Show Notes
Attack of the Jazz Giants by Gregory Frost.
The Crown Rose by Fiona Avery.
First up this week is Gregory Frost and his book, Attack of the Jazz Giants. Gregory's book is a collection of short stories and he tells us how they came about. Even though it sounds like a tribute to music, the scifi is rich. Tune in and hear the details.
After that, Fiona Avery is back to tell us about The Crown Rose. (XM listeners, you have a chance to get a free book. Tune in!)
Draco-Vista Studio receives many new books each week. So, we just have to tell you about them.
Michael Stackpole is in the studio and has the honor of tossing someone to the Dragon this week. Find out what he thinks of mis-conceptualized fantasy stories.
A fun interview with Gregory Frost. I remember his story 'Madonna of the Maquiladora' from Asimov's May 2002 (indeed I reviewed it for Andy Cox's magazine The Fix -- or was is still called Zene back then?)
Totally agree with Mike Stackpole about fantasy needing to be self-consistent. And the best fantasy will let the reader know all the rules of the invented fantasy world in a completely invisible non-info-dump kind of way.
Just and FYI, that book Michael was talking about was The Rune Lords, by David Farland aka David Wolverton. I thought it was good, and not the whole army was based on people with the abilities of 10 people. Only the nobility was granted the abilities of people, and as part of the agreement they had to take care of the people and protect them. They had whole castles and complexex dedicated to guarding the people who had given up their abilities.
One of the military strategies was to send in an assassin to kill the people who had given their abilities to the nobility. I think the first book actually has an example of this very thing, so I don't know about the draft that Michael read, but what I read explained things really well.