Jo Boone Reads and Writes

Newsletter #5

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: YOU GUYS I’M SO EXCITED! BOOK THREE IS OUT! YOU CAN BUY ALL THREE BOOKS NOW!

Jo Boone Reads:

I may have said this before, but I have a hard time reading fiction, especially in the genre I write in, when I’m actively writing fiction. So, I tend to read nonfiction when I’m writing. Right now, I’m plotting out Books 4 and 5, and while I’m doing that, I can read fiction.

I started with a book that my daughter was reading when she came to visit me a couple of months ago. It was clearly a difficult book for her to put down, and our tastes are similar, so I picked it up when I had a chance. The book is Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhou, and yep, it’s a tough one to put down. Gripping from page one to the final jaw-dropping scene, the book tells the story of Wu Zetian, a teenage girl who lives in future-China, 229 years after the arrival of the alien Hundun invaders, in an age of seemingly endless war.

When you open the paperback edition of this book, you’re greeted with images of “war machines” that begin as a smallish, animal-based form—tortoise, fox, bird—and can through the use of “qi”—spirit-energy provided by the pilot and copilot—evolve through an intermediate form into a larger, powerful form, like Pokemon mechas. The mechas are operated by a male pilot and a female copilot; but the ugly little secret of the system is that the male pilots drain the female copilots of qi energy to the point that the copilots almost invariably die in battle. Despite this, families sign their daughters up to be copilots because of the lucrative death-benefits offered to their families—and because rarely, a female copilot will prove to have such strong qi that she is a match for her pilot, and they become an extremely powerful team.

Wu Zetian’s family signed her big sister up as a copilot, but were cheated of their expected death-benefit when the pilot, a violent young man, murdered her before she ever even made it into battle. Zetian, enraged and grieving, secretly vows vengeance. She volunteers to become a copilot, intending to murder the pilot who killed her sister. I’m not generally much for revenge plots, but this is not strictly a revenge plot. Once on the inside, Zetian quickly finds and commits to a much greater cause that is the book’s real plot.

Zetian’s initial quest for vengeance and the path it sets her on make for a page-turner of a tale that kept me up well past my bedtime. The way the plot and characters develop put me in mind of Orson Scott Card’s classic, Ender’s Game. This is a well-plotted, well-written, action-heavy novel with some lite, FTB reverse-harem romance. I’ll be watching eagerly for the sequel.

New Book Goodness!

If you’re looking for something new to read, you might want to give one of these a try:

A brand-new MilSF series from author Kevin Ikenberry? Yes please! Steel on Target (The Buzzer War Book 1) is available now for preorder.

More in the mood for atmospheric mystery? Give The Alewife: Curse of Obsession by Jason Graves a try!

Jo Boone Writes

I should have a short story coming out soon in a shared-world anthology; more about that when I know more. I started writing what I thought would be a standalone short story in the Combined Service universe, that I intended to use as a free reader magnet. When I hit 10,000 words on that one, I heaved a deep sigh and acknowledged that, as with my previous attempt at writing a short story to use as a reader magnet, I have failed; I think this story is actually a subplot in Book 4 of the Combined Service. That book has a working title, now: The Information Traders. It is still in the note-card plotting stage.

I write fat, intricately plotted books and I tend to write them slowly. If you’re looking for something of mine to read in the meantime, let me recommend to you a short story I wrote originally under a different pseudonym: “The Waters of Callisto” was published in the anthology Challenge Accepted. All of the stories are science fiction; all of the protagonists in are disabled; and all of the proceeds go to charity. In “The Waters of Callisto,” someone is stealing water—a crime that could hurt everyone. When Amani, a newcomer to the colony, discovers what’s really going on, she must find a way to make things right for the colony as a whole—and for the thieves.

Until next time,

Jo