(Charlie here. The season of guest bloggers continues with Aliette de Bodard, an incredibly talented writer, who I unaccountably forgot to introduce at the same time as Fran Wilde.)
Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a System Engineer. She studied Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, but moonlights as a writer of speculative fiction. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Obsidian and Blood trilogy of Aztec noir fantasies, as well as numerous short stories, which garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and a British Science Fiction Association Award. Recent/forthcoming works include The House of Shattered Wings (August), a novel set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, and The Citadel of Weeping Pearls(October), a novella set in the same universe as her Vietnamese space opera On a Red Station Drifting. She lives in Paris with her family, in a flat with more computers than warm bodies, and a set of Lovecraftian tentacled plants intent on taking over the place.
Hi, and welcome Aliette! Pardon me if I squee, but I considered Obsidian and Blood one of the most impressive fantasy sequences I've read in recent years. Your protagonist there is one of the most alien characters I've ever read, and yet simultaneously completely understandable. Were I a writer myself, I think I'd be studying your technique closely.
Unfortunately Obsidian and Blood is not available outside US and UK:
AngryRobot says they don't sell it any more, details on Aliette's web page. Aliette's webpage sends me to a 404 page on AngryRobot's site...
Bellingham @1: waves Aw thank you! Very flattered that it worked for you. I have no idea how I pulled it off :) Andreas @2: arg, awfully sorry about that. The rights to O&B reverted to me end of June, and I've been meaning to put them out as ebooks (except that I never got around to doing it. Adding to to-do pile...). I'll fix the website in the meantime...
Echoing what Bellinghman said: Yay! I really enjoyed the first O&B book, and look forward to the rest, though will likely read the new novel first. Hmm, I may just have to binge read them, haven't done that with a single author in a while. Also, I hope a publisher has the sense to collect the Xuya stories.
Hey Aliette! Just finished Servant of the Underworld a couple of weeks ago (on audiobook) and enjoyed it immensely.
I'm about to visit Paris later this month and I was thinking of picking up House of Shattered Wings as I love reading novels while I'm visiting the locations they're set in. I might go out of my way to visit a place or street mentioned in a book (I paired last year's Worldcon with The Rhesus Chart and Rowling's The Silkworm). So I was wondering, What Paris locations would you recommend I visit to enhance my reading experience?
Hey Michael@5: thank you so much, glad you've enjoyed it! The House of Shattered Wings has a lot of places, depends where you want to roam: Notre-Dame is the obvious one, followed by a walk around Ile de la Cité (Hotel-Dieu, Prefécture, Tribunal de Commerce, all of these being, I think, only visible from the outside). Also have a look at: Petit-Pont, Pont-au-Change, Pont de l'Archeveché (if you can, walk from the back of Notre-Dame to Pont de l'Archevêché, in the footsteps of a character at a crucial juncture in the book), Pont and Fontaine Saint Michel. The defunct House of Aiguillon, mentioned in the book, was in the Sorbonne; the defunct House of Draken near Place de la Republique (and a number of background characters are buried in the streets around the Place). The novel opens in the ruins of the Grands Magasins, and more particularly Galeries Lafayette (visit the place for shopping, stay for the dome and Belle Epoque architecture). Saint-Lazare station, nearby, served as a major inspiration for the design of magical faction House Lazarus. If you can go out of the way, I'd recommend visiting Auteuil, which is mostly not a tourist place, but is the real-world location of House Hawthorn. Orphelins d'Auteuil and Eglise d'Auteuil, in particular.
JamesPadraicR@4: aw thank you! Xuya stories will hopefully be collected at some point, but right now I'm focusing on House of Shattered Wings #2 (and project snakelet, which is a time drain in and of itself...).
Go to bookdepository.com, they have the book. Delivers anywhere, no shipping costs.
There's also Powell's if that's more your taste.