Hello and a very warm welcome to Engineered Unicorns episode 4.
This is the June 2020 episode and as I'm recording this, it's Plague
Day Tuesday because of the recent protests in the United States of
America and the protests against police violence.
So I decided to switch the format up a bit, which means today I will
not only give you normal recommendations just for books that are
interesting or that will be released, but I also had a look through my
reading list and found the books by Plague Authors and I will give you
some hints as to what authors you could read, which I liked and which
colleagues of mine liked.
So they aren't always in the fantasy genre, they are also contemporary
or romance, but nevertheless they are by Plague Authors and very
interesting and really well written, so they are definitely worth a
read in my opinion.
I also will give you some recommendations for LGBTQ plus books.
For one thing it will be by authors who identify by these letters or
as different from cisgender or from heterosexual.
And I will also give you some recommendations for books that have gay
characters, gay main characters and that are fun and enjoyable to read
and where the gay character doesn't have an ill fate at the end
because quite often if you watch Hollywood movies, gay characters are
either the nice sidekick or if they are the main character they often
have a not so nice end.
So I will make an effort to give you some book lists and book recs
that are positive.
So May 2020 wasn't much better than the other months before.
I don't know what it is with this year, but it seems it's getting
progressively worse.
Reading wise May was quite good for me.
I read 6 books and about 1800 pages.
One of the books that I finished was Jennifer Strange and Mr. Norrell.
Hi there, quick update.
It's Saturday the 9th I think.
8th?
9th?
Whatever.
I just finished Jennifer Strange and Mr. Norrell yesterday evening and
it was quite interesting the ending.
And I gave it 4.5 stars.
A very solid 4.5.
The half one you just don't grade it from 5 stars because women don't
matter much in this story while they in the end try to get a
rebellious strange out.
The women don't do anything themselves and that's just not right in my
opinion.
I mean it is written as if it's part of this time where it plays out,
but it's nevertheless written by an author from today and a feeble
author, so I don't think it's alright to just focus on the men and
their actions.
And I just realized at the end that Susanna Clarke talked much more
about the inner thoughts and reasons behind Stephen Black, which is a
servant, which you think that he is not a main character like Mr.
Norrell or Jennifer Strange, but turns out Stephen Black is quite
important.
And at the end there's in the last two hours of the book, I don't know
which pages, it happens quite a lot.
One of the fun things that happens is that Mr. Norrell doesn't find
his own library because he had it magically hidden away.
There's a labyrinth around it and normally you don't find it if you're
a normal person.
And because Mr. Strange shifted it around, even Mr. Norrell couldn't
find his own library, which was quite funny.
And then there's another story happening with the Fairy Lord, which is
also on the one hand very funny, on the other hand it's quite bad,
what he does.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was 900 pages.
I still highly recommend it, but I hope that Susanna Clarke talks more
about women and their actions in future books.
There's one coming out in September, which is called Piranesi, which
I'm looking forward to.
So much for that book.
I'm still reading Defy or Defend by J.
G.
Carriger, which is just fabulous.
I absolutely love it.
And I just started My Lady Jane by an author trio.
And it's quite funny.
It's also historical fiction.
And it's also magical.
And they took part of the English history and rewritten it how they
liked and how they would have liked it to happen, and switched out
names because they didn't like them.
So it's a very self-aware book.
And this makes it a lot more funny.
It's quite enjoyable, in my opinion.
I'm reading it as an audiobook.
You can't have it, at least currently, it's not available via the
public library system in Karlsruhe.
But I'm pretty sure it's available elsewhere as a library book,
because it's not the newest one.
It's part of a trilogy, and it's quite funny.
So if you like historical fiction that is magically enhanced, and it's
alternate, so it's alternate history, then this is really the thing
for you, I think.
And so far, I'm about to nab her in.
And it's really funny.
I mean, they have shifters, so it's actually a shifter romance, which
is funny enough.
And then they also had Henry VIII, which is just part of the
backstory.
And Henry VIII, if you don't know him, he was the king who had, I
think, eight wives.
And there was this... the last one, the last wife outlived him.
And the narrator and the authors were like, HA!
I highly recommend it, even though I'm only about 7% in.
So it's definitely worth a read, especially in times like this.
I hope you are alright, and see you soon!
And I started several other books.
One was the mentioned My Lady Jane.
And I'm currently reading quite a lot of different books.
There's a book about linguistics, which I read for work.
There's a book about what's happening in the world by a German author.
So it won't be further talked about in this episode and in this
podcast, because there's enough German language podcasts out there.
And I don't need to add to this.
And I am also reading some Romans.
I'm also reading some fantasy.
So currently I think I have about seven books that I'm reading,
depending on the hour of the day and my current mood.
Funnily enough, I'm also reading Red, White and Royal Blue.
And this is a Romans book.
It's a gay Romans book and contemporary.
And it's Romans between the Prince of Wales and the first son of the
female president of the United States.
It's a fictional book and it supposes that not the president that the
USA have now, but instead they have a female president, Clermont, as
she's called.
And her son is falling in love with the Prince of Wales, which is also
a fictional character, actually.
And it's quite lovely.
And fun thing is, there are still some representatives that are actual
characters.
And in this book, they are mentioned.
And yeah, I think the author is definitely a Democrat and not happy
with what is going down outside there.
And so it was published last year.
It was a really big thing.
And it is sometimes a bit too much in the current environment,
especially with the protests and what's happening out there.
But nevertheless, I quite like it so far.
So let's get back to the real stuff.
I do have, again, a fantasy book to recommend to you.
And I do have a nonfiction book to recommend to you.
And the fictional book is Defy or Defend by Gail Carriger.
And the nonfiction book is The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli.
Gail Carriger is my favorite author for fiction and fantasy books.
She has quite a lot of humorous books out.
And Defy or Defend was just released in May, on May 3rd.
And I read it in 4 days.
It's a short novel.
And it's based in her Parasol universe.
And you can read it as a standalone, but I would recommend it to have
read her Parasol Protectorate series and the Finishing School series.
Because the main character, Dimitri, is actually a character which we
first meet in the Finishing School series.
It's all based in a universe that is close to Ares, but it's not the
same.
So it's in Victorian times.
Dimitri is a spy.
She saves a vampire hive.
So we also have vampires and werewolves.
And while they don't like each other, they do live together in
relative harmony, at least in Great Britain.
And they aren't as accepted around the world.
But Great Britain has let them become a part of the society.
It's quite an elaborate universe.
And the werewolves and the vampires are part of the high society.
Especially the vampires are lords and ladies and they are well
regarded.
And the werewolves are more like the soldiers of Great Britain.
So they tend to be part of the Royal Army.
Dimitri is a spy.
And she was a main side character in the Finishing School series.
And the Finishing School was a school for ladies.
But this school was floating a bit the British landscape.
And the young ladies were trained to be spies.
It's quite a fun series.
So I highly recommend it.
Especially as these books are exploring class and gender.
And gay characters tend to be very self sufficient.
The women are definitely protagonists and they do make their own
decisions and are willful in a positive sense.
And I quite like them.
You can easily understand them, where they come from.
At least I can easily understand them and their behavior.
Dimitri is a character I didn't really bond with in the Finishing
School series.
I like her quite well in this novel.
And I quite like her love interest, Crispin.
And the vampires are also very, very funny.
And it's also funny to see the problems that the Vampire Queen has and
how they play out.
They are quite understandable from a female point of view.
With all gay characters books you have very strong female characters.
You also have LGBTQ characters who hold their own and which are
definitely a part of this series.
So it's also good to read this month as June is Pride Month.
Which is why I also recommend all of her books if you like stories in
that kind of vein and which are whimsical and good natured and where
in the end everything works out.
Except for the bad guys.
And the bad guys are not just one dimensional.
You don't go in there and woo the vampires or the bad guys or woo the
ghouls or whatever.
I don't think even she has ghouls in it.
Anyway, you don't have one dimensional bad characters.
You have always good characters or good people with the vampires.
One of the main characters, well not in this, it's not a main
character in this novel, but in this universe there's a main character
which is called Lord Akkeldama.
And he's so funny.
And he's a vampire and he's really old.
And it's always fun to see him and to have him make an appearance in
one of her novels or in her novellas.
So you have bad vampires definitely.
There are also bad werewolves.
There are bad humans.
As a matter of fact in this novel there's a bad human.
So all her characters tend to have depth and her novels are definitely
worth a read.
And she's one of my auto-buy offers, which means whenever she puts
something else I will get it and read it.
And yeah, I definitely recommend her books in whatever order you want
to read or you go to her website.
There you can also find a list of her books and in what order they are
intended to be read.
The first series you should start with is the Parasol Protectorate.
And then the Finishing School books.
Then the novellas, which is Defy or Defend and Poison or Protect is
the other one.
And then she has a Gay Shifter Romance series, which she publishes
under her pen name, which are the St. Andreas Shifters.
It's a really good series if you ask me.
They are quite fun.
So if you want to read a Gay Shifter Romance or something like this in
June, because it's Gay Pride Month, then definitely check those books
out.
The second book I want to recommend to you is a non-fiction book,
which is called The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli.
Carlo Rovelli is a physicist and he is Italian.
And a few years back he wrote a book, Seven Short Lectures on Physics.
And I do have the German edition and you can get the German edition
also in Karlsruhe's libraries.
But what I'm recommending to you today is The Order of Time by him.
And you can get it at the American library in Karlsruhe.
And it's a short book.
You only have 182 pages.
And it's mostly free of any equations, because I don't like equations
either.
I do like non-fiction books on physics or even mathematics, but I
don't like to get into the nitty-gritty of mathematical equations or
stuff like this.
So you will be spared those things in his books.
And he is also a writer who is quite poetic.
As a matter of fact, one John Benville by the Irish Times said,
physics has found its poet.
And it's definitely very poetic.
It's very nicely written.
And as a matter of fact, he starts out with this sentence, which I
find quite interesting and quite astonishing.
Let's begin with a simple fact.
Time passes faster in the mountains than it does at sea level.
The reason that he gives for that is actually that time is stretched
thin in the mountains in quite a real sense.
Because what he says is that time, or not he, but actually it was
Albert Einstein which came up with this, is that time doesn't exist in
itself.
It's spacetime that we're looking at.
And spacetime, or physics found out, is bendable.
And if you have more mass, then you actually bend spacetime, which
leads to gravitational pull and stuff like this.
So the fact is that when you get into the mountains, you have the
fabric of the universe as spread thin, which means you have literally
less time up there, which is why you have this thing that time passes
faster in the mountains than it does at sea level.
I hope I just did not make it completely weird.
So it's sometimes quite hard to follow.
He actually warns before those two chapters that now it gets down into
the nitty gritty and it's quite hard to follow.
And in the end he puts it all together nice and neat, or nice and neat
as far as you can do.
Because a lot of it is still theory and it's not proven.
It's the relativity theory by Einstein, which is proven quite well,
but it's still considered a theory.
So time is still quite mind-bending subject.
And so I definitely recommend it.
It's only 182 pages, but I also needed several days to read it.
It's definitely not a book that you just can push through in a day and
take everything with you.
You need to think it through.
At least it was that way for me.
So definitely worth a read.
And same goes for his other book.
Both books are available.
It's The Breeze in Karlsruhe.
And you can get it at the American Library.
And it's a fictional novel and romance.
And you would put it probably in the young adult age range.
So If It Makes You Happy is quite a nice book.
I really liked it.
And it was really interesting because it was a coming-of-age story.
And we follow the main female character and how she experiences her
summer at her grandma's.
And I recommend it.
Another book that I just recently read and which was also published
last year is Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert.
And Talia Hibbert is a UK-based author.
Get a Life, Chloe Brown is a romance novel.
And what I liked about it is that you get not only the day-to-day life
experience by black female, but you also get to follow female
character, main character, who isn't just your happy-go-lucky or
something like this.
She does have an underlying health issue and so does her love
interest.
And they do both have to overcome those issues.
And since it's romance, you know what happens.
And I quite like it.
And another author which is black and which is actually writing in the
genre that this podcast is most interested in is N.K.
Jemisin.
And she has published just recently another new book.
But I haven't read it and my colleague Lisa hasn't read it.
But Lisa has read the Broken Earth trilogy and she highly recommends
it.
So those are definitely books that we recommend here.
And you will find also in the blog post at the website of Campus Radio
a list of fantasy books by black authors or better a link to a list
which is provided on Goodreads and which goes by year.
As a matter of fact, today several books by black authors are
published and you can look into them at Goodreads.
And another list that is provided by Book Riot.
It's best LGBTQ fantasy books.
So the link will be up on the Campus Radio webpage too.
And now I will give you book recommendations by LGBTQ plus authors
that I read or that I have on my TBR.
One of my favorite authors that I have read is T.J.
Klune.
And he has read, yeah, he has read naturally a lot.
But he has just also published a new book and which I'm still reading.
And one of my favorite books and which also is fully fantasy and which
I should definitely talk about in a special episode is The Lightning
Struck Heart which is a gay romance and fantasy book.
It was published in 2015 and it's quite hilarious.
And actually in this book he has a side character which is a unicorn
which is gay which has then eventually a relationship with a gay
dragon.
So that's quite funny if you ask me.
And I more or less gave this podcast this name Engineered Unicorns
because I was thinking about this unicorn when I created this podcast.
So just so you know, this is one of the books that was the reason for
this name.
And another author that I haven't tried out but that was recommended
to me by Bria and Mallory by the Reading Glasses podcast which is also
a podcast that I highly recommend and that I listen to every Thursday
because then the new episode drops.
The author is Charlie Jane Enders and The City in the Middle of the
Night is a science fiction book which was published just two or three
months ago.
I bought it right before we went into lockdown.
It's called The City in the Middle of the Night.
I haven't read it so far but I really want to read it.
She has written quite a lot more and she is a trans author.
And as I've said before, there will be a link to her queer fantasy
book list on the webpage.
So last but not least I want to give a shout out to another podcast
that I quite like which is called Breaking the Glass Slipper.
Women in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror.
And this podcast which is completely just spoken, it's discussions on
different topics and they have also quite interesting episodes on
African authors and how these authors and these stories aren't so well
known.
And personally I will also look into having more African authors in my
TBR that I read because when I looked into it today to find those
authors I already knew two of those authors because I don't have so
often black authors in my line up.
Which is not that I don't want to read them.
You don't have so many books out there by them or they aren't stocked
that often in the book stores.
So you definitely have to look out for them.
So last but not least I wanted to give you a heads up for the books
that will be published this month.
Let's start again, or mention again, Christelle LaBose, Im Sturm der
Echos, the fourth book of the Mirror Visitor series.
I initially thought or initially it was planned to be released in May
but turns out they weren't fast enough with the translation from
French to German and so they had to push back the publishing date.
I'm sorry that I said last month that it would be released in May,
which was the original one.
So they will probably publish it around June 22nd, hopefully, if
everything goes to plan.
And another book that will be released just one day later, probably,
is Talia Hibbert's Take a Hint, Danny Brown.
So this is the second book from this series, which is the Black Orphan
that I just mentioned from Get a Life, Chloe Brown.
And I'm quite looking forward to the second book because I like her
writing.
And another book that will be released today, June 2nd, is Bethany C.
Morrow's A Song Below Water.
It's also a fantasy book, so you might want to look into it.
Maybe it is something for you.
I'm not sure if it is my cup of tea.
But anyway, you might have a completely different point of view
regarding those books.
So those are the books that I find interesting that are going to be
published in June 2020.
The next episode will come out in July.
It will be on Sunday, the 5th of July.
And hopefully June will be a bit better.
But with 2020, all bets are off.
I just don't know what to say anymore to this year.
It's crazy.
So everyone stay safe and hopefully have a nice June.
This was the 4th episode of Engineered Unicorns.
My name is Sandy Eschke.
Music, as always, by Erwin Schmidt.
Hear you soon!