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Jo Fletcher Fridays: Astra by Naomi Foyle
It’s been a long time since we last did a Jo Fletcher Fridays contest so we’re really excited to have this one to kick off 2014. We have 5 autographed trade paperback copies of Naomi Foyle‘s latest book Astra, the first book in her new series The Gaia Chronicles. Astra is available for pre-order in the UK but hasn’t made it state-side yet so this is your chance to get it way early.
In case you’ve forgotten how to play this game, all you have to do is re-tweet this tweet or comment here in the blog to enter the contest. Do both and double your chances! It’s about as easy as we can make it. We’ll have a random drawing from our re-tweeter pool and announce the winners next Friday so tweet away and don’t forget to tell your friends.
Astra
by Naomi Foyle
Like every child in Is-Land, all Astra Ordott wants is to have her Security Shot, do her National Service and defend her Gaian homeland from Non-Lander ‘infiltrators’. But when one of her Shelter mothers, the formidable Dr. Hokma Blesser, tells her the shot will limit her chances of becoming a scientist and offers her an alternative, Astra agrees to her plan.
When the orphaned Lil arrives to share Astra’s home, Astra is torn between jealousy and fascination. Lil’s father taught her some alarming ideas about Is-Land and the world, but when she pushes Astra too far, the heartache that results goes far beyond the loss of a friend.
If she is to survive, Astra must learn to deal with devastating truths about Is-Land, Non-Land and the secret web of adult relationships that surrounds her.
What people said about Seoul Survivors:
“Naomi Foyle is well placed to bring the little-known complexities of Korea’s contemporary cultural scene to the foreground of her imaginative leap into our future.” – Mia Yun, author of House of the Winds
“Foyle is effective at building tension and creating villainy all the more sinister for its well-meaning smile.” – SFX magazine
“Impeccable plotting.” – Guardian
And if you’re taking part in this year’s Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge this could be a good fit for you. In fact, it could work for many of our 17 Roll-Your-Own Reading Challenges. Best of luck to you all.
2013 Philip K. Dick Award Nominees
The 2013 Philip K. Dick Award nominees have been announced:
- A Calculated Life, Anne Charnock (47North)
- The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, Cassandra Rose Clarke (Angry Robot)
- Self-Reference Engine, Toh EnJoe, translated by Terry Gallagher (Haikasoru)
- Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit)
- Life on the Preservation, Jack Skillingstead (Solaris)
- Solaris Rising 2: The New Solaris Books of Science Fiction, Ian Whates, ed. (Solaris)
- Countdown City, Ben H. Winters (Quirk Books)
Game of Thrones Season 4: Trailer #1
So this look pretty good. I’m actually really excited by this season since they’re getting into parts of the story that I have not read. Which means I won’t have to patiently explain everything to my wife before it happens. She’s the kind of person who reads the synopsis and reviews of the episode before watching so she’ll know what to expect. Sorry, Honey, I don’t know this part at all. Bliss.
Introducing the 2014 Worlds Without End Roll-Your-Own Reading Challenge!
A Problem of Theme and Legacy
With the Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge winding down the last few months we have been racking our brains trying to come up with a new challenge for 2014. We had lots of calls to repeat the WoGF from folks who want to do it again and from those who came to it too late in the year. It was a really great challenge so that option was very tempting, but in the end we wanted to do something new – something fresh. And of course we wanted to top the WoGF – a tall order.
For months we bandied about different themes based around the awards and lists we cover on the site or various author-based ideas, but nothing we thought of was as wide open as the WoGF. Every idea seemed to have more limited appeal or was already being done by the genre book bloggers we follow. We certainly didn’t want to copy anyone else. We were stuck like Chuck.
Alcohol to the rescue!
Time was running out and we had no viable idea so we decided to get together and drink until we came up with a plan. It’s a time-honored method that has worked for us in the past, so off we went to the pub. For a couple beers we just rehashed all the ideas from the previous months. For a couple more we got loose and started throwing out new ideas. Most of them were shite, but some were worth a laugh at least. A few beers later and the law of diminishing returns kicked in. In our frustration we had soured on the topic, and in the middle of a lull, someone said screw the damn theme! Reading challenges are such a pain because not everyone wants to do the same bloody theme. Then why bother trying to come up with a theme at all? Let’s just let our members create their own custom reading challenges to suit themselves and be done with it!
There was a moment of stunned silence while all our minds were blown, and suddenly we were all on the same track, talking a mile a minute. This could work! We don’t have to funnel everyone into a single theme, and leave people out in the cold for 12 months if they don’t like our choice. Love it. Well, what about people who just want a challenge to join and aren’t interested in making their own? We’ll give them a list of all the custom challenges that get created by other members, and if they find one they like, they can signup. So if you created a cool challenge I could join yours rather than make a new one? Sure, why not? The best challenges will get followers, and people will try to make interesting challenges so they can get more followers. And you can get your friends and your reading group to signup too.
Oh, that means that our book blogger friends, many of whom are already WWEnders, can signup on our site and use our tools to promote and manage their regular challenges. They’ll go on the custom challenge list where they can recruit new followers from our membership. We’ll promote their blogs from our site and they’ll promote us from theirs – I like that! Our list will be a great tool for folks looking for a challenge to follow.
OK, so we have a big list of cool challenges to follow… but what if I like more than one? You can signup for as many as you want. We can do that?! Yeah, we can do that. We’ll adjust the code from this year to allow multiple challenges. I like that ’cause lots of people thought 12 books for the WoGF was not much of a challenge, even with the reviews. Those guys can simply signup for 2 or 3 challenges and flagellate themselves as much as they want. Are we going to stick to the 12-12-12 format? No! Why make people adjust to us? We’ll make the tools flexible so they can do what they want. If they want to do 10 books or 20 or 50 they can. They can even choose the length of the challenge and add review requirements if they want. Or stipulate rules like new-to-you authors! People loved that twist on the WoGF. The reviews were a big part of the WoGF’s appeal. Yeah and we should get a wide variety of book reviews out of this which is better for the blog.
Well, what about the review contest? We’ll do them just like last year. We’ll have people reading for different challenges, but it doesn’t matter what challenge the review is for. We’ll still highlight the best reviews and award gift cards. How about the knuckle-heads? You know there will be some dill-hole who creates a challenge theme that other members will find offensive. Are we going to censor content? Some kind of review and release? God, no! Too much additional coding and we’ll never hear the end of that. Now, if it’s blatantly offensive we’ll shit-can it, it’s our site after all, but for the rest we’ll just let the community police itself. Yeah, we can put a flag on the challenge page so members can let us know when something’s fishy. If we get a bunch of flags we’ll put it up for a vote. That’ll work. Well, what about….
And Lo, the WWEnd Roll-Your-Own Reading Challenge is Born
The conversation went on and on and we hammered out the rules and feature set for another hour or two. The name came up early in the conversation as the result of a side remark about rolling characters for Dungeons & Dragons which obviously played a part in the challenge logo. Lots of things changed and morphed as we got down to building the thing, but we’re really pleased with the result and we hope you are too.
So, after all that, here are the basics in a nutshell.
Pick an Existing Challenge. Take a look at the RYO reading challenges on our list and find one that’s right for you. Each challenge has it’s own theme, rules, and requirements, and you can join as many as you like throughout the year. Click the signup button and use our tools to find and tag books for your challenge and start reading! If you are already part of a reading challenge on another site or with a reading group that’s not on our list, please let the challenge host know about us. We’d love to have them on our list!
Roll-Your-Own Challenge. If you can’t find what you’re looking for on our list you can Roll-Your-Own! You pick the theme, set the length and the rules, and determine how many books and reviews you want. Publish your challenge and join it like you would any other RYO challenge from our list. You can roll as many as you like, and you can even mark your challenge as private if you want to use our BookTrackr™ tools to do your own thing. Your RYO challenge will reside on it’s own page on WWEnd that you can easily share with your friends, family, and followers. Your page will include details about your challenge, a list of participants, stats, and a link to your blog. You can even create your own custom challenge logo to go on your page.
Reviews and Monthly Review Polls. Not every challenge will have a review requirement, but any reviews submitted for a RYO challenge are eligible for selection for the WWEnd blog. Reviews selected for the WWEnd blog are automatically entered into our monthly review poll to be voted on by all WWEnders. The review poll prizes are $25, $15 and $10 Amazon gift cards! Pretty schweet, huh? If you write a review every month, you’ll have 36 chances to win a prize throughout the year. Where else are you gonna get odds like that? Only 1 review per member per month will be considered for the WWEnd blog, no matter how many challenges you participate in, but there is no limit to the number of times you can win in the course of the year.
The Fine Print. I hate to say this but you know how it is: WWEnd reserves the right to reject any challenge themes that are in bad taste or offensive to others. Let’s all play nice. I think this goes without saying but just in case: You must be a WWEnd member to participate in the challenge. Join now for free!
So there you have it – a new challenge for a new year that’s a little bit different! We hope to see all our participants from last year signing up again this year and getting creative with the RYO. We’ll be adding new features to the RYO like filtering and sorting etc. but we’ve got all the basics covered for now. To kick things off we have created 2 RYO challenges that probably look familiar. The 2014 Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge is a reprise from last year with the same rules as before which should make a lot of folks happy. (I’ll be doing this one myself since I didn’t manage to finish in 2013.) We’re also bringing back the Grand Master Reading Challenge for a second go. (There are a couple more GM authors to pick from this year and we’re including the Horror Grand Masters as well.) Our challenge list will grow as more people grok to the RYO so if you don’t see anything you like right away, just come back tomorrow to see what new ones have been added. The possibilities are limitless, and I can’t wait to see what our members come up with.
Are you ready for the Worlds Without End Roll-Your-Own Reading Challenge? What ideas do you have for your own “roll-your-own” challenge? Let us know in the comments below and help us spread the word on your blogs, on Facebook and Twitter and to anyone who’ll listen. More details can be found on the challenge page and in the forum. Happy reading!
Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge: December Review Poll is Open!
We posted eleven great reviews in the blog for December and it’s time to vote for your 3 favorites. As always, there are 3 prizes up for grabs. We’ll keep the poll open until January 20 so you’ll have time to read all the reviews.
- Heartwood by Freya Robertson – Wendy B. (nightxade)
- Debris by Jo Anderton – Rob Weber (valashain)
- Among Others by Jo Walton – Stephen Poltz (spoltz)
- Hild by Nicola Griffith – Alix Heintzman (alixheintzman)
- Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente – Megan AM (couchtomoon)
- Forays into Fantasy: Arabian Fantasy and G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen – Scott Lazerus (Scott Laz)
- Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie – Nadine Gemeinböck (Linguana)
- Ice Forged by Gail Z. Martin – Steff S. (MMOGC)
- The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells – Sue Bricknell (SueCCCP)
- He, She and It by Marge Piercy – Allie McCarn (Allie)
- The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo – Lynn Williams (lynnsbooks)
This is the final review poll for the WoGF in what has been a fabulous year for reviews on WWEnd. Our hats are off to all our members for so many quality reviews. We threw down the gauntlet and you picked it up and slapped us smartly across the face with it.
General Stats After 12 Months:
Time Remaining: 0 days
Participants: 391
Books Read: 1,236
Books Reviewed: 679!
Thank you all for being a part of the Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge! We’re extremely proud of how the challenge turned out and we’re still a little shocked that we got almost 400 people signed up. Over 1,200 books by women authors read is nothing to sneeze at and we like to think, and are also a little afraid to think, that many of those women might not have gotten read without the challenge spurring you on to try some new authors. And speaking of new authors, we added 127 new women authors to our database over the course of the year, all by member request, and some hundreds of their books to boot. We moved the parity needle in the right direction as far as our data goes and we hope to continue that positive trend going into a new year. The 679 reviews is just a stunning number but it’s more than just the quantity that we’re proud of. The majority of those reviews have been top quality and our site is so much better for having them.
It was a tremendous pleasure being your host and we hope to see you all back for the 2014 challenge which we should be announcing on Tuesday. Come back for the big unveiling and prepare to be amazed. We can honestly say that nobody will be able to resist the new challenge theme.
WoGF Review: The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
For Lynn Williams (lynnsbooks) books are much more than a hobby or a pastime they’re really an obsession. If she’s not reading a book, she’s talking about books on her blog, Lynn’s Book Blog, or deciding which books to buy next. Lynn reads all sorts of books, sometimes straying into YA, but her first love is fantasy. Recently she started to cross into science fiction thanks to the suggestions of some very excellent bloggers.
Editor’s Note: This review counts for December.
Just finished reading The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo – talk about getting your last challenges in right on the last minute – this book is both my 100th book of the year and also my December read for Worlds Without End, Women of Genre Fiction reading challenge – can I just say what a great challenge the WoGF has been – sincerely I hope they hold this next year, I will be all over it if they do!
Anyway, moving swiftly on and away from my gloaty back patting self (the book review being the actual purpose of the post!) I do have mixed feelings about this book – which would probably resolve themselves if I had the chance to mull it over a little longer and really establish how I feel, but – deadlines are pressing – so, mixed feelings are what I’m going with on this occasion. Although, for clarity’s sake I certainly didn’t dislike this, just not quite sure about exactly what my emotions are at this point (did I love it, maybe not. Did I hate it – definitely not.)
The story is about a young girl, Li Lan, living in Malaya. Her mother has died and her father has retreated into the world of opium. As a result, and although she certainly doesn’t seem to have suffered any hardship having been raised mainly by her very loving Amah, her future does not seem to have been taken care of in the traditional sense leaving her with no future marriage prospects. Her father’s business has deteriorated, as you would likely imagine as he spends most of his time with cloudy eyes chasing the dragon, and, on top of that, he also seems to have run up considerable debts. Then along comes a marriage proposal of a most unusual nature. A very well to do family would like Li Lan to marry their son. Yes, it’s the old ‘attractive young girl marries into a wealthy family to save her own family honour’ chestnut. Or is it? Before we all start jumping to those conclusions – there’s a snag with this marriage proposal, just a tiny one, maybe not insurmountable to some – although I think I might object – the would-be groom has already passed away. Now, tell me that you’re not intrigued!
