Walton says, among other things, she always snaps up extra copies of Walter Jon Williams' Aristoi and all of John M. Ford's books, because she's always giving them away. Other commenters mention Catherynne M. Valente, Pamela Dean... and Walton herself. (As for me, it's not science fiction, but I was just complaining the other day that I can't keep a copy of Small World by David Lodge on my shelf because peopel always borrow it and don't give it back, and the person I was talking to had the exact same problem with Small World. I've also loaned out/given away multiple Kushiel's Darts and keep a box of d.g.k. goldberg's Queen Of The Country Where They Sleep Till Noon to give away.)

How about you? What books do you hang onto, in order to get rid of? [Tor.com]

For our last book club meeting, we read Paul McAuley's eco-political epic The Quiet War, so this time around we're veering more towards the escapist. Santa Olivia is a mutant coming-of-age story about Loup, an orphan who has grown up in a tiny, forgotten town between the two heavily-fortified walls that divide North from South America. The main attraction in this town is a bar where off-duty soldiers come to drink (and pester the local girls), and the boxing gym. Every year, there is a boxing match between the townies and the soldiers. The military leaders promise that if a townie ever wins, he'll be allowed to jump the wall and go free in North America.

Loup wants nothing more than to be the man who goes free. Except she's not a man, and no girls have ever competed in the contest. Luckily, she has strange mutant powers from a father she never knew, a friendly coach at the boxing gym, and a gang of orphan friends who want to help her mete out justice in a town where soldiers can get away almost with anything. This engaging, often thought-provoking story combines elements of Wolverine and Million Dollar Baby - and Carey's great talent for creating characters who are larger-than-life but always recognizably human.

For this book club meeting, we also picked a novel that has been out for several months, so it should be a little easier to get from your local library than The Quiet War was.

You can read our review of the novel here.

Here are the details on this book club meeting. You read Santa Olivia. Then we all have our book club meeting on Wednesday, January 6 (when you're fully recovered from the holidays). I'll post, and we can discuss the book in comments. We just got confirmation that Jacqueline Carey will join us for discussion in January too, so be thinking about what you might want to ask! Find out more about our previous book club meeting in the io9 Book Club forum.

Now get reading!

Santa Olivia via Borders

If you liked Star Trek... And who didn't like J.J. Abrams' breezy reinvention of the 1960s space adventure show, focusing more on the coming-of-age of Kirk and Spock, and their journey from rivals to friends? Anarcho-syndicalists, that's who.

...You'll Love Ringworld by Larry Niven. The defining "big object in space" novel, Niven sees your scary Romulan drilling platform and raises you a huge ring-shaped world orbiting a star, with "shadow squares" to provide a day/night cycle, and many weird ecosystems and cultures thriving on it. And if you enjoy that, delve into more classic space opera by Heinlein, Clarke, E.E. "Doc" Smith, David Weber and Lois McMaster Bujold.

If you liked Wolverine... Maybe you enjoyed the way the latest X-Men spinoff used the experiences of a lonely mutant to talk about the ravages of war. Maybe you just liked the purer distillations of mutant angst and feeling like an outsider in non-mutant society. Or perhaps you just liked the sexy mayhem.

...You'll love Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey. The tale of a lonely mutant in a town on the U.S.-Mexico border, this novel's young female version of Wolverine named Loup blew us away. She's been genetically engineered not to feel fear, and she becomes her town's secret superhero.

If you liked The Dark Knight... Who didn't love The Dark Knight's reinvention of superhero comics' "grim and gritty" cliches in an even more noir, even more mind-blowing vein? Whether you were into the portrayal of a Gotham City that destroys the best among its citizens, or you just liked the brooding, this film was instantly iconic.

...You'll love Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey, or just about anything by Richard K. Morgan. If you love noir anti-heroes squaring off with madmen for the future of a city that doesn't deserve saving, then you'll want to spend some serious time with Sandman Slim — sure, the city in question is L.A., and that's automatically less cool than the fictional Gotham. But still, the hero who's crawled out of Hell and now fights his power-mad former friend is the best fix for your Nolan Batman addiction right now. And for more noir, check out Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs novels as well as his noir fantasy The Steel Remains.

If you think you'll like James Cameron's Avatar... Okay, you can't really know if you're going to like Avatar yet, since it's just a couple of trailers and one preview day so far. But a lot of us are pretty pumped up about the cool concept, of a human put into a hybrid alien body to interact with cool blue aliens... not to mention all the war-machine technology and battle scenes.

...You'll love The Color Of Distance by Amy Thomson. Why not try another take on the idea of a human who's transformed into an alien-human hybrid to live among aliens? Juna is a human who lands in the rainforests of the planet Tendu, whose pollen gives humans deadly allergies. Juna's atmosphere suit gets ruptured and she nearly dies, but the planet's elders save her by transforming her into something like one of them. She learns their skin-color-based language and grows to understand their weird culture, and accept her own half-alien self.

If you liked Hancock... Maybe you liked the look at a more flawed superhero. Maybe you liked the alienation, or the feeling of futility in spite of great power. Maybe you enjoyed the cynicism.

...You'll love Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. In any case, you should definitely check out this smarter, cooler look at what superheroes would be like in the real world. Where Hancock fobs you off with repeated gags and muddled mythology, Grossman (an io9 contributor) gives you real psychological complexity and sharp characterization.

If you liked The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button... It sure did look impressive: a love story involving a man who ages backwards, and somehow keeps finding the same woman over and over again as she ages forwards in time. Set against the backdrop of history as it was, maybe you liked the epic feeling.

...You'll love Confessions Of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer. This is definitely a case where a book did it first, and way better. (Yes, Button was nominally based on a HAITE story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.) Greer both pioneered and perfected the "backwards-aging love story" concept, without ignoring the potential creepiness of a boy who looks like an old man having a crush on a girl his own age. Heartbreaking and epic, this is the story Button should have been.

If you liked Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen... Umm... Well, you might have enjoyed the battle scenes and huge robots fighting alongside military hardware. You might have been into the love story between Shia and Megan, or Shia learning to grow up and accept responsibility. Oh, whatever. Let's assume you liked this movie for the big robots and military hardware.

...You'll love Hammer's Slammers by David Drake. This 1979 story collection, as much as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, is a landmark in the history of military science fiction. And it has the big hardware in spades — most notably the giant super-tank that the Slammers roll around in, which comes equipped with a massive 20 centimeter power gun that fires high-energy copper plasma. You might also really dig the Jon and Lobo novels by Mark Van Name, which are about a guy who makes friends with a giant artificially intelligent battlesuit, and they go off having adventures together.

If you liked Knowing... Maybe you liked the weird clues and all the numbers that secretly predicted all the disasters in the world. But most likely, you liked it for the same reason people seem to be liking 2012: for the apocalypse.

...You'll love Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. For a somewhat more light-hearted look at the end of days, you really can't beat this book. Or if you want a post-apocalyptic novel which shows how America continues after everything has collapsed and we've reverted to slavery and other nineteenth century institutions, try Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery.

If you liked Monsters vs. Aliens... With its A-list cast and zany monsters banding together to save the world, who didn't like this movie? Plus, it had a super-basic, but still welcome, message about being yourself and how it's OK to be different and all that stuff.

...You'll love Monster by A. Lee Martinez It's got the same spirit of fun, and a similar misfit cast of characters who save the day despite being weirdos. But it's maybe a little less kid-friendly, and the eponymous Monster is more of a slob who gets rid of the paranormal creatures threatening all the normal people, even though he'd rather just crash on the couch and drink beer. His paper gnome companion will definitely remind you of a cartoon character, and could easily be voiced by Hugh Laurie or Will Arnett in the movie version.

If you liked District 9... With its look at otherness, and the predicament of a human who accidentally gets infected with alien DNA and starts losing his privileged status, District 9's alien-ghetto tale was full of metaphors for the way humans treat each other.

...You'll love Mind Of My Mind by Octavia Butler. Nobody wrote about hierarchy, oppression and otherness better than Butler. And Mind Of My Mind deals with the idea of losing your humanity and becoming something unfamiliar and terrifying with incisive brilliance.

If you liked Moon... You probably got into the chilling depiction of loneliness on our only satellite and the slow madness that overtook our hero, played by Sam Rockwell. But you probably also loved the depiction of two Sam Rockwells, and the questions of identity this doppelganger story raised.

...You'll love Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley. If you want a really thought-provoking tale about cloning, you'll definitely want to check out Ophiuchi Hotline. Varley deals with a far-future society where only the dead can be cloned legally, then plunges us into a world of outlaws whose cloning goes far beyond the permissible.

If you liked Wanted... It probably wasn't for any vestigial supervillain trappings. In its movie version, this film was mostly about a man realizing he's inherited his dad's gunman powers, and getting inducted into a society of super-assassins. But more than anything, it was about becoming an ubermensch and realizing that the "little people's" rules don't apply to you.

...You'll love Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. If you really want a story of a super-assassin who has gone beyond traditional morality, you should check out the tale of Horza, a shapeshifter who has rejected the super-advanced Culture and is willing to do whatever it takes to win. Or if you just want the tale of an ubermensch who comes into his power, read Frank Herbert's Dune for the tale of Leto Atreides II.

Those are our book recommendations for the movie addicts in your life. What are your suggestions?

Thanks to Graeme, Meredith and Annalee for suggestions!

Standing here, in the middle of San Diego Comic Con, it's easy to feel as though the movie industry is a huge maw — sucking up every stray thought or tingle of creativity that anyone has ever had, and mashing them all into new reasons for Brad Pitt to grimace. Hollywood feels all-consuming, when you're surrounded by hype for upcoming comic-book and disaster movies.

I was actually going to do a list of "gloriously unfilmable books," but then I Googled to make sure io9 hadn't already done that post. We hadn't, but SciFiWire, Screenhead and hard-SF writer Mike Brotherton all have. And after I'd already started writing this post, Wired Magazine did one too. (And io9 contributor Jeff VanderMeer and the CrazyMonk blog have great comments on the Screenhead post.) The unfilmable novels include some literary giants, like Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace and Haruki Murakami, some masterpieces of thought-provoking science fiction, including Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, and Connie Willis, and some giant epics, like Gene Wolfe's Book Of The New Sun and Dan Simmons' Hyperion. I would add at least some of Iain Banks' Culture novels, some Joanna Russ, and a lot of Rudy Rucker's work.

(Incidentally, the movie of William Gibson's Neuromancer? Still definitely happening, according to inside sources I've talked to recently.)

So instead of doing a list of unfilmable novels, let's discuss the whole idea of a book being "unfilmable." First of all, is it true that there are "unfilmable" books (as opposed to books that shouldn't be filmed?). And what makes a book unfilmable? And finally, what do these supposedly unfilmable books tell us about the process of translating a book to film?

Jeff VanderMeer makes a really fascinating point in his response to the Screenhead post. He writes:

I also think this brings up a serious point: more novels should be unfilmable. Because this speaks to what about the form cannot be replicated in other art forms. When I was writing Shriek, one thing I had foremost in my head was to create something that couldn't be filmed (well, except for little excerpts of it...).

Yes, there are unfilmable books.

So is there such a thing as an unfilmable book? I'd say the answer to that is a resounding "Yes." Sure, people used to say Lord Of The Rings and Watchmen were unfilmable, and they were proved wrong. But those two examples don't disprove the existence of the unfilmable book, as a species. Some books are too abstract, too complex, too idea-driven, or too non-mainstream to become a Hollywood movie, or any kind of movie for that matter.

Take Rudy Rucker's Postsingular and its sequel, Hylozoic. They're fresh in my mind because I just read Hylozoic recently, and there's so much in those novels that you could never possibly convert into a series of sounds and visual images. You have the nano-machines, the "nants," devouring the entire world and porting everybody to a virtual Earth simulation called "Vearth." And after the nants are turned back, you have a kind of global awakening via a network of Orphids, machines which turn every object fully interactive. And soon, everybody on Earth is quasi-telepathic and able to spy on each other via the OrphidNet. And people can expand their consciousness by connecting to a kind of group mind called the Big Pig. Oh, and they create plastic self-aware robots called Shoons, and contact giants from another plane of existence (the Hibrane) who show them how to "unroll the Lazy Eight" dimension. I feel like I'm barely scraping the surface here, and any Hollywood scriptwriter would need a week in a sensory deprivation tank after trying to turn this into a screenplay.

We went to a reading and booksigning for Jacqueline Carey a while back, and she mentioned, with obvious glee, that her magnificent "Kushiel" books couldn't be made into movies. Partly, that's because of their huge scope and complexity — but mostly, it's because of the subject matter. Especially in the first three books, the main character is a sacred prostitute who can turn pain into pleasure (I'm oversimplifying a bit), and sex work and S/M are woven into the story so deeply, you can't remove them without the whole thing falling apart. Not to mention, the fact that her story takes place in alternate France that worships the bastard son of Jesus Christ, who teaches that you should "love as thou wilt," including S/M as well as homosexuality. There are many ways to make a terrible movie of Kushiel's Dart, but no way to make a good one — at least within Hollywood.

Some books just aren't visual enough to make good movies — take Le Guin's The Dispossessed. You could, I suppose, make a somewhat lifeless film about a physicist from an anarchist planet who travels to a capitalist one. But it would be missing everything that makes The Dispossessed brilliant, from its exploration of the limits and virtues of Annares' utopia, to its dead-on depiction of academic politics, to the investigation of physics and philosophy that lie at the core of the development of "simultenaeity physics." How do you make a compelling movie about someone coming up with a new way to think about space/time?

Watchmen and Lord Of The Rings, by contrast, are both action/adventure stories. They were already woven into the fabric of tons of other superhero and fantasy movies long before they came to the silver screen. Turning them into movies required a deft touch, to be sure, but there was nothing in either work that was antithetical to the needs of the movie form. (Except, possibly, Watchmen's giant alien squid.)

And novels that are even more unfilmable than the ones mentioned above also exist. Some of them aren't particularly great as books either — there are novels that are so dreadful, so dull, or so pointlessly offensive that you'd go mad trying to adapt them. I've read many of these books, so I know.

I should add a caveat: even if a book really is unfilmable, you can always make a movie with the same title and one or two character names, with nothing else in common with the original. If you include works loosely inspired by a book, then yes, anything is "filmable."

Are there books that can be filmed, but shouldn't?

As to whether a science fiction novel shouldn't be turned into a film, that's slightly more of a value judgment than the question of whether it can. Many people — myself included — argued that Watchmen shouldn't be a movie. In my case, I was groping towards the theory that a movie that was faithful to the graphic novel would be both too dark and too dull. I wrote:

I don't really doubt that we'll end up with a note-for-note mimicking of the graphic novel, transplanted to the screen. But will it be worth watching?... The Watchmen movie won't be able to duplicate the things that were awesome and juicy about the original graphic novel. And in its attempt to grasp at something that can't be captured, it may wind up being kind of boring.

Looking back at what I wrote, I'm not sure I made the case conclusively — I focused too much, in that essay, on discussing the things that Watchmen does that are unique to the graphic novel form, and discounted the possibility that the movie could do similar things in a different way. I didn't talk enough about the story itself, and the things about it that could, or could not, make for a good movie.

And then, a year ago today, I saw a bunch of footage and talked to Zack Snyder, and came around to the idea that his movie could work — it could be about the history of superhero movies, in the same way the graphic novel was about the history of comics. On the other hand, the actual movie that resulted really was a bit lifeless, as I'd originally feared — especially in the final act.

You'll find no shortage of novelists who feel their books shouldn't be movies, that too much would have to be sacrificed to the crudeness of the movie form.

But actually, thinking about it some more, I think it's a lot harder to argue that something shouldn't be filmed than that it can't be. If you're going to argue that it's possible to make a movie of your favorite book, but too much would be lost in the adaptation, you're shouldering the burden of proof. You have to identify just what elements would be lost — and make a stab at understanding how a work gets ported from "book" to "movie."

What does the process of adapting a novel to films tell us about movies and books?

Much of what Alan Moore said, in arguing that Watchmen shouldn't become a movie, is true of all printed works. You read a book at your own pace, with the ability to flip back and forth as you notice connections between things that happened in the previous chapter and things that are happening now. You do much more of the work of imagining the world in your head — even if there are illustrations. The book is frozen; the reader moves. It's the opposite of a film, in a sense.

I think people who believe that any novel that's brave, or complicated, or emotionally rich, will automatically make for an unfulfilling movie are slightly selling the medium of film short. You can do a lot in visual shorthand in movies, and there's a lot more scope to convey information in a way that will go over the heads of some viewers but resonate with others. Any film worth its photons works on multiple levels, for different audiences. A decent actor can convey a whole chapter's worth of backstory with a meaningful look.

Maybe, when adapting a book to a movie, there's something like T.S. Elliott's "objective correlative": you can put in visual cues, props and hints that stand in for complicated ideas and emotions inside a book.

My favorite book-to-film projects include Adaptation, which takes Susan Orlean's introspective work of journalism The Orchid Thief and turns it into a bizarre pomo story of two screenwriter brothers struggling with an inscrutable story. And then there's American Splendor, the film which adapts Harvey Pekar's autobiographical comics the only way you could: with a mixture of documentary and reenactment, with the two crossing over in a surreal fashion.

Of course, both of those movies experiment with the movie format to try and do justice to a quirky, unusual book. It's hard to imagine a science fiction movie doing something similar, unless it was a low-budget indie like Primer or Moon. Certainly, the kind of big-budget movie that a book like, say, Neuromancer demands is not going to support much in the way of stylistic experimentation. But maybe there are other ways of doing what those films do — bringing in some of the metatextual quirks of the books by adding a narrative voice-over, say, or a Verhoeven-esque set of fake commercials.

But really, that brings us to the biggest problem with adapting movies to books — big-budget Hollywood film genres are much more restrictive than book genres, at least right now. You have superhero films, disaster films, space-horror films and the occasional space opera. But that can always change — it was only a decade ago that you could count the number of satisfying superhero films on one hand, and now it's the "it" genre.

So maybe instead of hoping that your favorite book never becomes a movie, you should hope it does — and in the process of being filmed, it expands, just a bit, the circumference of Hollywood's narrow sphere of possibility. After all, it never hurts to be optimistic.

The Enchantment Emporium, Tanya Huff (DAW)

In this urban fantasy, Allie Gale's grandma disappears, leaving behind a strange shop that sells magical supplies to the local witch population. When Allie takes it over, she's suddenly involved in a mysterious struggle within the Canadian magic community. If you ever wanted to speculate about the witch population of modern Toronto, this is your book.

Naamah's Kiss, Jacqueline Carey (Grand Central Publishing)

From the io9 review:

This is a novel of pure adventure, with a kick ass heroine who gets to fight, do magic, and get laid just like the swashbuckling heroes of old. It's a perfect beach read. And the best part is the Jacqueline Carey is extremely clever – don't let her fool you with all that romantic frippery. She manages to slip a lot of interesting, subversive messages into this swords-and-sorcery tale.

The Women of Nell Gwynne's, Kage Baker (Subterranean)

The women of a Victorian brothel are hired to cater to the needs of a party of businessmen holding an auction for a mysterious piece. They find themselves quickly involved in intrigue and espionage, in a story with flecks of steampunk and classic mystery. We reviewed it (along with a couple of other Baker books) here.

Wild Thyme, Green Magic, Jack Vance (Subterranean)

This career-spanning collection of stories from Jack Vance includes a wide variety of genres, including a few science fiction stories about other worlds. Vance's ability to build worlds has been praised by Frank Herbert, Poul Anderson and Robert Silverberg.

Fragment, Warren Fahy (Delacorte)

A reality show crew on a ship stumble on an island ecosystem inhabited by parallel-evolved monsters. From the io9 review:

If you like monsters and mad science - and who doesn't? - this is the perfect book to take on your vacation or on that long plane ride to a remote island. However, if you're looking for characters who move outside of two dimensions, you might want to give this one a pass.

The Year's Best Science Fiction 26, edited by Gardner Dozois (Griffin)

I'm a sucker for well-complied science fiction anthologies, and this one appears to be no exception. Including 30 stories from masters and new writers alike, this collection also has an extended list of honorable mentions. It looks like a pretty hefty resource for the short story geek.

Green, Jay Lake (Tor)

A fantasy / steampunky tale of international espionage and mythology. From the io9 review:

At times unsettling but always compelling, Green abounds with intrigue and adventure. A feminist fable lovingly written with a father's hope and concern for his daughter's future, Green is the story of a strong-willed young woman trying to find her place in a world that would rather ignore her. Green will not be ignored.

A Monster's Notes, Laurie Sheck (Knopf)

This novel turns inside out one of the oldest science fiction stories. The story imagines Frankenstein's monster not as Mary Shelley's creation, but as her companion, consoling her in a time of sorrow. He discusses with her all of the facets of humanity, trying to understand human connection in a world where he doesn't belong. It's a tale of speculative alternate history, couched in a story of compassion and companionship.

Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles WIlson (Tor)

A speculative future of post-oil America. From the io9 review:

Peak oil has left the world a churchy, early-industrial shambles in Robert Charles Wilson's new novel Julian Comstock. An engaging cross between post-apocalyptic series Jericho and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, it may be the best science fiction novel of the year so far.

Haze, L.E. Modesitt Jr. (Tor)

An agent of the now-Chinese-run Earth investigates a planet surrounded by a haze of nano-satellites. He finds an eerily familiar world of superior technology.

House of Suns, Alastair Reynolds (Ace)

This book came out a little while back in the rest of the world, but this month marks its publication in the United States. It's a space opera of post-humanity and colonization, with the added twist of relativistic travel. As a result, this novel chronicles a mystery distorted by time. It's certainly nice to see a space epic that explores some of the complexity of actual interstellar travel. We reviewed it here.

The Strain, Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan (William Morrow)

Master of Horror Guillermo del Toro brings vampires back from their whiney post-Buffy image. From the io9 review:

The Strain is a breakneck thrill ride chronicling only the first four days of the vampire plague that may destroy civilization. The cinematic quality really comes though, making the book feel more like a action blockbuster than a thought-provoking horror novel.

For those unfamiliar with Carey's two previous trilogies, collectively referred to as Kushiel's Legacy, they're set in an alternate middle ages spiced with magic. In previous novels, magic was never really the point. There were a few moments with otherworldly powers, but by and large they were the tales of political machinations across Europe and the Middle East in a world without Christianity. In Carey's universe, the world is mostly pagan. Instead of Christianity, a country resembling France has adopted the religion of Elua, the child of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Those who follow Elua believe in his one tenet, "love as thou wilt." They live in a society were prostitutes are like royalty, everybody is bisexual, and having multiple love affairs is considered an ordinary part of everyday life. But that's just the backdrop: the first trilogy was about a prostitute spy named Phedre, who repeatedly prevented war; the second trilogy was about her adopted son Imriel and his star-crossed love affair with the princess. Yes, there are a lot of princesses in these books.

And Naamah's Kiss doesn't disappoint in this department: there are at least two princesses, both of whom have pretty awesome sex with our new heroine Moirin. Like Phedre, Moirin comes from humble beginnings to become a friend of royalty and a savior of two nations. And she also has quite a bit of magic. She comes from an alternate version of England, one of the last members of a Druid tribe who worship a great bear. At least, her mother is a druid. Her father comes from Terre d'Ange – the alternate version of France – and he fathered her during an orgiastic celebration. So Moirin has the best of both worlds. She can do all kinds of druid magic, like disappearing when she wants to and talking to spirits, but she can also have completely awesome sex like Phedre could.

At this point, you're either saying to yourself that this is the most awesome heroine ever, or you shouldn't read the book. I fall into the former category, and was completely enthralled by the novel.

When Moirin comes of age, she goes on a spirit quest to meet the great bear goddess of her tribe. What she discovers is that the goddess has a plan for her that involves sailing over many oceans – including the strait between Alba (England) and Terre d'Ange to meet her long-lost father. After she crosses the ocean but before she can meet papa, she accidentally gets run over in the street by a man who turns out to be the tempestuous lover of the princess. And by the way, the princess is also the most beautiful prostitute in the land. Did I mention that I love this novel?

The princess's lover draws Moirin into a dark plot involving magic and power, which escalates into a love affair, and finally propels Moirin into the arms of the princess. She also meets her father, who turns out to be a priest in the temple of star-crossed lovers. So he completely understands what she's going through.

Quickly she plunges into court intrigue, and is elevated to the status of companion to the princess (which means everything you think it means). But at the same time she meets a mysterious holy man from China who teaches her how to use her druid powers. And eventually he takes her with him to visit the land of his origin, accompanied by his ultra-hot student/ninja Bao. The second half of the novel takes place in China, where Moirin has to help a princess who is possessed by a dragon – and, of course, she helps save the nation too.

And let's not forget what she discovers with Bao. Which is that stick fighters are super hot, and super romantic.

This is a novel of pure adventure, with a kick ass heroine who gets to fight, do magic, and get laid just like the swashbuckling heroes of old. It's a perfect beach read. And the best part is the Jacqueline Carey is extremely clever – don't let her fool you with all that romantic frippery. She manages to slip a lot of interesting, subversive messages into this swords-and-sorcery tale. I'll leave it to you to find them. Or to ignore them, and just have a hell of a lot of fun.

Naamah's Kiss via Amazon

Bestselling fantasy author Carey, creator of the "Kushiel's Legacy" series, has turned to post-apocalyptic scifi in new novel Santa Olivia, and it's truly a pleasure to read. Fans of her Kushiel books will recognize some of the themes that have often preoccupied her, such as the orphan seeking justice and a hero whose greatest strength is some kind of weird emotional quirk. In the Kushiel series, hero Phedre has the odd power of converting her own physical pain to pleasure, enabling her to endure situations few other humans could.

Like Phedre, the mutant Loup is immune to feelings that hold other people back. Because she's been engineered not to feel fear, she's also peculiarly unaffected by embarrassment and threats. When bullies make fun of her, she doesn't care. And when she's told (often incorrectly) that she can't do something, she tries it anyway. Without fear, insults and condescension simply lose their power. Carey treats this rather cliched superpower in an intriguingly original way, and shows how it is in some sense the perfect cure for the humiliations and setbacks of teenage girlhood. The subversive implication here is that if teenage girls could just be fearless, they might really take over the world. Or at least, they might try to do it more often.

Santa Olivia is set in a Texas border town that finds itself between two vast walls erected by the US government to stop plagues from percolating up from Mexico. After the plagues die down, however, the government manufactures a nebulous terrorist threat from Mexico to justify maintaining the walls. Loup's town is converted into a secret military outpost, and its inhabitants who cannot afford to move away are tolerated there although they're given very little money and resources to survive.

All that remains of the crumbling town's social structure are three things: A nightclub, the church, and the boxing gym. Loup's mother died when she was young, so she has gone to live with the orphans at the church; meanwhile her doting older brother Tommy lives at the local boxing gym, scrubbing out bathrooms and training to become a boxer. The local military leadership has promised the people of Outpost that if one of them can beat the military boxers, that the lucky winner will get two tickets out of town, beyond the walls.

While Tommy strives to become the winning boxer, bringing pride back to the town, Loup strives to save the town in a different way. Her fellow orphans, who dub themselves the Santitos, want to turn her into a superhero. They have an old stack of X-Men comics in the church basement, and there are several funny scenes where they discuss whether Loup's power is like Wolverine's (she says her powers are "good" but not "super"). Eventually they hatch a plan to mete out justice by turning Loup into the embodiment of the town's patron saint, Olivia.

But that's just the beginning of Loup's career as the town's secret superhero. She later trains as a boxer, in a series of intense scenes that reminded me of the best parts of the film Million Dollar Baby. For anyone who loves an ass-kicking, kind-hearted heroine, Santa Olivia will pack a major punch, combining comic book lore with the exhilaration of girl jock triumph.

Though Loup is far from a tragic hero, Carey is unafraid to explore her flaws. A lack of fear makes her somewhat "slow," as she puts it, unable to learn from scary experiences the way most humans do. When she's burned by something as a baby, she's not afraid to get burned again. Learning not to do dangerous things is horribly difficult for her.

On the other hand, typical teenage experiences of excruciating embarrassment leave Loup untouched. When she's called stupid and a slut by other girls, she just shrugs it off. She's not afraid of what those terms imply. And later, because this is a Carey novel after all, she'll embrace her sexuality in a way that is both unconventional and completely hot - as well as romantic, of course. Loup is truly a superhero for the twenty-first century, dealing with contemporary politics and social concerns.

Most of all, she's an engaging character who forms complicated, warm, and realistic friendships with the people around her. She's the perfect centerpiece for a cast of characters whose lives illustrate what could easily happen to communities on the US/Mexico border in the near future. Carey is fond of writing series, so here's hoping that Loup's quest for justice isn't over quite yet. She overcomes some obstacles in this novel, but we're left wanting her to overcome more - and to seek justice and community in the world beyond the walls surrounding Outpost.

Santa Olivia via Amazon

It's always a delight to come back to Carey's elaborately-conceived alternate world. Most European and Mediterranean countries are pagan, while France (here called Terre D'Ange) took up a form of polytheistic, pseudo-Christianity founded by Elua, the bastard child of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Our heroes hail from Terre D'Ange, a land where prostitutes are revered and holy scripture bids everyone to "love as thou wilt." The politics are crisp and intriguing, and every adventure is packed with cool battle strategies and entertaining cultural details.

The spawn of super-dominatrix and supervillain Melisande, Imriel spends the first two books in his series overcoming his unhappy, pre-Phedre childhood and proving his loyalty to the kingdom his mother betrayed. Here, as in the previous novel, we find Imriel pining for Sidonie, the princess of Terre D'Ange and the one woman he's forbidden to love. Sidonie returns his passion, but nobody in the kingdom can deal with the idea of her marrying a man whose mother many years ago tried to stage a coup and sell the country out to Skaldia (Germany). The Imriel/Sidonie romance remains lukewarm — I never liked it in previous novels, and it just feels too stagey for words (falling in love with a princess? am I in fourth grade?). Luckily, their romance is merely a motivating force but not center stage for most of the novel.

Instead, the novel is a meditation on the madness of war and conquest. Carthage, which wants to secure an alliance with Terre D'Ange in order to conquer Aragnoia (Spain), manages to generate a kind of mass hallucination in the capital city of Terre D'Ange which convinces the leaders of the country to make that alliance. And Sidonie is convinced to marry the leader of Carthage, despite her love for Imriel. Most of the novel is about Imriel's quest to restore sanity to the kingdom, and to rescue Sidonie from her delusion. It's a tidy way for Carey to make her characters behave in a way that is profoundly out of character, and to give Imriel and Sidonie a chance to fall in love again (slightly more believably this time).

I say it's tidy, but the story actually works. Partly that's because Imriel is forced to turn to his villainous mother for aid, which gives Carey a chance to suggest that even the most foul of people might be able to redeem themselves given a chance. Pleasing also is Carey's exploration of madness in this novel. So many key characters go crazy — and some crazy characters at last come to their senses — that there's a genuine sense of development that felt lacking in the first two Imriel books. As Imriel ventures across Aragonia and the native-held lands of Euskerria bordering it, he realizes that heroism is itself a kind of madness. Especially in a world where heroes are all forged in bloody, horrifying wars that leave royalty relatively safe while destroying whole generations of common folk.

I think the biggest problem in Kushiel's Mercy, aside from the still-blah romance between golden-haired princess Sidonie and brooding Imriel, is Carey's attempt to maintain the sexual spice of the first three novels in the Kushiel series. Part of what made those novels so popular was Carey's ability to mix transgressive sex with compelling spy stories — and that made perfect sense in the Phedre books. Phedre is, after all, a prostitute: She is required to have sex for her job, and her adoptive father trains her in the "arts of covertcy" so that she can use her sexuality to ferret out secrets from her powerful patrons in the royal court. Plus, her superpower is that she is aroused by pain, no matter who causes it or why. So again, this makes sexuality central to her character, especially since she's always being kidnapped and tortured during her super-spying adventures.

Imriel, however, is not a prostitute nor does he have a sexual superpower. He's just a son of privilege with royal blood who happens to like a little kinky sex once in a while. Liking kinky sex is not a superpower, especially when anybody in our current timeline can shop at Hot Topic and Babeland. Carey dutifully throws in some slightly racy sex scenes between Imriel and Sidonie (ohhh, he rips her shirt and uses a quirt on her back! ohhh, he ties her up with silken bonds!), but these scenes feel like something her editor requested to retain the flavor of the earlier series rather than something necessary to advance the plot. I mean, if Carey had really wanted to continue in the sex-centric universe of the Phedre novels, she could have given Imriel a superpower like the ability to make people get aroused while experiencing pain. I mean, why not? That's no more preposterous than Phedre's power, and Imriel is the son of the most skillful dominatrix in Terre D'Ange.

But obviously Carey didn't want to do that — she had other plans for Imriel. And at last, in this novel, those plans come to startling fruition. Imriel's superpower is that he is a great protector of women, like his adoptive father Joscelin, the monk-ninja who guards and then becomes consort to Phedre. In the Phedre novels, we never fully understand what motivates a celibate monk to fall in love with a prostitute. But in Kushiel's Mercy we begin to understand, as Imriel slowly discovers what his real role will be in Sidonie's life and the life of the kingdom he serves. He knows he won't be a great ruler (that's Sidonie's job), and he won't be a great scholar (though his adoptive mother Phedre is one of the greatest thinkers in the land). Instead, he will be the guardian of a great woman, the man behind the throne. Master in the bedroom, he is merely an attendant upon power in public life. Watching Imriel learn this, and what it means to him, is what kept me reading Kushiel's Mercy and got me excited about what Carey has in store for us next.

[Kushiel's Mercy via Amazon]