Black Metal Heel High Heels and black Stockings

...what I wore underneath my ball-outfit from last weekend? Well, now you know ;). Black 5 inch High Heels with pointed toes, a metal heel and a slim ankle-strap together with black stockings. This few pix were taken when I pulled up my stockings and tried to attach them to the suspenders of my garterbelt. It's not that easy if you wear gloves and a corset ;).
High heeled greetings & kisses
- Vivian

More 2011 Titles of Interest, from ChiZine: Brent Hayward, Claude Lalumiere and Derryl Murphy (by Liviu Suciu)

From the author of the remarkable debut Filaria (FBC Rv), May will see the publication of The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter, a new novel that promises much and starts extremely well. With a title for the ages and a cover that looks pretty cool, here is the blurb:

The city is crumbling . . . . Clouds over Nowy Solum have not parted in a hundred years. Gods have deserted their temples. In the last days of a dying city, the decadent chatelaine chooses a forbidden lover, separating twin outcasts and setting them on independent trajectories that might finally bring down the palace. Then, screaming from the skies, a lone god reappears and a limbless prophet is carried through South Gate, into Nowy Solum, with a message for all: beyond the city, something ancient and monumental has come awake.

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From the author of the remarkable collection Objects of Worship (FBC Rv), April will see the publication of The Door to Lost Pages. From what I gleamed so far, this book is a mix between a novel and a collection of related stories in the vein of the superb Things We Didn't See Coming.

Here is the blurb:

Step through the door to lost pages and escape a life you never wanted . . .

On her tenth birthday, Aydee runs away from home and from her neglectful parents. At first, surviving alone on the streets is harsh, but a series of frightening, bewildering encounters with strange primordial creatures leads her to a bookshop called Lost Pages, where she steps into a fantastic, sometimes dangerous, but exciting life. Aydee grows up at the reality-hopping Lost Pages, which seems to attract a clientele that is both eccentric and desperate. She is repeatedly drawn into an eternal war between enigmatic gods and monsters, until the day she is confronted by her worst nightmare: herself.

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Napier's Bones (tbp March) is a novel that attracted my attention for two reasons; first as being published by Chi-Zine which so far never put a book out that "felt for me" and disappointed; second the blurb is irresistible for someone with a math background, so I decided to give it a try and I will let you know what I think - the first pages read quite well, so I will get to this one sooner rather than later.

What if, in a world where mathematics could be magic, the thing you desired most was also trying to kill you?

Dom is a numerate, someone able to see and control numbers and use them as a form of magic. While seeking a mathematical item of immense power that has only been whispered about, it all goes south for Dom, and he finds himself on the run across three countries on two continents, with two unlikely companions in tow and a numerate of unfathomable strength hot on his tail. Along the way are giant creatures of stone and earth, statues come alive, numerical wonders cast over hundreds of years, and the very real possibility that he won't make it out of this alive. And both of his companions have secrets so deep that even they aren't aware of them, and one of those secrets could make for a seismic shift in how Dom and all other numerates see and interact with the world.

Edit 2/28: I finished this and it was a very good read, conventional (UF) formula in structure but the content made it worth and the author has a flowing style that kept the pages turning. Here are some raw thoughts with the full review in several weeks:

"Napier's Bones is a very entertaining mix of sf and UF; the structure is all UF (evil being with superpowers, awakened in our day and time wants to take over and change all, good guys have to stop it but to start they are too puny, so there are chases, hidden powers, unexpected allies and all the paraphernalia of traditional fantasy set in our world and time) but the content is all sfnal since the conceit of the novel is numbers as magic and there is a lot of real fun numerology - I have no idea if the author has read Martin Gardner's ultra-entertaining essays on numerology but the stuff in the novel is as good as anything there and the book is worth reading if only for that.

The characters are ok though nothing outside stock and some of the major twists are easily seen but the writing flows well, the pages turn by themselves and the book is a very entertaining reading experience with a great ending. Another recommended book - and a positive surprise for 2011."

The Adversary by James R. Bowman (Reviewed by Mihir)

Order "The Adversary" HERE

AUTHOR INFORMATION: James R. Bowman was born and brought up in Ipswich, Suffolk. He currently resides there with his family. He’s been fascinated by Native American culture and has relished his inquisitive nature by making a trip over to the American Southwest. He’s also been shortlisted for the Brit Writer's Published Writer of the Year 2010 award. This is his debut novel.

PLOT SUMMARY: Death, War, Famine and Pestilence; known to the sentient races of the Multiverse as the Absolutes, face their greatest threat since the first race made its mark on the cosmos. The Adversary, Lucifer s right hand and enforcer has decided the time has come for him to take charge instead of orders; freeing Fenris the Dread Wolf to aid him and systematically wiping out the Earth s guardians those individuals whose destiny it was to protect the world from extinction and slavery he gathers his forces, poised to strike and annihilate humanity. The world as mortal kind knows it stands to fall and the age of humans is about to end. Extinction is only moments away.

Two heroes rise to challenge the Adversary, drawn into the conflict by an Arch-Angel, two ancient Dragons and the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse themselves. Tomas a former government operative winds up trapped in Hell and becomes allied with a group of exiled Valkyrie; while Gwen is forced from her home in Santa Fe and is sent on a quest for the First Tree, the tree that seeded all others including the legendary tree of knowledge, and whose whereabouts has been forever lost in the mists of time and memory.

Success depends on their survival and their survival is threatened on an almost perpetual basis by the demonic minions of the Adversary, werewolf like Hounds of Fenris and swarms of possessed, to name but a few. For the sake of the Multiverse, humanity, every other living creature and for the pure life essence of the Earth herself, let battle be joined.

CLASSIFICATION: The Adversary is a mixture of Epic Quest fantasy and Urban fantasy, with an apocalypse impending!

FORMAT/INFO: The Adversary is 1028 pages long divided over twenty numbered and titled chapters with a prologue. Narration is in the third person via many different characters such as Tomas Walker, Gwen, The Adversary, Azaroth, Daniel and a few others. The Adversary is the first volume in a series. There's also an "Acknowledgments" section and an introduction written by the author. Cover art is by Peter Pracownik.

ANALYSIS: The Adversary was a book which got queried at our blog and the premise seemed very exciting for me. After I read the first 25 pages I decided to give it a try. The book blurb reveals it to be quite a mish-mash of genres and the book doesn’t disappoint in the size and scope of the tale imagined by the author.

The tale begins by introducing us to Tomas Walker, an ex-British agent who’s become disgruntled with his life and now has become a wanderer of sorts. He travels around and is soon beset with an otherworldly encounter which convinces him to focus on his self preservation and beguiles him as to the nature of his opponent. He soon meets up with an archangel who convinces him that he’s not losing his mind however events are being precipitated which require his urgent attention and if left unchecked could mean the death of all living things. Tomas being himself is quite skeptical however soon loses all his reservations when he is joined by the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They proceed to lay out his role and why he’s crucial to their battle.

Another thread opens up on the other side of the Atlantic by introducing us to Gwen, who has been living a life of her own but suddenly gets introduced to a paroxysmal shift in the nature of things and soon finds out that two of her best friends are more than what they appear to be. Gwen is also tasked with another responsibility as she finds out that she is akin to a repository and she has been entrusted with new powers. In the third and significantly stronger thread we get a view point in to the Titular character and the antagonist of this tale, the Adversary who has upended hell and its denizens and also whose plans include coercing the power of Fenris and many others who have similar ambitions. There are also a few more players to this mix and it will be best if I don't allude to any more of the plot.

The book is a rather large one at slightly more than 1000 pages encompasses a lengthy tale which is only the opening salvo of the entire saga which the author has planned. The plus points to this book are the author has amalgamated many mythologies and has constructed a vast global mythology to this world which might appeal to jaded Urban fantasy readers. There are also not too many characters and the tale is tightly focused on the POV characters as they travel to new places and continue their quest to save their universe. The writing for a debutant author is good however has some faults which I’ll be discussing next.

The pacing deserves a lot to be said as of there are quite some info-dumps in between as the author tries to explain the world which though required; does detract a bit from the reading experience. Another point was that the main characters of Gwen and Tomas were not fleshed out beyond their roles as chosen ones in the books and this perhaps can lead to a slight disconnect as majority of the plot unfolds around both of them (then again since this is a first book, there might be more to come in the remaining three titles.)

Lastly not all of this gargantuan effort is all that vexing, there are quite a few positives namely the imagination of the debutant author which has to be lauded for coming up with such a mythological background to this tale and his rather exuberant attempt to connect the dots amongst the various myths mentioned in the book. The characters are decently drawn out however with the drawbacks mentioned above, if the author can remedy these in the remaining part of the sage, this series can indeed become special. This book I would rate as a good debut effort with a lot of heart in it however it could very well do with a trimming of its content page wise and a rather coalescing of the plot so as to remove the tepid flow to the pace of this tale. Most readers should very well try this hefty debut from across the pond as it offers something new in terms of effort and plot while retaining some favored clichés.

"The Oracle of Stamboul" by Michael David Lukas (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

Official Michael David Lukas Website
Order 'The Oracle of Stamboul" HERE
Read an Excerpt from The Oracle of Stamboul HERE

INTRODUCTION: The Oracle of Stamboul was the first real positive surprise of 2011 for me as it was a book that came out of nowhere for me and took over my reading with a combination of magical prose and pitch perfect atmosphere.

I recently saw the title in a list of "just published" books when looking for more information about what turned out to be the first big flop of 2011 for me and the title sounded appealing, so I checked the blurb below which made me continue exploring the novel, while the excerpt linked above convinced me to get the novel immediately and then it took over my reading.

"Late in the summer of 1877, a flock of purple-and-white hoopoes suddenly appears over the town of Constanta on the Black Sea, and Eleonora Cohen is ushered into the world by a mysterious pair of Tartar midwives who arrive just minutes before her birth. "They had read the signs, they said: a sea of horses, a conference of birds, the North Star in alignment with the moon. It was a prophecy that their last king had given on his deathwatch." But joy is mixed with tragedy, for Eleonora's mother dies soon after the birth.

Raised by her doting father, Yakob, a carpet merchant, and her stern, resentful stepmother, Ruxandra, Eleonora spends her early years daydreaming and doing housework—until the moment she teaches herself to read, and her father recognizes that she is an extraordinarily gifted child, a prodigy."

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The Oracle of Stamboul is a magical novel, short but fulfilling. Somewhere at the border between historical fiction and the fantastic, not straying away from the possible but hinting at the supernatural, the book has as main protagonist Eleonora, a girl whose birth in unsettled and ultimately tragic circumstances is heralded by portents.

Growing up in Constanta on the Black Sea - the ancient Tomis of Ovid and a city I spent many summers on its beaches, though here we see it in the twilight of the Ottoman era and the beginning of the Romanian one in the 1870-1880's - and in a world of prejudice against women and minorities - her family is a Jewish merchant one - Eleonora is grudgingly allowed to develop her stunning intellectual gifts by doting father Yakob Cohen against the wishes of her aunt/stepmother Ruxandra who pushes her into "women stuff" - eg housework of all kinds from as early an age as possible.

There are strict conditions that Eleonora cannot show or tell anyone what she learns since already a flock of rare birds has taken residence around her house and sometimes the birds are following her when she goes out and as Ruxandra knows too well, when you are Jewish and reasonably prosperous, it is not good to attract too much attention. As it's obvious, soon Eleonora will make a naive misstep when shopping with her aunt and the ignorant shop boy miscounts the change, so from then on she is restricted to one book per month.

In very poignant scenes we follow the 8 year old as she must a make a choice as what book she will get to treasure in the next month, until by chance she discovers an old favorite novel of her mother, a 7 volume series called The Hourglass which will open her eyes to the wider world and give her a taste for adventure. So when her father goes to expand his business to Stamboul, it is natural for Ellie to follow what she has learned in her treasured books and sneak in a trunk with all planned as how she will endure the week long sailing trip.

And so Eleonora's adventure begins and in the Ottoman capital we meet an assorted cast of characters that will interact with her in both usual and unusual ways of which the most notable are Yoncef Bey a Turkish official and intellectual with a reputation for subversive liberal thought, Rev. Prof. Muehler who is rector of the American college there and moonlights as a spy for both the Grand Vizier and the US government and of course Abdulhamid himself, the (last true) Sultan of the empire...

As structure, The Oracle of Stamboul mostly follows Ellie's POV but alternates it with the Sultan's one and occasionally with some of the other adults that come into Eleonora's magical circle. There are no other children in the book and in many ways her world is the world of a "real world" child - doing what the adults ask while creating her own separate universe - though the mundane and the fantastic intertwine around her.

The main strength of the book is the superb style of the author - poetic and evocative, but also making one turning the page until the "too soon, I want more" fitting end. From this point of view the book sits comfortably in the tradition of tales of yore without any modern anachronisms regarding the way the world was in the late 19th century. The atmosphere is also wonderfully evocative and I felt the author really understood the flavor of the places where he has his action happening.

The Oracle of Stamboul (A+) also belongs to the category of books that feature children as main protagonists but are not really addressed to them for the reasons expounded above - basically the children live in an adult world and follow adult rules, rather than being the motive power of action, eg saving the day, world, situation, by themselves - the awesome The Children's Book by AS Byatt or the excellent but darker The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti are similar narrative space novels I have reviewed here - and as such it is a book for all ages, but one that I predict will be enjoyed more by lovers of beautifully written "magical" tales than anyone else.

I would like to note that The Oracle of Stamboul is Michael David Lukas' debut though it reads like the work of a quite experienced writer...

Steven Erikson Tour Dates!

On February 21, 2011, Transworld Publishers will release “The Crippled God”, which is the tenth and final volume in Steven Erikson’s awesome Malazan Book of the Fallen fantasy series. In support of “The Crippled God”, Steven Erikson will be going on tour in the UK for a number of book signings and Q&A’s. Details are included below:

Monday, February 21st:

1.00pm: Book Signing
Waterstone’s Birmingham High Street
24-26 High Street
Birmingham
B4 7SL

6.30pm: Talk, Q&A and Signing
Waterstone’s Manchester Deansgate
91 Deansgate
Manchester
M3 2BW
0161 837 3000
Tickets £3 Redeemable against the book on the night

Tuesday, February 22nd:

1.00pm: Book Signing
Waterstone’s Derby
78-80 St Peter's Street
Derby
DE1 1SR
01332 296997

7.00pm: Talk, Q&A and Signing
Waterstone’s Leeds
93-97 Albion Street
Leeds
LS1 5JS
0113 244 4588
Tickets £3 Redeemable against the book on the night

Wednesday, February 23rd:

1.00pm: Book Signing
Waterstone’s Nottingham
1/5 Bridlesmith Gate
Nottingham
NG1 2GR
0115 948 4499

6.30pm: Talk, Q&A and Signing
Waterstone’s York
28-29 High Ousegate
York
YO1 8RX
01904 628740
Tickets £2

Thursday, February 24th:

12.30pm: Book Signing
Waterstone’s Edinburgh West End
128 Princes Street
Edinburgh
EH2 4AD
0131 554 7732

6.30pm: Talk, Q&A and Signing
Waterstone’s Glasgow
153 – 157 Sauchiehall Street
Glasgow
G2 3EW
0141 332 9105
Tickets £3 Redeemable against the book on the night

Friday, February 25th:

7.00pm: Talk, Q&A and Signing
Waterstone’s Milton Keynes
72 Midsummer Place
Milton Keynes
Bucks
MK9 3GA
01908 395384
Tickets £3

Saturday, February 26th:

12.30pm: Book Signing
Forbidden Planet
179 Shaftesbury Avenue
London
WC2H 8JR
020 7803 1890

Monday, February 28th:

6.30pm: Talk, Q&A and Signing
Waterstone’s Truro
11, Boscawen Street
Truro
Cornwall
TR1 2QU
01872 225765
Tickets £3 Redeemable against the book on the night

“The Crippled God” will be published in North America on March 1, 2011 via Tor.