This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will award a randomly drawn winner a copy of the audiobook. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
What is your reading comfort zone?
Science fiction, high fantasy, and often literary fiction
How often do you read out of your comfort zone?
Sometimes. But that usually entails postmodern or experimental literary fiction. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace is a case in point.
Can you read in the car?
I usually do the driving. But I enjoy reading on trains or planes.
What makes you love a book?
I love anything with a unique and captivating voice. But I also like to be challenged to think in new ways and am a sucker for unexpected twists.
What will inspire you to recommend a book?
A book that moved me.
Favorite reading snack?
Chocolate.
Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution is a 2022 novel of speculative fiction by R. F. Kuang.
How often do you agree with critics about a book?
Around 50% of the time.
How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
I tend not to read books that I don’t think I will have something to learn from, or enjoy in some way.
If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you chose?
I can and do read in two foreign languages. But if I were to choose a third it would be the Tuscan dialect of Italian, so that I could read Dante in the original.
The longest I’ve gone without reading.
I don’t remember the last day that I didn’t read something.
Name a book that you could/would not finish.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I go too absorbed by the footnotes….
What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
Ideas for writing.
Favorite film adaptation of a novel?
Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. These three movies do something approaching justice to the majesty of the original.
Most disappointing film adaptation?
The crazy David Linch movie version of Frank Herbert’s Dune.
The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
I’ve lost count of the vast sums I’ve spent on books.
How often do you skim a book before reading it?
Never. I just dive straight in.
What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
If I got too distracted by the footnotes, which became so absorbing they prompted further research—see Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
Do you like to keep your books organized?
I do, by genre, in a vast series of book shelves.
Your favorite fictional hero/heroine/villain/etc.
Ebba Black, the protagonist from my own The Babel Apocalypse: she’d be great a conversational partner on the mysteries of language, how it works and why language is the hallmark of what it means to be human.
She is also a badass: “What sustained the blackness of her sorrow was vengeance. Vengeance past and vengeance yet to be dealt. Ebba nurtured it in the dark palace of her mind—the innermost, most private mental shrine where she kept the one list, the list that was actualized and ritualized. The list of lists.”
But when a massive cyberattack causes a global language outage, catastrophe looms.
Europol detective Emyr Morgan is assigned to the case. Suspect number one is Professor Ebba Black, the last native speaker of language in the automated world, and leader of the Babel cyberterrorist organization. But Emyr soon learns that in a world of corporate power, where those who control language control everything, all is not as it seems. After all, if the mysterious Ebba Black is to blame, why is the Russian Federation being framed for an outage it claims no responsibility for? And why is Ebba now a target for assassination?
As he and Ebba collide, Emyr faces an existential dilemma between loyalty and betrayal, when everything he once believed in is called into question. To prevent the imminent collapse of civilization and a deadly war between the great federations, he must figure out friend from foe—his life depends on it.
And with the odds stacked against him, he must find a way to stop the Babel Apocalypse.
Ebba was all too aware that she was viewed as an anomaly by pretty much everyone; she was neither feral nor out-soc. So, some of her students—especially those from outside the Republic, such as the Grand Union, and other places too—thought she must be breaking the law. It was a common misconception. She had even once been reported to the authorities by one of those types. For being an unchipped ghost, as they called her. That made her laugh; a dark laugh at the irony of it. The mutes, she called them. Those who had been fitted with Universal Grammar tech.
But while she officially resided in the Nordic Republic, and as long as she remained there, Ebba wasn’t doing anything illegal. The Republic was something of a curiosity even among Tier One states, never having passed a lang-law. Yet this singular absence was offset by the special requirements of Nordic birth licenses. To have one granted, prospective parents had to consent to their newborn being fitted with Universal Grammar tech. So everyone got a language chip at birth anyway, together with an ear implant transceiver. Which meant that voice command tech was, for all intents and purposes, de rigueur even without a lang-law. But that was the Scandinavian way. In the Nordic Republic, they organized freedom.
For her part, Ebba knew it wasn’t her. It was everyone else who had the problem. “That’s what you would think,” her braver, typically male students told her. “You’re Ebba Black.” Ha! Whatever that means. How do they know what Ebba Black would think anyway?
Book website (including ‘Buy’ links):http://www.songs-of-the-sage.com
Author website: https://www.vyvevans.net/
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@vyvevans
Twitter: https://twitter.com/VyvEvans
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Vyvyan.Evans.Author
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ReplyDeleteThis one sounds super good and I love the cover too.
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