Goose girl

Last night I finished Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl, and wow, it’s good. Spun into a novel from the Grimms’ fairy tale of the same name, Goose Girl easily pulled me into its world, coaxing me with a love potion that’s got me head over heels for its characters and its story. This book is so well done. It’s beautifully written, the magic is delightfully plausible, and it perfectly captures the fairy tale feel. I love this book.

And the fact that Shannon is LDS is icing on the cake. Is it just me, or is there a new, rising generation of LDS authors — Hale, Brandon Sanderson, etc. — who all seem to be writing primarily science fiction/fantasy for general audiences? It’s almost as if they’re Orson Scott Card’s literary children, so to speak. Not meaning that they necessarily write like him — just that they’re LDS and do sci-fi/fantasy. (Which does makes perfect sense, at least to me. Card’s got a great essay in Storyteller in Zion which talks about Mormonism and science fiction being intertwined.)

Speaking of Orson Scott Card, I’ve already blocked out Feb. 14-16 for this year’s Life, the Universe & Everything conference, at which both Card and Gail Carson Levine (of Ella Enchanted fame, and no, she’s not LDS) will be present, along with Brandon Sanderson and a dozen or two others. It’ll be good. Geeky, too, but good. ;)

I’d add Stephenie Meyer to that list of LDS authors who have won wide acclaim (not that her books are amazing pieces of literature, but they have definitely been popular). Also the guy who wrote Gateway to Foo (can’t think of his name).

Obert Skye. It’s a pseudonym, obviously. :-)

Speaking of finishing books, I finally finished your copy of Wind in the Willows, so I need to get that back to you :)

Ben, what are the times for this conference? I didn’t find it on the website–but mind you, there were so many links to click on it was a bit overwhelming.

Also my friend Martine Leavitt is a fantasy writer. Keturah and Lord Death her most recent book. She wrote her Marmawell Trilogy under the name Martine Bates. She was Nancy’s laurel advisor back in the day.

Janssen: Ah, yes, I was also thinking of Meyer — I just blanked when it came to writing the post. :)

Katherine: And Skye, too. I wonder what his/her real name is…

Haley: Anytime. :)

Myrna: Their website is admittedly a bit on the hard-to-understand side. :) The times are on the schedule page — it’s basically 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday and Friday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, all upstairs on the third floor of the Wilk. I’ve been meaning to check out Keturah for the past few months, ever since David told me about Martine — I’ll bump it up a few priority notches. :)