Benjamin J Newland

Phoenix Rising by Philippa Ballantine


This was a first for me: I discovered this book on Twitter, long before it was published. It happened like this.

Last year, at the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference, I pitched my novel, Magic Bullets, to a pair of agents. Subsequent to that, I started following said agents on Twitter. Not for stalking purposes, mind you, but to keep an eye on what they liked, what publishing events they were in on, etc. One of those agents is behind Phoenix Rising and authors Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris.

The thing that really sucked me in was that the authors (I assume it’s the authors, I guess it could be some lowly intern) are running a Twitter feed that purports to be written by the main characters of Phoenix Rising, Eliza Braun and Wellington Books. The novel is set in an alt-historical/steampunk world, but somehow the idea of these characters running around the world commenting via the “aethertweets” is really exciting. This isn’t precisely twitter-fiction, as they definitely break the fourth wall often, but it works. When I preordered the novel, largely because I’d enjoyed following @BooksAndBraun, I mentioned the fact on my own twitter feed and got a reply from the characters thanking me for the purchase. This was entertaining all out of proportion.

So that’s how I found the book, but was it worth it? Oh yeah. Definitely.

Phoenix Rising is a rip-roaring tour de force of Steampunk adventure. The main characters, bookish Archivist Wellington Thornhill Books and Field Agent/Pepperpot Eliza D. Braun, begin as template character opposites but quickly develop enough depth to avoid the cardboard cutout accusation. The story is at once quaintly Victorian and intriguingly modern, with plenty of action and sensuality to spice things up as we go along. There are also some unanswered questions and motivations left hanging, which I’m sure is merely teaser material for forthcoming installments.

Phoenix Rising is available in Mass Market paperback and Kindle editions for exactly the same price. I don’t care for either of these formats, but I went with the digital copy. What do you call an eBook page turner? A button pusher? A page clicker? Whatever you call it, it was that. I’m looking forward to more, and I’ll be keeping @BooksAndBraun on my following list indefinitely. Cheers!


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The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey


I’m sitting in the main terminal building at SeaTac airport, having a late lunch/early dinner while waiting for the flight to Colorado. I’m still not sold on e-readers (another rant, for another post), but I’ve resuscitated my 1st generation Kindle for the trip, on the theory that one Kindle takes up less space than the 3 novels I hope to read this next week, all of which I own in hardcover editions. The cellular connection on my Kindle reminds me of 56k modems (though I’m probably misremembering, and there’s no awesome sound effects when connecting) but eventually I manage to peruse the “Recommended for You” section and pick out The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey. Digital synchronicity causes this book to appear on my recommendation page and on my “To Read” shelf at Goodreads. Must mean something, right? Sample digested over burritos, and full book bought and paid for before the horrible “turn off all electronic devices” warning when the plane’s door closes.

I don’t read a lot of horror, but I like YA, and I like Victorian era settings, so the promise of “Lovcraftian YA horror” managed to get my attention. What I have read a lot of is vampire stories, and zombie stories. One of the features of The Monstrumologist I most appreciated was that there was A new kind of monster! I’d never heard of Anthropophagi before, but I’m damn glad to have met them. How refreshing!

The story features a pair of characters at it’s heart: the protagonist, an orphaned child, isolated and employed by, the Monstrumologist, an eccentric, mad scientist striving to not deal with the horrors of his own past. The action covers a small area of space and time, with an interesting supporting cast. The plot was sell structured, nicely paced, and really enjoyable. I’m not fully converted to the genre by any means, but I’m very glad to have made the detour from my normal fodder. If you’ve any interest in Lovcraftian horror and enjoy YA, give this novel a try.



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Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi


I made an effort at Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl some months ago and couldn’t get into it. I take full responsibility for this; it’s not the author’s fault. I tend to be pretty escapist in my reading preferences, and while I have been building up a higher tolerance for tradgedy and have even come to like slightly vague endings (nothing on the order of Lit. Fic., mind you), Bacigalupi’s adult fiction was just too bleak and realistic for me. I gave up and went looking for something less depressing to me personally.

Yet I kept hearing his name, this author, and so when I came across a Young Adult title by him on the New Fiction shelf at my library I grabbed it up.

Ship Breaker is set in a very similar world to Windup Girl, if not the same one: a post-environmental-apocalypse earth where the gap between rich and poor is greater than ever. Yet the YA outlook must have taken the edge off for me, or else my tolerance is still increasing, because the story had enough hope and optimism that I didn’t once feel like backing away. The main character is part of a team of scavengers who physically recycle the valuable pieces of the previous era’s tankers and cargo vessels, hence the eponymous title. He looks out over the Gulf Coast waters at the new generation of clipper ships, a combination of high tech electronics and materials with old tech sail plans, with longing for something unimaginably better.

It’s a wonderful book, completely representative of what I think is the best of Young Adult fiction. There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle over a Wall Street Journal article decrying the state of modern young adult novels. Sherman Alexie wrote a powerful rebuttal that I highly recommend, and while Alexie’s novel (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) is set in the real world and Bacigalupi’s in a near-future dystopian fantasy world, they speak the same language to teens as far as I can tell.



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