My Favorite Small Press Books
I believe the editors at the six big New York publishing houses have erudite literary tastes. I'm sure they value diverse viewpoints and they probably enjoy the singular novel with a quirky plot—just as we all do.
But I also know large publishers operate on slim margins. Everyone's got bills—a house note, car note, kids to support—and the lights in those tall buildings don't stay lit with magic fairy dust.
The reality of capitalism is that money lubricates the gears of the printing press. Filthy lucre runs the publishing industry and any author who can't sell a hundred thousand copies is persona non grata. Thus bookstores are filled with commercial fiction that pleases the masses. Too bad for me—I'm not a fan of angsty vampires and Twilight makes me barf.
Small presses serve niche readers like myself. To a small press, a sale of ten thousand books is success, not failure. The small press makes a profit and readers enjoy books that are quirky and original. This is the upside.
The downside is that small press manuscripts don't go through as many editing filters as at the big publishing houses. Many small press books could use a critical eye to point out basic writing flaws like the overuse of adverbs or unnecessary dialog.
But without the small press, we readers would be resigned to clones of the top ten best-sellers.
So in the spirit of supporting small press, here are my favorite small press novels, in order of my preference:
- When Fox is a Thousand, by Larissa Lai, published by Press Gang.
A mythical Chinese spirit seeks relevance in the modern world. A modern Chinese woman seeks meaning in her heritage, and the mystery of a poet's tragic death is examined. Lai's storytelling had me riveted from the first page. The antics of the fox just killed me! The conclusion to the first tale says it all: Is it my fault if she ran off with the concubine? - Lady Knight, by L-J Baker, published by Bold Strokes.
A woman warrior refuses to either pass as a man or submit to one, in a time when women were the property of their closest male relative. The background of this book is so meticulous and the plot so solid I was transported to 1250 AD. Romantic and exciting, it has all the elements of fantasy that I love. - Water Logic, by Laurie J. Marks, published by Small Beer Press.
This is the third in Mark's Elemental Logic series. The first two were published by Tor. I thought Water Logic was every bit as thoughtful and entertaining as Fire Logic and Earth Logic. I look forward to Air Logic, the next installment. - The Amazon Chronicles, by Jane M. Robinson, published by Clothespin Fever Press.
This is an awesome tale of female warriors in the Greek heroic tradition. The majority of Greek mythology is male oriented. That's not a bad thing, especially as so much is homoerotic, but Robinson fully imagines the Amazons and makes them seem real as the Spartans. - Dangerous Space by Kelly Eskridge, published by Aqueduct Press.
I enjoyed most of this short fiction collection. There were a number of fun twists—in several of the stories the gender of the protagonist was left to the reader's imagination. I read "Eye of the Storm" (my favorite story) twice, imagining the protagonist first as male, then as female. It didn't change the story at all.
© MonkeyCMonkeyDo | GLBT Fantasy Fiction Resources | 2010
