Reading to learn; 2012's best and "Ghostweight."

I'm not learning enough from just reading; I need to figure out what the authors are doing that is working so well. And perhaps start to use some of those techniques and skills in my own writing. So I'm starting some posts about what I've read this winter and spring. These are mostly for me, especially since I try to take apart what I've read significantly, so it will spoil the books or short stories for anyone who hasn't read them. 

I begin with The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2012, edited by Rich Horton. 

There are nearly 30 stories in the collection. I needed a place to start, so I used a totally subjective criteria;  stories I remembered solely from the title, sorted in order of impact (how long the story stuck with me, how deeply the premise/idea/story affected me). 

This is a combination of how well the title fit with my interpretation of the story (I might eventually remember the story, but the title didn't bring it to mind) and how well the remembered story lived in this reader. 

This initial list is what I'll start with, one story at a time, but I'll probably add to it as I go through remaining eighteen and realize I liked some of them better, just didn't remember them from the title alone. 

• "Ghostweight" by Yoon Ha Lee, originally published in (opi) Clarkesworld, January.
• "Mulberry Boys" by Margo Lanagan, opi Blood and Other Cravings.  
• "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson, opi Asimov's, October-November.  
• "The Adakian Eagle" by Bradley Denton, opi Down These Strange Streets.  
• "The Summer People" by Kelly Link, opi Tin House, Fall; Steampunk!  
• "The Sandal-Bride" by Genevieve Valentine, opi Fantasy, March.  
• "The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland, for a Little While" by Catherynne M. Valente opi Tor.com, July 27. 
• "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu, opi Clarkesworld, April. 
• "The Choice" by Paul McAuley opi Asimov's, February.
• "Choose Your Own Adventure" by Kat Howard, opi Fantasy, April.
• "My Chivalric Fiasco" by George Saunders, opi Harper's, September.  

ADDED:
Other stories from the collection that I want to dissect but whose titles didn't remind me of the story:

• "The Silver Wind" by Nina Allan, opi Interzone, March-April.
• "Rampion" by Alexandra Duncan, opi F&SF, May-June.

 For each story, I want to answer the following questions, some of which focus on areas I'm having difficulty with in my own work:

Why is the story good or why might it have been awarded/bought.

How does author: 

- do character/alien descriptions
- put the reader inside the protagonist's skin
- evoke emotional truth/reader emotion
- depict character emotion
- create mood
- handle EDACE (Eric Witchey's analysis tool, which I'm employing a truncated version of to better understand)

 I began with "Ghostweight," which has really stuck with me. I think it's the strongest story in the collection.

"Ghostweight" by Yoon Ha Lee, originally published in Clarkesworld, January. 

 Why is the story good or why was it awarded/bought.

I remembered this for three reasons; I'd read it some time prior to picking up the collection (this and "The Cartographer Bees.."; immersive world building with fantastical weaponry and universe; and its layered secrets, mood, tone, and evoked emotion haunted me.

 Looking at it again, the language is amazing. (Opening: "It is not true that the dead cannot be folded. Square becomes kite becomes swan; history becomes rumor becomes song.") The card game, the description of the incoming troops, the phrases: In raven arithmetic, no death is enough. ... "...sheathed in metal mined from withered stars." 

POV is omniscient, and that distance works well to show us Lisse is in ways a child, a tool being used by a ghost to effect revenge no matter the cost. And it is hysterical to read in an interview that the author views what needs to go into a short much as a mathematical proof: "include all the necessary axioms and arguments, but leave out the extraneous" in reference to character strengths and motivations and weaknesses, and setting. 

How does author: 

- do character/alien descriptions

She doesn't, with the exception of the other pilot near the end of the story.

Lisse is never described save for "a long, livid line down her arm" and via her actions and statements. She doesn't want to kill those following her; she only wants to kill them; she shakes and dreams of what actually happens. We do not know her age although she is a cadet; so we assume young military age, human, perhaps 18? We don't know.

The ghost is described in a single run-on sentence that give very little physical detail: "It was composed of cinders of color, a cipher of blurred features and it had a voice like entropy and smoke and sudden death." Lisse wonders if it has a scar, so clearly she cannot see it well. Later, "In spite of herself, she flinched from the ghostweight, which had troubled her all her life." 

By contrast, the exterior of the kite has a description, and the interior, the command spindle built for 50, is described via its tapestries and as it becomes needful, its controls. And the weaponry, the war machines are what get the love here: "...when improbable paper shapes began drifting from the sky, foxes and snakes and stormbirds. ... jerengjen unfolded prettily, expanding into artillery with dragon-shaped shadows and sleek four-legged assault robots with wolf-shaped shadows. In the skies, jerengjen unfolded into bombers with kestrel-shaped shadows. ...People rumpled like paper cutouts once their shadows were cut away by the onslaught."

- create mood

Author interspaces the space battles with narration, crucial information  long withheld by a distant narrator: how the ghost came to be attached to Lisse in the first place (the version Lisse was told, anyway) the one candle information. ...

POV is omniscient, dry, as one relating a true horror one witnessed and must explain. The beauty of the weaponry is contrasted with its terrible cost, as Lisse's essentially innocent trust of the ghost is contrasted with the Imperium's mercilessness and then the ghost's betrayal. The combination create a glittering dread, a silk train wreck the reader must see to its conclusion.

- put the reader inside the protagonist's skin

(She doesn't?) It's a different style and it works here, and given the distance and the subject matter and her action.

 Those bits that do help provide us a glimpse into her humanity and help build reader connection to her.  Lisse flinches, her hand spasming from the pain of the ghostweight.  "Had ten seconds passed yet? She couldn't tell, and the clock of her pulse was unreliable. ... Lisse choked back a cry as the kite lofted."  "Lisse called to her parents, laughing. ... She tried to bite one of her fathers when he clamped his hand over her mouth."

"The nightmares started after the sixth... (short description of a plea for mercy, destroyed by her opponent)... when they broke ten million, she plunged out of the command spindle and into the room she had claimed for her own. She pounded the wall until her fists bled. Triumph tasted like salt and venom. It wasn't supposed to be so easy." 

We're not in her skin, but we don't really want to be, do we?

- evoke emotional truth/reader emotion

- depict character emotion

Author spends an entire page conducting the math necessary to tell Lisse how many people she has killed to fly the kite. The distance here is key; giving us all that information slows it down, shows us Lisse is finding it hard to believe, to cope with "...her handprint on her own birthworld. She had only meant to destroy her hunters." 

Later, the Imperium's crime is summed in a sentence: "Approximately one-third of the world's population perished in the weeks that followed. Of the casualty figures, the Imperiuum said, It is regrettable. And after, The stalled negotiations made the consolidation necessary." 

Which buys us some empathy for Lisse, helps create our cold gut dread for her -- they're going to kill her.

EDACE (Eric Witchey's analysis tool; I'm using a very truncated version here, mostly mapping her shifting emotions, because the distant viewpoint makes her precise reactions less important except in the initial and ending scenes).

Wariness, fear, fear of causing harm to others, desire to escape peacefully (thwarted by ship's refusal to respond and tanks), frustration, anger and determination culminating in her sending out an attack she does not understand, tries to fly and succeeds this time, realizes she has murdered thousands by mistake and ignorance. 

(backstory explaining her desire for revenge)

She may be a killer, but she still has to eat. Discomfort at being away from her ghost, surprise at edible food, more wary nerves (the kite lit her exact path -- this helps the reader's edginess, sets us up to ask questions she's not asking). Argues with the ghost over choices, cedes one and wins the second, which requires a riskier approach and much closer sight of the carnage. Finds an escape. Takes it. (sense of growing numbness to horror at her own actions)

(backstory about ghostweight and being raised by a ghost)

Second target: all about the numbers, her victims, the dead. The nightmares begin. (Guilt). Triumph tasted like salt and venom. Argued with ghost about supplies. She had little appetite. Exhausted staying awake running from whoever hunted them.

(backstory about the kites that lends some moral weight to Lisse's revenge)

Overtaken by another kite, Lisse is startled by ghost and then the woman in the other ship. She is hurt, betrayed, by what she learns, that he who has been her constant companion has lied to her. Anger at the woman's stated goal, the further betrayal (the kite's cost). Anger, determination to deal with the imperial forces herself.

(candle backstory)

Fear? Curiosity. Pain. Dull dread and ashen horror. All her efforts to hurt the Imperium, to take revenge, all those millions dead -- all of it has done nothing except prove her value to them as a weapon. 

(coda: beginning repeated, "It is not true that the dead cannot be folded ... Even the act of remembrance creases the truth." with the addition of "But the same can be said of the living.")

No conclusion, which is part of what is haunting about this; we don't know what Lisse's next action is. I can assume (even hope) she kills herself by destroying the kite; others might see the ending differently. It's a conversation piece, one of those stories you poke at like a loose tooth.