Photo: Andy Chilton [via Unsplash]
I am passionate about food.
This will not come as a surprise to anyone who’s read my books. The Kushiel’s Legacy series is rife with food references, so much so that I’ve been asked on numerous occasions if I’d consider writing a cookbook. The answer, by the way, is “no,” because while I like to think at this point I’m a fairly skilled home cook, writing recipes is a very specific skill set. (Pssst! But I would consider collaborating!)
In this ongoing series, we ask SF/F authors to describe a specialty in their lives that has nothing (or very little) to do with writing. Join us as we discover what draws authors to their various hobbies, how they fit into their daily lives, and how they inform the author’s literary identity!
I am passionate about food.
This will not come as a surprise to anyone who’s read my books. The Kushiel’s Legacy series is rife with food references, so much so that I’ve been asked on numerous occasions if I’d consider writing a cookbook. The answer, by the way, is “no,” because while I like to think at this point I’m a fairly skilled home cook, writing recipes is a very specific skill set. (Pssst! But I would consider collaborating!)
Destined from birth to serve as protector of the princess Zariya, Khai is trained in the arts of killing and stealth by a warrior sect in the deep desert; yet there is one profound truth that has been withheld from him.
In the court of the Sun-Blessed, Khai must learn to navigate deadly intrigue and his own conflicted identity… but in the far reaches of the western seas, the dark god Miasmus is rising, intent on nothing less than wholesale destruction.
If Khai is to keep his soul’s twin Zariya alive, their only hope lies with an unlikely crew of prophecy-seekers on a journey that will take them farther beneath the starless skies than anyone can imagine.
Jacqueline Carey’s Starless introduces readers to an epic world where exiled gods live among us, and a hero whose journey will resonate long after the last page is turned. Available June 12th from Tor Books.
For the past several years, I’ve been recommending Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein as the best book I’ve read in ages. Okay, it’s not fantasy, but it’s historical fiction, which is also near and dear to my heart. It takes place during World War II, and tells the story of two young British women, an intelligence agent and a pilot, and the friendship they form. The book is divided in two sections, each protagonist getting her own narrative.
At the outset we meet our first protagonist, the intelligence agent—she calls herself Queenie—as a prisoner of the German army in occupied France. Her narrative shifts between a first-person account of her harsh treatment at the hands of the Nazis, seeking to extract valuable codes from her, and a third-person recollection of her developing friendship with the pilot and sharpshooter Maddie, whom her captors inform her died when her plane crashed. Everything is ostensibly recorded in a diary cobbled together from whatever materials her captors afford her, rife with disgust at her own cowardice and collaboration.
(Major spoilers ahead.)
A lovely girl grows up in isolation where her father, a powerful magus, has spirited them to in order to keep them safe.
We all know the tale of Prospero’s quest for revenge, but what of the dutiful and tenderhearted Miranda, who loves her father but is terribly lonely? Or Caliban, the strange and feral boy Prospero has bewitched to serve him. Always under Prospero’s jealous eye, Miranda and Caliban battle the dark, unknowable forces that bind them to the island even as the pangs of adolescence create a new awareness of each other and their doomed relationship.
Miranda and Caliban is author Jacqueline Carey’s gorgeous retelling of The Tempest, exploring the themes of twisted love and unchecked power that lie at the heart of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, while serving up a fresh take on the play’s iconic characters. Miranda and Caliban is available February 14th from Tor Books. But if you need more of Carey’s sensual fantasy to get you through the holidays, look no further than Kushiel’s Legacy, an ebook bundle that collects the first trilogy featuring the courtesan spy Phèdre nó Delaunay.
