Glossaries for novels

Dear Publishers,

If a novel has a glossary, please give some early indication that there exists a glossary. Put it in the front of the book. Or list it in a table of contents (even if it's the only contents to list). Whether the book is print or digital.

As a rule I don't flip through books, and especially not anywhere near the end, for fear of spoilers. Putting a glossary at the end is only useful if you make it that far, but at that point, there's little point.

I remember reading the whole of A Clockwork Orange when I was 18 without the benefit of knowing there was a glossary at the back — sure, I felt pretty smart for being able to figure out most of the terms, but I wondered how readers who didn't know a Slavic language managed, and then I felt pretty stupid for not having realized there was a glossary at the back. Knowing there's a glossary might make challenging books a tad more accessible.

Two recent examples of books I've read that have glossaries I wish I'd known about:

Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman. (I read this book in hardcover.) Particularly as it's aimed at young adults, readers would benefit from knowing they can refer to a glossary to keep certain dragon and other concepts of this fantasy world straight.

Kino, by Jürgen Fauth. (I read this as an ebook.) German words and phrases are scattered throughout the book and add colour. The meaning of single words is generally clear(ish) from context, but I skipped over several of the longer phrases in faith that my not knowing what they meant wouldn't detract from my understanding of the novel as a whole. I'm pretty sure that's true, but now that I've reached the end, I'm not going to flip back to check my German comprehension.

Hey, if the book is digital, why not link the term directly to its definition?

Thanks,

Sufficiently interesting

In Rachel Hartman's young adult novel Seraphina, dragons feel about us the way we feel about cockroaches...

"All right. Can you think of anything — anything at all — that the cockroaches could do to persuade us that we should let them live?"

The girls exchanged a skeptical look. "Cockroaches can only scuttle horridly and spoil your food," said Millie, hugging herself. She'd had experience, I gathered.

Glisselda, however, was thinking hard, the tip of her tongue protruding from her mouth. "What if they held court or built cathedrals or wrote poetry?"

"Would you let them live?"

"I might. How ugly are they, though, really?"

I grinned. "Too late: you've notice they're interesting. You understand them when they talk. What if you could become one, for short periods of time?"

They writhed with laughter. I felt they'd understood, but I underscored my point: "Our survival depends not on being superior but on being sufficiently interesting."

Seraphina is musically gifted and she has joined the court as music tutor to the Princess Glisselda. Though she is but a year older than Glisselda, as the above exchange shows Seraphina — in part due to her family heritage and the fact that her father is a lawyer — has a worldly wisdom on matters other than music that the princess recognizes as valuable.

The entire kingdom is in the midst of preparations for a grand celebration of the treaty with the neighbouring dragon nation. But as the novel opens, one of the royal family has recently been found murdered — by a dragon, it's suspected. Old animosities resurface, and political tensions are coming to a boil. And Seraphina gets caught up in the intrigues surrounding the prince's death.

It's a richly detailed world, and the characters — Goreddi, dragon, Porphyrian, half-breed, what have you — are very humanly realized. There's something very true about them.

One quibble: while the dragons are calculatingly mathematical and unemotional by nature, the dragon half-breeds seem to be gifted with talents that aren't obviously related to their dragonness. Perhaps it's something rooted in their other half that the dragonness intensifies? This isn't entirely clear to me.

Regardless, the core of the story is about Seraphina coming into her own, coming to terms with her past and the family secrets she uncovers, and learning to accept herself as she is, with all the unique traits that set her apart. She starts off a lonely and somewhat timid and confused girl, but always thoughtful. She grows into a self-assured young woman with a well-developed sense of what's right and just and forms strong bonds with the people who matter.

There is also a romance element that builds gradually and sweetly — I like how it's described in The Book Rat review.

All in all, Seraphina is a compelling story, gracefully written. I look forward to sharing it with my daughter when she's older.

Seraphina

I had the privilege of reading an early incarnation of the novel now to be published as Seraphina, a story about music and (shape-changing!) dragons, family secrets and growing up. The world in which it is set is incredibly rich and complex, and the characters intensely "human." It made me cry, and you can consider that an endorsement.

Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman, will be released on July 10.

I met Rachel online many years ago — she's one of the first bloggers I ever interacted with and one of the smartest, funniest bloggers I know. She created the fabulous comic book Amy Unbounded: Belondweg Blossoming, and it's in part thanks to her encouragement, and the fine example she sets in striking a balance between literary smarts and smart-assery, that I ever made it through Don Quixote, Middlemarch, etc.

I've not yet read the published version of Seraphina (but my copy is on the way). The story has changed considerably since the draft I saw, but it's peopled by the same characters and set in the same world. Rachel has spent years pouring her soul into this work. It can only have gotten better.



Congratulations, Rachel!

Web sites
Rachel Hartman
Seraphina
Short story prequel
Interview