Explain

Amazon has a spot on Author Central where I can post a review of my own book. Here is what I wrote:

Anzu was not written by a fifteen year old. It is not YA, although I will be disappointed if young readers don’t take to it. All the same, Anzu is not “Johnny had a gleam in his eye as he strode confidently to his rocket ship”.

This is a book for a reader who enjoys discovery, who likes to think, who wants to be surprised, who relishes ‘aha’ moments and turns back a few chapters to see when he or she should already have figured out the thing just discovered.

An agent asked me what the book is about, and then groused because I couldn’t answer in one sentence. Again, Anzu isn’t that kind of book. For some readers, it will be about a race that believes it is dying. Others might ruminate about the intractable differences that keep cultures apart, or the futility of war, or the efficacy of war. I hesitate to say the book has something for everyone, but there is a lot of material to think about.

More than one person has complained that they couldn’t relate to people with funny sounding names. May I observe that Anzu takes place on another planet? Nobody named Tim or Bob here, ma’am. The names are Sanskrit, so perhaps South Asians will like the book better than Westerners. I can live with that, but I hope it doesn’t turn out that way.