Good review from Publishers Weekly:

The Half-Made World Felix Gilman, Tor, $25.99 (480p) ISBN 978-0-7653-2552-5Gilman (Gears of the City) honors the beauty of the frontier while skewering the colonists who despoil it in this vivid wild west–flavored fantasy. At the western edge of the world, time and space behave oddly and monsters roam. Colonizers push west, enslaving the magic-using Hillfolk (a questionable stand-in for human natives) and bringing industry, religion, and war. The violence-loving followers of the Gun are slowly losing to the engine-worshippers of the Line; avoiding the conflict, psychologist Liv Alverhuysen treats and studies those driven mad by the Line’s noise bombs. Then a wily agent of the Gun kidnaps Liv and her patient, the General, whose broken mind holds a secret that can destroy the gods of both forces. Line drudges and machines pursue the trio into the titular unfinished lands. Though the story moves slowly, the lyrical descriptions of the harsh, dramatic, and mystical frontier compel the reader onward. (Oct.)

I will not be at WorldCon in Australia.  This is a huge shame, because I like Australia, or at least the parts of it I’ve been to, and of course in the unlikely event that I win the Campbell it would be nice to be there for it, and it feels lame and a bit rude not to.  But there’s just no way I can make the time this year.

I will be at a thing for the New Atlantic Independent Bookseller’s Association on September 20th in Atlantic City.

I will be doing a reading of some kind at the Steampunk Indie Mart in Brooklyn on October 24.

I will be World Fantasy in Ohio on October 29-31 if at all possible.

I will probably be at Steamcon in Seattle on November 19-21.

Spent all day painting the kitchen, as phase one of a planned move out to Brooklyn.Then I celebrated Ray Bradbury’s birthday by kicking down my neighbors’ door and burning all their books.They didn’t get the joke at first but when I explained it how we all laughed! Though of course I had to arrest them anyway.

Someone reminded me that the time to vote for the Hugos/the Campbell award is nearly up (at the end of this month). And I realized that I never did get round to saying how very nice it is to have been nominated for the Campbell again, and how very grateful I am to everyone who nominated me. When I am God-Tyrant you will all be on the protected list and no harm will come to you.

Probably everyone who can vote has voted by now, but if you can and you haven’t may I urge you to vote for Juliet Ulman in the Best Editor category? She acquired and edited my first two books, she’s great, and it would be nice to see her get the whatever it is, the rocket ship thing, you know the thing. I would like to win myself but do not expect to.

I meant to remark on this a while ago, but didn’t get round to it until now: Mary Robinette Kowal has posted an excerpt of her first book, Shades of Milk And Honey. It’s great and you should read it.

One of a number of things I very much like about it is the opening paragraph:

The Ellsworths of Long Parkmead had the regard of their neighbours in every respect. The Honourable Charles Ellsworth, though a second son, through the generosity of his father had been entrusted with an estate in the neighbourhood of Dorchester. It was well appointed and used only enough glamour to enhance its natural grace, without overlaying so much illusion as to be tasteless. His only regret, for the estate was a fine one, was that it was entailed, and as he had only two daughters, his elder brother’s son stood next in line to inherit it. Knowing that, he took pains to set aside some of his income each annum for the provision of his daughters.

Openings are important and difficult and this is very nicely done indeed - I’m thinking particularly of the way glamour in the third sentence and entail in the fourth play off each other. Both words catch your attention in the same sort of way. You probably have a vague idea of what they might mean, but you don’t know any of the details of how they work or what they do.* Glamour is made up and entailment is real but they’re sort of equally familiar and unfamiliar here - entailment gets a touch of the exotic and otherworldly and glamour gets an overlay of real-world plausibility. Both seem like they’re important to the world on about the same level: a certain amount of low-key fantastic, and the ins-and-outs of inheritance and property law and money. One already gets the sense of interesting friction between the two to come. This is a very elegant way of conveying what the book’s about and what the world’s like in just the first few sentences.**

One of the other things I like about it is that Mary, an American, has been forced to spell “neighbour” with a “u”. This balances the karmic scales for the fact that I have had to Americanize all spellings in The Half-Made World. Such is the great circle of life.

* Unless you are a fairly well-informed historian, or went to law school and paid more attention in Property classes than was really, let’s face it, worth your time.

** Unless I’m wrong and from Chapter Two onwards it turns out to be about a gore-soaked Predator invasion or something. I don’t know, I don’t have a copy.

So clearly the best actually-existing fictional subgenre is the teddy-bear-collecting-themed-murder-mystery. I became aware of these only recently - the cafe near my apartment has half a dozen of them on its bookshelves.

But is the best possible subgenre? I think not. The first person who writes a teddy-bear-collecting-themed-murder-mystery-where-a-hardbitten-sexy-leather-trousered-lady-cop-has-graphic-sex-with-a-werewolf will make a million.

I note that the man who writes these books about teddy bear collecting is an honest-to-god former homicide detective, bomb squad member, and hostage negotiator, and apparently all-round authentic tough guy. Just think how many genre writers would kill for that kind of gritty hyper-macho bio. Imagine what Richard Morgan would give for it! And this man spends that hard-won tough-guy authenticity on teddy bears, because he is so real that he just does not give a shit. Fantastic.