It was the reason I picked the story up in the first place, and Starling delivered in spades.

Anyone who likes sci-fi horror with tension that escalates continuously, filled with flawed and unpredictable characters, and a landscape that's so real and visual it could actually exist in the real world won't want to miss this story. As a testament to the author's finely tuned writing skills, before I was even half done with The Luminous Dead, I bought everything else she has available. Fingers crossed I find another favorite, must-read author.

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/

Linguistic Anachronisms

I'm reading an enthralling new vampire novel, THE GOD OF ENDINGS, by Jacqueline Holland. The first-person protagonist grew up in the 1830s in a small town in New York, as the daughter of a gravestone carver. Her parents, her brother, and she herself all died in an epidemic of tuberculosis. Thanks to her Hungarian grandfather, however, she didn't stay dead. Over the course of her unnaturally prolonged life, she seems to have acquired an excellent education. (In the 1980s, she's the head of an exclusive preschool.) The novel's style is a pleasure to read, evocatively descriptive, almost lyrical. So far, I haven't come upon a single grammatical error or typo, a rarity nowadays even from major publishers. But then -- at one point the narrator breaks the spell and outrages my suspension of disbelief by using "snuck" for "sneaked," an irregular form that I don't recall ever hearing in my own youth, much less reading in any older prose regardless of its informal tone. How did the author miss that error, considering the in-depth research that seems to lie behind her story? Is that lapse a case of not knowing what one doesn't know?

THE CHOSEN, a streaming series whose first three seasons I enjoyed very much (and I'm waiting with impatience for the next season, not due until sometime in 2024), made me wince at a couple of points for a similar reason. It's a retelling of the life of Jesus with an ensemble cast, focusing on the apostles and other prominent people in the Gospels. It imaginatively creates personalities and backstories for them while expanding on what little information the Bible supplies. As a side issue, I wonder why every non-Roman character speaks with an accent, as if the Judeans and Galileans are foreigners to themselves. instead, shouldn't the Romans, as outsiders in the country, be the people with the accents? That's not my main complaint, though. To make the characters relatable, the script has them talking in colloquial American English. That's fine as far as it goes, even the inclusion of "okay." We can assume their dialogue is being translated from the terminology of their own culture into expressions we're familiar with. But now and then a phrase or figure of speech that would have been impossible in that time and place shatters the illusion of realism. The most blatant example is a character referring to some action "pushing" somebody else's "buttons." That metaphor could not have existed much before the twentieth century, maybe at the earliest in the era of the telegraph. Cringe.

Of course, sometimes words feel anachronistic when they aren't. The case of "Tiffany," a modern-sounding feminine name that in fact dates back to the Middle Ages, is a well-known example. One anthology editor told me not to write that a character "scanned" a room in a story set in the 1890s because that image referred to the action of a video camera. Later I found out "scan" was indeed used in that sense before the invention of movies. I once chided a fellow author for having an eighteenth-century character in a work-in-progress call another man a jerk; I was abashed when she pointed me to a source that confirmed the word did exist as an insult in that period. Should an author of historical fiction refrain from using a term that's accurate for the period but might sound wrong to most readers?

Do you notice that kind of thing in fiction? If so, how much does it bother you?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

DMCA Deadlines

 

This will be dry... and esoteric.

For owners of blogs, websites and such, one is supposed to register a copyright agent. Then, not only is one required to change ones password almost every month, but every third year, one must verify and update ones entry in the directory or lose ones "safe harbor" eligibility under 17 U.S.C.512.


If you got the email, act on it.


To renew, you will need to review your designation and either amend it to correct or update outdated information or resubmit it without amendment to confirm its continued accuracy. Begin by logging in to your account at https://dmca.copyright.gov/osp/login.html. Once logged in, click the pencil icon next to the designation, which will take you to a summary screen where you can review your information. From there, click "Edit" if you need to update anything, or click "Preview and Pay" to renew without making any changes. Please note that your renewal will be effective for three years starting the day it is submitted; renewal does not add three years to your prior expiration date.

The fee is $6.00.

The U.S. Copyright Office has created step-by-step instructions to walk you through the renewal process, available in both video and text form. It is very easy to do, and takes very little time.

If you are new to blogging, or did not register a copyright agent designation in the past, perhaps you should do so. It is not hard to do, not expensive to do. In fact, it might be the cheapest liabity insurance out there in case one is hacked or a seemingly innocuous "comment" turns out to have malware or a bad link embedded in it.

Happy Fathers Day for the rest of today, and Happy Juneteenth for tomorrow.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Read What You Love, Part 3 by Karen S. Wiesner

            Read What You Love, Part 3

by Karen S. Wiesner

In this three-part article, I talk about what conditions, if any, cultivate or discourage a love of the written word as well as about the importance of reading what you love, regardless of your age, the genre or content appropriateness, your gender, or what's considered your "level". In the last two segments, I'll also review two of my favorite Young Adult book series that any fan of the supernatural should love as I much as I do.

In the first part of this article, I talked about how, in the general sense, people should read what they're interested in. It doesn't matter if someone else dubs it above or below your proper reading level, too mature or immature, if it's in a genre that social convention says adults or kids shouldn't be reading, or if it's something most people think of as gender specific. A love of the written word transcends any boundaries. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Read what you love! In the second article, I provided an in-depth review of Brandon Mull's phenomenal Young Adult Fantasy series Fablehaven and its sequel Dragonwatch.

In this final installment, I'll review Joseph Delaney's Spooksworld, which is, in my opinion, the best Young Adult Fantasy multi-series in existence. Many people may have heard of this series based on the film adaptation that came out in 2015 called The Spook's Apprentice, which was adapted as a play script originally by the author's son. The film featured Ben Barnes playing Tom Ward (he also played Prince Caspian in The Chronicles of Narnia film series), Jeff Bridges as John Gregory, Julianne Moore as Mother Malkin, and Kit Harington (yes, John Snow from HBO's Game of Thrones) as Billy Bradley, among many others. My opinion (which may not mean a lot) is that this movie didn't even come close to capturing the magic found in the books. I find it difficult to watch, honestly, because it was such a poor adaptation of what could have been nothing short of amazing, had the books been followed much closer.

Spooksworld began as a dark fantasy novel saga written by Joseph Delaney. Three separate series comprise this "arc" that includes Thomas "Tom" Ward as a central character in each. In this fictional world, the seventh son of a seventh son (and sometimes the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter) is a unique being equipped above all other humans to sense the supernatural and become a defender against "the Dark", which can include all manner of beasties like ghost, witches, boggarts, and demons. Such a fighting master is referred to as a "Spook".

Before I dive into this unique world, I'll point out that Joseph Delaney is a British author and all of the Spooksworld books were originally published in the UK by The Bodley Head division of Random House Publishing (which is now Penguin Random House). That said, it'll make more sense to explain that the three separate Spooksworld series have different names (for pities' sake, sometimes more than one for each!) in the UK and the US, and that includes the titles in the differing series names also being changed. So I'll start with a basic listing of the original series name and title differences between the UK and the US. You can find out more at the author's website: https://josephdelaneyauthor.com/.

In the United States, the original series that began with Tom Ward being apprenticed to the County Spook John Gregory is called The Last Apprentice Series, with the following titles available:

Revenge of the Witch (Book 1)

Curse of the Bane (Book 2)

Night of the Soul Stealer (Book 3)

Attack of the Fiend (Book 4)

Wrath of the Bloodeye (Book 5)

Clash of the Demons (Book 6)

Rise of the Huntress (Book 7)

Rage of the Fallen (Book 8)

Grimalkin the Witch Assassin (Book 9)

Lure of the Dead (Book 10)

Slither (Book 11)

I Am Alice (Book 12)

Fury of the Seventh Son (Book 13)

In the UK it's called The Spook's Series and the individual titles are shortened considerably to:

Apprentice (Book 1)

Curse (Book 2)

Secret (Book 3)

Battle (Book 4)

Mistake (Book 5)

Sacrifice (Book 6)

Nightmare (Book 7)

Destiny (Book 8)

I Am Grimalkin (Book 9)

Blood (Book 10)

Slither’s Tale (Book 11)

Alice (Book 12)

Revenge (Book 13)

Just to make this as confusing as possible, this same series has also been referred to as The Tom/Thomas Ward Chronicles or The Wardstone Chronicles. In French, strangely, it's called L'apprenti L'Épouvanteur, which means "The Scarecrow's Apprentice". Either that's poorly translated or "Spook's" is simply not a word that can be grasped in the French language. Go figure.

In any case, there are also several interconnected offerings to this original series that are occasionally included with further (seemingly conflicting) book numbers in the series. These include: A stand-alone story called Seventh Apprentice, which is an introduction to the series that has an earlier apprentice, Will Johnson, left to fend for himself while his master is away. Bestiary (also called The Guide to Creatures of the Dark), which is a practical record of dealing with the Dark and features John Gregory's personal account of "the denizens " he's encountered, combined with his lessons learned and mistakes made. Short stories are also combined with different stories with varying titles in the UK and US in collections, namely Grimalkin's Tale, Witches, The Spook's Tale and Other Horrors, and A Coven of Witches. Finally, a fun little scary story set in the same world is called The Ghost Prison.

Tom Ward is just a boy when John Gregory comes to claim him as an apprentice. Tom's mother promised her seventh son of a seventh son to the local Spook, who's more than a little cranky and irascible. Though Tom isn't sure about being apprenticed to a hard man like this, he dutifully leaves with the Spook, resigned to being apprenticed by him. Soon, he discovers that most of the man's previous apprentices failed, fled, or were killed in the process of learning the ropes of fighting the Dark. Not surprisingly, Spooks are feared and shunned everywhere…you know, up until ordinary people have need of their unique abilities.

Everything Tom faces as the plot progresses from one book to the next makes for chilling conflict and soul reflection. The uncertain but morally grounded boy grows into a young man changed not only by those he meets, the creatures he fights, and the mystical skills he possesses but by his own convictions about his place in the world.

Seeing Tom mature and become powerful, embracing his role of responsibility to the County he serves, his master, his family, and the world at large was a fascinating byplay of shades of gray. On the surface, as this saga progresses, a hero could easily be a villain while just as easily a former monster may end up becoming an ally. Light and dark coexist, and no one is really what they seem here. My favorite characters can't really be short-listed because there are so many intriguing ones, but those that stand out to me would include Tom first and foremost; his master; his parents and family; Alice Deane, the young witch Tom is warned early on not to trust; the former apprentices of John Gregory who serve in other parts of the world, Bill Arkwright and Judd Brinscall; Grimalkin, the Malkin witch assassin who has many faces, and her apprentice Thorne; and finally Meg, John Gregory's former lover, who lives in his winter house.

When I discovered the first book in the series, I bought all the subsequent ones in one fell swoop, including the miscellaneous bonus offerings. I read them compulsively over the course of about a week, barely sleeping because I was so enthralled, wanting to know what would happen to Tom and his master John Gregory. While there is a point where the books slow down and things are all moving in one direction (toward the defeat of the arch villain, the Fiend, which I didn't find quite as interesting as previous enemies), I've still read the series multiple times. After completing it the first time and feeling sad that there weren't more books about Tom Ward, I went searching for follow-up and discovered that there was indeed a spinoff series to be had.

With the conclusion of the original series in 2013, the author started a spinoff trilogy in 2014 with The Starblade Chronicles (the UK versions go by "Spook's" with the same individual titles) that follows the continued adventures of Tom Ward. The apprentice is now the master Spook, responsible for fighting the evil threatening the County and the surrounding world. The three books include A New Darkness (Book 1), The Dark Army (Book 2), and The Dark Assassin (Book 3).

Tom is now 17 but he never finished his apprenticeship as a Spook. Nevertheless, the County needs his unique skills more than ever and there is no one else willing or able to do what he can. To further complicate his life, a young girl named Jenny, a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, comes, asking to be his apprentice. Never before has a girl been a Spook, and Tom isn't sure how to feel about it. Yet Jenny has vital information and knowledge that he needs to defeat a new evil threatening humanity. Like it or not, he has to take a chance on her.

Returning to Tom's life after the events of the original series was a thrill for me. I wasn't disappointed, but I was very surprised by a lot of the changes in store that weren't ideal and weren't necessarily what I would have hoped for in a spinoff. However, I enjoyed these books very much, read them just as voraciously as the original series, but I will say I was blindsided by the events in the conclusion. As a tremendous fan of the series, I wasn't entirely happy with the outcome and resolution either. Luckily for me, it wasn't actually the end of Tom's story, though fans of the series did have to wait nearly three years before the author brought back our most beloved Spook.

In 2020, Tom Ward, Alice, and other series favorites returned in a new spinoff series, Brother Wulf, which includes four offerings: Brother Wulf (Book 1), Wulf's Bane (Book 2), The Last Spook (Book 3), and Wulf's War (Book 4, coming 8/17/23).

A young novice monk, Brother Beowulf, is being manipulated and sent by the church to spy on Spook Johnson, who takes Wulf along on his monster battles. After Spook Johnson is captured by one of the very creatures he was supposed to be eliminating, Wulf has no choice but to seek out Tom Ward's help. In this spinoff series, Wulf is the main character, while Tom is the secondary, though still a major protagonist. As with the young Tom Ward in the original series, I was charmed by Wulf, who isn't tainted by the evil that plagues the world around him. He remains pure and determined to do good in a world with so many contradictory players. But Wulf is more than he seems, just as this author's characters always prove to be in the end, and that makes him another hero to root for.

Those new to these books may not realize that Joseph Delaney was battling illness while he was writing the last few books in this series. I'd read all three of the first offerings in it. (Incidentally, I had to purchase Book 3 from Blackwell's booksellers in the UK https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/home because it wasn't available in the US, nor do I believe it is even now.) I went to the author's website to find out when the conclusion to the series would be released, and it was there that I was devastated to learn Joseph Delaney lost his battle. The third story ended on a cliffhanger with no satisfactory resolution. It took a long time to resign myself to the fact that I would never learn the conclusion of such a wonderful saga. But then, while I was researching for this review, I discovered that a fourth book would be released posthumously August 2023, on the anniversary of the author's death. Wulf's War was apparently the last book Delaney wrote. I hope this final book provides an ideal conclusion to the series, though I will be more understanding, given how hard it must have been for the author to write this one.

I've also read Delaney's Aberrations series, another dark fantasy sequence, that currently has two installments. I actually talked to the author several years ago (before the Brother Wulf series was published), asking him if more books would follow in that series. I believe he was writing more, but he said that the publisher hadn't yet committed to releasing the next. I'm strongly hoping this series will also be finished at some point in the future, but I don't expect that will be the case. I'll be devastated, since Crafty and his friends may never defeat the evil mist that brought the aberration monsters to their world. Naturally, I'll blame the publisher. I've written a note to those responsible for the upkeep of his website, requesting information about potential future offerings in the series. We'll see if I get a response.

As I said early in this article series, I discovered Spooksworld as a 30-something year old adult and would have missed it (and been the worse for it) and so many others if I cared a whit about maturity, appropriateness, genre, and level classifications when it comes to selecting my reading material.

Life is too short to read only what's expected of you. Instead, make the most of the remaining years you have exploring an entire universe of wonderful reading material available to you.

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 Internet Knows All

This week I acquired a new HP computer to replace my old Dell, which had started unpredictably freezing up at least once per day. Installing Windows 11 didn't fix it. It had reached the point where even CTRL-ALT-DEL didn't unfreeze it; I had to turn it off manually and restart every time it failed. It feels great to have a reliable machine again.

Two things struck me about the change: First, the price of the new one, bundled with a keyboard and mouse, about $500. Our first computer, an Apple II+ purchased as a gift at Christmas of 1982, cost over $2000 with, naturally, nowhere near the capabilities of today's devices. No hard drive, no Windows or Apple equivalent therof, and of course no internet. And in that year $2000 was worth a whole lot more than $2000 now. Imagine spending today's equivalent in 2023 dollars for a home electronic device. Back then, it was a serious financial decision that put us into debt for a long time. Thanks to advances in technology, despite inflation some things DO get cheaper. An amusing memory: After unveiling the wondrous machine in 1982, my husband decreed, "The kids are never going to touch this." LOL. That rule didn't last long! Nowadays, in contrast, we'd be lost if we couldn't depend on our two youngest offspring (now middle-aged) for tech support.

The second thing that struck me after our daughter set up the computer: How smoothly and, to my non-tech brain, miraculously, Windows and Google Chrome remembered all my information from the previous device. Bookmarks, passwords, document files (on One Drive), everything I needed to resume work almost as if the hardware hadn't been replaced. What a tremendous convenience. On the other hand, it's a little unsettling, too. For me, the most eerie phenomenon is the way many websites know information from other websites they have no connection to. For example, the weather page constantly shows me ads for products I've browsed on Amazon. Sometimes it seems that our future AI overlords really do see all and know all.

In response to recent warnings about the "existential threat" posed by AI, science columnist Keith Tidman champions a more optimistic view:

Dark Side to AI?

He points out the often overlooked difference between weak AI and strong AI. Weak AI, which already exists, isn't on the verge of taking over the world. Tidman, however, seems less worried about the subtle dangers of the many seductively convenient features of the current technology than most commentators are. As for strong AI, it's not here yet, and even if it eventually develops human-like intelligence, Tidman doesn't think it will try to dominate us. He reminds us, "At the moment, in some cases what’s easy for humans to do is extraordinarily hard for machines to do, while the converse is true, too." If this disparity "evens out" in the long run, he nevertheless believes, "Humans won’t be displaced, or harmed, but creative human-machine partnerships will change radically for the better."

An amusing incidental point about this article: On the two websites I found by googling for it, one page is headlined, "There Is Inevitable Dark Side to AI" and the other, "There Is No Inevitable Dark Side to AI." So even an optimistic essay can be read pessimistically! (Unless the "No" was just accidentally omitted in the first headline. But it still looks funny.)

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Derivative

This week, most of the law blogs are discussing either AI or the Warhol case, however, I came upon a fascinating podcast discussing derivative works and fan fiction.

The law office is Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.

The headline is So You Want To Write Fan Fiction. The discussion between Wendy Kearns and Kraig Marini Baker is fascinating and very helpful.

https://www.dwt.com/insights/2023/06/so-you-want-to-write-fan-fiction

There's also a really good discussion of permitted parody.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

Read What You Love, Part 2 by Karen S. Wiesner

Read What You Love, Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner

In this three-part article, I talk about what conditions, if any, cultivate or discourage a love of the written word as well as about the importance of reading what you love, regardless of your age, the genre or content appropriateness, your gender, or what's considered your "level". In the last two segments, I'll also review two of my favorite Young Adult book series that any fan of the supernatural should love as I much as I do.

In the first part of this article, I talked about how, in the general sense, people should read what they're interested in. It doesn't matter if someone else dubs it above or below your proper reading level, too mature or immature, if it's in a genre that social convention says adults or kids shouldn't be reading, or if it's something most people think of as gender specific. A love of the written word transcends any boundaries. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Read what you love!

In this next part, I'll review a phenomenal Young Adult series I discovered as a 30-something year old adult and would have missed (and been the worse for it) if I cared anything about maturity, appropriateness, genre, and level classifications. Fablehaven is a Young Adult Fantasy series with five books in the first set with another five in the spinoff Dragonwatch.

In the very first installment that shares the same name as the series, the main characters of the series, young adults Kendra and Seth Sorenson, are spending the summer with grandparents they've barely met up to this point in their lives. Never could they have imagined that Stan and Ruth are the current caretakers of Fablehaven, a centuries' old hidden refuge for all sorts of mythical creatures they're protecting from extinction. This sanctuary survives as one of the last strongholds of magic in the real world. In the restricted woods around the property, ancient laws dictate order among a wide selection of supernatural creatures that run the gamut between good and evil and sometimes a little of both at once. The kids meet witches, fairies, satyrs, trolls, imps, mermaids, and--hoo-ya!--dragons. And that's not even close to all that crop up as the first saga is spun. Each volume introduces new additions to the creatures that inhabit this fascinating secret world along with compelling characters in various organizations on the outside pursuing the incredible wealth and power controlling the magical preserves and the arcane magic hidden in each that could be theirs.

Being the older of the two, Kendra (12-13) is more sensible and mature (if a bit too perfect), almost always working to do the altruistic thing and/or to right the wrongs--frequently those caused by her own brother. In contrast, Seth (11) is immature, reckless, impulsive, a bit greedy, and far too curious for his own good. In large part, the problems that take place in both of the connected series are due to Seth's consistent failure to think things through to the inevitable conclusion instead of the one he optimistically envisions. However, lest you think these are clichéd or what-you-see-on-the-surface-is-what-you-get characters, let me assure you, they're not. Seth is fun and fun-loving, and you can't help but love and root for him, even as you're rolling your eyes, going "Seth, Seth, have you learned nothing from the last time you tried something stupid like this?!" His boundless enthusiasm pulls you along despite yourself. Kendra is also a multifaceted character with strengths and weaknesses, though she begins and often is very typical of what you'd expect. She serves as a good role model to anyone else who's had their vision of what life and reality are turned completely upside down. The siblings discover their own sort of magic power within the course of the series that can help or hinder their efforts to keep the magical refuges unharmed and intact.

The grandparents Stan and Ruth running Fablehaven are well-drawn and complex, as you'd expect, as are those associated with the sanctuary--Lena, the housekeeper, Dale, the groundskeeper, and his brother Warren; and Hugo the golem; the mystical world at large; and secret organizations, each in their capacities of helping or harming. There are many other intriguing characters that readers will enjoy having join the cast. The parents of Kendra and Seth are nearly non-existent. In Book 1, I accepted that they were going on a 17-day cruise and so basically dropped off the kids and had no reason to really worry anything could go wrong. But their continued absence and/or lack of involvement through the other four books in the series were the only aspect I found a little bit unsettling and unrealistic.

Starting in the second book in the series, Rise of the Evening Star (an archaic society seeking to grab control of the magic preserves around the globe), five artifacts of immense power become the focus of this story and Books 3-5 (titled respectively The Grip of the Shadow Plague, Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary, and Keys to the Demon Prison) as those protecting the sanctuary and the other four like it all over the globe try to keep these talismans from falling into the hands of those who wish to subvert and unleash what could destroy the world--magic and human alike--as they know it.

Though Book 5 ends on an optimistic, if a little unresolved (purposely, I believe) note, it's not the end. Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary introduced Wyrmroost, a hidden dragon sanctuary, that becomes the focus of the spinoff series, Dragonwatch. In the first book of the same name as the series, four months have passed since the events of Keys of the Demon Prison. Kendra and Seth are a little older, a little wiser, and both are equipped with powers that will prove vital to fighting an all-new threat. Their cousins Knox and Tess are also visiting Fablehaven for the summer, which is bound to cause endless issues and conflicts.

In Dragonwatch, a fearless dragon named Celebrant, King of Dragons, wants to reign without borders by returning the world to the Age of Dragons, when dragons, not humans, ruled. Celebrant was actually one of the many heroes of the previous series instrumental in its satisfactory, if not ideal, conclusion. Dragonwatch was an ancient order of wizards, sorceresses, and dragon slayers that subdued the dragons in the past, but nearly all of the former guardians are gone. 

Once again, in the course of the five books (Dragonwatch, Wrath of the Dragon King, Master of the Phantom Isle, Champion of the Titan Games, and Return of the Dragon Slayers), we're treated to a host of compelling creatures including the dragons (both good, evil, and those who could go either way), of course, but also unicorns, giants, fairies, demons, and the king of the undead. Kendra and Seth are unfathomably made co-caretakers of the Wyrmroost dragon prison (along with a wizard). The two main characters we rooted for all through the first series retain the traits we either loved or decried then in this new series. Incidentally, Kendra and Seth's all but missing parents in Fablehaven do put in an appearance this time, eventually, as I wanted them to in the previous series.

In Dragonwatch, the humans, wizards, the characters we've come to love in Fablehaven as well as new ones (Knox and Tess, in particular), and even some previous enemies become allies in this "enemy of my enemy is my friend" plotline. Those assembled in the course of the series form another intriguing cast. Kendra and Seth are separated for most of the stories, as they work to prevent the seven dragon sanctuaries around the globe from falling. But only together can they become the comingled dragon slayer that can end the threat of draconic domination.

As the Fablehaven volumes did, each book starts where the previous one left off, so there's solid conflict from start to finish, and you're immediately plunged into tense scenarios at the beginning while also unable to keep yourself from grabbing the next when one ends.

I've read Fablehaven a number of times, Dragonwatch only once (so far). The creatures pull me in each and every time while the characters keep me on my toes, following them from one (mis)adventures to the next. The suspense is incredible, with each book impossibly better than the previous. I couldn't set any of the stories aside to read something else altogether. I was too enthralled with both series. I read them back to back, barely sleeping until I'd finished them from start to finish. These are keepers worth every penny I spent on them. I expect to read them indefinitely for the rest of my life. Incidentally, while there has been talk of a Fablehaven movie, which would be amazing beyond belief, so far nothing has come of it. Fingers crossed for the future!

In the final installment of this article next week, I'll review Joseph Delaney's Spooksworld, what is, in my opinion, the most fantastic Young Adult fantasy multi-series in existence.

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/

Existential Threat?

As you may have seen in the news lately, dozens of experts in artificial intelligence have supported a manifesto claiming AI could threaten the extinction of humanity:

AI Could Lead to Extinction

Some authorities, however, maintain that this fear is overblown and "a distraction from issues such as bias in systems that are already a problem" and other "near-term harms."

Considering the "prophecies of doom" in detail, we find that the less radically alarmist doom-sayers aren't talking about Skynet, HAL 9000, or even self-aware Asimovian robots circumventing the Three Laws to dominate their human creators. More immediately realistic warnings call attention to risks posed by such things as the "deep fake" programs Rowena discusses in her recent post. In the near future, we could see powerful AI "drive an exponential increase in the volume and spread of misinformation, thereby fracturing reality and eroding the public trust, and drive further inequality, particularly for those who remain on the wrong side of the digital divide."

On the other hand, a member of an e-mail list I subscribe to has written an essay maintaining that the real existential threat of advanced AI doesn't consist of openly scary threats, but irresistibly appealing cuteness:

Your Lovable AI Buddy

Suppose, in the near future, everyone has a personal AI assistant, more advanced and individually programmed than present day Alexa-type devices? Not only would this handheld, computerized friend keep track of your schedule and appointments, preorder meals from restaurants, play music and stream videos suited to your tastes, maybe even communicate with other people's AI buddies, etc., "It knows all about you, and it just wants to make you happy and help you enjoy your life. . . . It would be like a best friend who’s always there for you, and always there. And endlessly helpful." As he mentions, present-day technology could probably create a device like that now. And soon it would be able to look much more lifelike than current robots. Users would get emotionally attached to it, more so than with presently available lifelike toys. What could possibly be the downside of such an ever-present, "endlessly helpful" friend or pet?

Not so fast. If we're worried about hacking and misinformation now, think of how easily our hypothetical AI best friend could subtly shape our view of reality. At the will of its designers, it could nudge us toward certain political or social viewpoints. It could provide slanted, "carefully filtered" answers to sensitive questions. This development wouldn't require "a self-aware program, just one that seems to be friendly and is capable of conversation, or close enough." Building on its vast database of information collected from the internet and from interacting with its user, "It wouldn’t just be trained to emotionally connect with humans, it would be trained to emotionally manipulate humans."

In a society with a nearly ubiquitous as well as almost omniscient product like that, the disadvantaged folks "on the wrong side of the digital divide" who couldn't afford one might even be better off, at least in the sense of privacy and personal freedom.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

You Can't Make It Up [Double Entendre]

I may have used "You Can't Make It Up" for an earlier post, so have added a disclaimer. My apologies if the disclaimer [Double Entedre] weakens the title, does not make sense, or comes across as pretentious.

What can't one make up?

For one thing, one cannot make up ones own copyright law to suit oneself. 

CDL or Controlled Digital Lending is not something that a so-called internet library may simply impose on copyright owners. One may not purchase a print copy of a copyrighted work, scan it, and create an e-book for the purpose of loaning out that ebook to online borrowers. One "can" do it, as has been demonstrated, but by doing so, one falls afoul of copyright law and one may lose a copyright infringement lawsuit.

The case is Hachette Book Group, Inc versus Internet Archive. Legal bloggers Matthew Samet and Margaret A. Esquenet for the law firm Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett and Dunner LLP write a very thorough, reasoned, and superb explanation of how the Internet Archive fails on every point of law to justify copyright infringement under the "fair use" doctrine.

https://www.finnegan.com/en/insights/blogs/incontestable/ebook-lending-library-infringes-publishers-copyrights.html#page=1

There may be an appeal. This case could go further, although this writer wonders how a self-described "non-profit" enterprise has the funding necessary to litigate the matter for years.

For The Copyright Alliance, Isabella Hyun discusses the Internet Archive, but also a variety of other seminal literary copyright cases of which writers and publishers should be aware.

https://copyrightalliance.org/literary-copyright-cases/

For anyone who really likes to get into the weeds (see the logo of the House Judiciary Committee), there is an informative video on the hearings on AI and IP.

https://judiciary.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/artificial-intelligence-and-intellectual-property-part-i

Speaking of Artificial Intelligence (as I did just a week or so ago), a guest on one of the financial news programs that I have on in my kitchen all day, weekdays (except for when I try to do my part to prevent blackouts by cutting back on my power consumption) explained how his company was scammed using a deep fake of his distinctive voice.

As I recall, the scammers made a brief telephone call purporting to be from the executive in question to a direct report. The scammers claimed that the line or connection was bad, and "he" (the boss) would complete the call by text. The scammers then, still pretending to be the distinctive-voiced boss, instructed the employee to send gift cards to certain folks. The scam was discovered because they made a further request, and the employee called the real boss and asked in person if the boss truly wanted to send a second batch of gift cards.

This bad stuff is not made up. Just do a search of "deep fake voice".

My view? Never agree to voice-recognition as authentication for any accounts that you want to be secure!

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™  

http://www.spacesnark.com/   

http://www.rowenacherry.com

Read What You Love, Part 1 by Karen S. Wiesner

Read What You Love, Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner

In this three-part article, I talk about what conditions, if any, cultivate or discourage a love of the written word as well as about the importance of reading what you love, regardless of your age, the genre or content appropriateness, your gender, or what's considered your "level". In the last two segments, I'll also review two of my favorite Young Adult book series that any fan of the supernatural should love as I much as I do.

I don't know when I started reading as a child, though I suspect it wasn't as soon as I would like to brag it was, if anyone in my family could actually recall such a thing. For as long as I can remember, every catalog, magazine, even the TV Guide, as well as literally anything that had words on it (shampoo bottles, cereal boxes, telephone directories, maps…), I devoured. We didn't have many books lying around our house. I suspect those we owned had been left there by the previous home owner. We had a very old dictionary that lost its hard cover binding long before I dug it out of a junk pile--and read it front to back. Hey, maybe that aided the reading comprehension I seemed to have grasped very early in life.

I also unearthed one of what had to be the very first Nancy Drew novels published (a cloth hardcover!) that had, once upon a time, fallen down the well, been retrieved, and dried, making the gray cloth shrink, and the pages stick together until I carefully freed each one so I could read it.

I reread that book and the dictionary until I started grade school and discovered an entire world open to me through the school library. I was in utter awe. From the time I got to school each day, I went to the library whenever I could between classes. From Kindergarten and on, the elementary school librarian let me help her in the library, checking books in and out, reshelving those returned, getting brand new selections ready. She even let me have early access to each of those. I knew where everything went in that little library in no time at all based on the decimal number classification.

All my years in that school, I loved it when the librarian read books to us. I was utterly lost in the fictional world of those stories as me and my classmates sat on the reading rug. I barely noticed how uncomfortable it was to sit on the floor, I was so enraptured. I didn't want her to stop until she read the very last word of each book.

The librarian saw my love of books in how often I was there and the sheer number of books I checked out on a weekly basis. I got over my extreme shyness, at least to a certain level, because I saw a kindred soul in that kind lady. She never questioned whether I understood what I was reading. Instead, she asked me how I liked it, and we talked about those books all the time. From my introduction to the library, I always checked out books that interested me, regardless of genre and the suggested age level, which I can't imagine I even noticed back then. Even that young, I suspect I wouldn't have cared to be told reading material was beyond my age group or comprehension level, let alone appropriate for me to read. In fact, ever harboring a bit of the rebel, I would have taken it as a challenge.

I swear I read every single book in that teeny-tiny library before I graduated to the middle and high school that were in a single building. That new library was triple the size, another whole new world for me to explore. I was quick to set myself up for working there when I joined Library Club and became an aid to the librarian. I might not have read all of those books in the years I was there, but I sure made a dent in them.

As I got older, I fully realized there were actually age-related guidelines and categories for books. Additionally, comprehension determined what levels of books a person could or should read. I think those standardized tests we took, where I excelled almost to the extreme at language and reading comprehension (and performed dismally in math, lol), made me aware that (and appreciative of) my ability to understand nearly any book I picked up. I was also starting to comprehend that cultivating a love of the written word had more to do with personality and preference, not always (or at least not necessarily) with environment or conditioning. After all, I don't think I ever saw my parents reading, and the only time I remember them reading to me and my siblings was when I was watching for the school bus to pick us up in the morning. While I stood at the window, my mom would read out loud from the library books I checked out in towering stacks for those precious minutes on weekdays.

It's true that some people are just drawn to reading and books while others aren't--sometimes at all--for a variety of reasons, which can include skills, abilities, preferences, and personality quirks (or lack thereof). I don't think environment and conditioning are solid criteria for deciding emphatically that someone will turn out to be an avid reader or not. But that doesn't mean you can't slant the odds in your favor, as I actively did when I was old enough to start having my own children.

I suppose since my happiest memories as a child mostly all involved books, I began to read to my son even before he was born. Early on, he discovered his love of books. He started reading on his own when he was only four. Nevertheless, I still read to him all the time, by mutual consent. I don't remember when I started reading things like The Hobbit, Terry Brooks' Shannara Chronicles, and Harry Potter to him, but I know he was still in his early single digits. I could tell he understood most of what I read to him by 1) the discussions we had during and afterward about what we read and 2) how excited he was to get back to the story, just as I was, each time.

Later in life, another thing that struck me was when someone my husband knew asked what kinds of books I wrote. Because that was what I was writing at the time, my husband said science fiction. This person commented about how that genre was for little kids, wasn't it? I confess I was initially offended and embarrassed when I heard this, though of course I concluded eventually that this person wasn't a reader per se and didn't really know much about reading or writing. Commonsense says that most kids' books are written by adults, right? My science fiction was an adult novel series, but I imagine those younger would also enjoy it just as much. Besides, even if science fiction as a category could be relegated to only youth reading it, I couldn't help wondering how anyone would think that age, let alone genre, should dictate someone's reading likes and dislikes. I knew plenty of grown men who still enjoyed comic books and manga as well as grown women who continued to indulge in those "true confession" magazines that tantalized and scandalized them as teenage girls.

I do want to be clear here that I don't think there's anything wrong with parents "censoring" stories that are far too sexual or violent for their children. There's a lot of shocking material that's readily available these days to kids that wasn't anywhere near as accessible in my time. Also, in my day nearly everyone cared about being a role model to kids (not something that seems prevalent in today's world). While freely admitting that I never had any boundaries set on me and probably read a lot of things that weren't appropriate for my age, I turned out pretty good, despite this. My point here, for the most part, is that in the general sense, people should read what they're interested in. It doesn't matter if someone else dubs it too mature or immature, or if it's in a genre that social convention says adults or kids shouldn't be reading. Additionally, I don't think gender should play a factor either. Why can't males read romance novels while females read action/adventure and horror? Read what you love!

I myself am no respecter of age or level dictating what I do and should read. When I was young, I read books that others, even educators, would have (wrongly) assumed were far beyond my comprehension and, yeah, as I said earlier, some that was wildly inappropriate reading material for my age. Now, as an adult, the tables have turned. I read (and sometimes write) books that many would consider far below my level and too immature for someone my age. Oh, the wondrous things many readers are missing, all because of ill-perceived restrictions on age, level, gender, and/or genre!

I was never too young or sheltered to read Go Ask Alice (by Anonymous), Black Like Me (a must-read for every human that I'd read long before my high school teacher assigned it), anything by S.E. Hinton, Janet Dailey, Bruce and Carole Hart, Paul Zindel, and Judy Blume. I even read the occasional Western, which was simply not something girls read in my time.

I will never be too old or mature to love the brilliant works of Dr. Seuss, Astrid Lindgren, Peggy Parrish (and her belovedly ditzy, literalist character Amelia Bedelia), Betty MacDonald, the crazy-fun Robert Munch, Scott O'Dell, Brandon Mull, and Joseph Delaney.

A love of the written word transcends any boundaries. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

In the next two parts of this article, I'll post in-depth reviews of two phenomenal Young Adult series I discovered as a 30-something year old adult and would have missed (and been the worse for it) if I cared anything about maturity, appropriateness, genre, and level classifications.

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/

Brain-Computer Interface

Elon Musk's Neuralink Corporation is developing an implant intended to treat severe brain disorders and enable paralyzed patients to control devices remotely. As a long-term goal, the company envisions "human enhancement, sometimes called transhumanism."

Neuralink

Here's a brief article on the capacities and limitations of brain implants:

Brain Implants

A Wikipedia article on brain-computer interface technology, which goes back further than I'd realized:

Brain-Computer Interface

In fields such as treatments for paraplegics and quadriplegics, this technology shows promise. It "was first developed to help people paralyzed with spinal injuries or conditions like Locked-in syndrome — when a patient is fully conscious but can't move any part of the body except the eyes — to communicate." Connection between the brain's motor cortex and a computer has enabled a paralyzed patient to type 90 characters per minute. Another kind of implant allowed a man with a robotic hand to feel sensations as if he still had natural skin. A "brain-spine interface" has enabled a man with a spinal cord injury to walk naturally. Deep brain stimulation has been helping people with Parkinson's disease since the 1990s. Most of these applications, however, are still in the experimental stage with human patients or have been tested only on animals. For instance, a monkey fitted with a Neuralink learned to control a pong paddle with its mind.

Will such an implant eventually achieve telepathy, though, as Musk claims? Experts say no, at least not in the current stage of neuroscience, because "we don't really know where or how thoughts are stored in the brain. We can't read thoughts if we don't understand the neuroscience behind them."

What about a paralyzed person controlling a whole robotic body, like the protagonist of AVATAR remotely living in an alien body? Probably not anytime soon, but I was amazed to learn how much closer we are to achieving that phase of "transhumanism" than I'd imagined. If it's ever reached, might the very rich choose to live their later years remotely in beautiful, strong robotic bodies and thereby enjoy a form of eternal youth -- as long as their flesh brains can be kept alive, anyway?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt