recent reads & upcoming writes

[kaigou]

To those of you who responded on the themes, I'll be adding you. thejennabides and I are going to start tomorrow, and do two a week each. No critiques or comments are really necessary, but they are appreciated. These are mostly going to be snippets, so not really chronological, though I'll try to give some kind of context if I see the scene/bit as happening within the overall stories' flow.

So tired, braindead this week, not sleeping enough, reading too much, hiding from everything mostly, so I apologize for not being that talky on LJ and never around on AIM and barely responding when I'm on either. Just pretty much in that omg-thirty-days-omg-omg mode, the last desperate leg of this project before we settle down to the one-year phase. Sigh.

Been awhile since I've done any reviews, so here goes.

Heroics for Beginners, John Moore. It's everything Piers Anthony wished he could be -- witty, entertaining, but without those stupid, grade-two puns. The non-hero (or wannabe hero), Prince Kevin Timberline, is in the neighboring kingdom of Deserae attempting to win the hand of Princess Rebecca (along with a crowd of equally hopeful suitors). And there's a bad guy, Lord Voltmeter, who has a thing about pronouns and is therefore known as He-Who-Must-Be-Named. I could describe, or I could let Moore explain it himself, like in this scene where Princess Rebecca's father tells Kevin about the horrible crime committed by the evil overlord, Lord Voltmeter.

"Unfortunately [said the King], Voltmeter stole the Ancient Artifact. Not him personally, of course. No doubt some highly professional thieves stole it for him. I won't go into the details, but it was spirited right from under our noses and out of the castle."

"Was it insured?"

"Yes, but we still have to pay the deductible. Anyway, the money isn't the problem. The problem is that the Ancient Artifact is a source of tremendous power." The King handed Kevin a small booklet. "Here, take a look at the owner's manual. See what I mean?"

Kevin flipped through the booklet. It was full of numbers and cryptic abbreviations. With warning messages. Lots of warning messages. He couldn't follow any of it except the title. "Ancient Artifact Model Seven," he read aloud.

"The most powerful there is. Hot stuff, they told me. The latest model."

"I thought it was an ancient artifact."

"It is. Practically brand-new, too."

To cover his confusion, Kevin read from the booklet again. "Clean your Ancient Artifact with soap and water, then polish with a soft cloth. Do not use ammonia-based cleaners."

"Dulls the finish," said the King.

It's a good ride, a quick read, and I don't think there's a fantasy trope that didn't get skewered.

Nine Layers of Sky, Liz Williams. This one's science fiction (with some fantasy thrown in) and much harder to explain. Elena Irinova is a former Soviet scientist, now cleaning offices at night and trying to keep her sister and mother fed and healthy, when she meets Ilya Muromyets, an eight-hundred year old myth...and a recovering heroin addict. And the bad guys are russalka, but who's bad and who's good isn't that clear, and the strange black marble Elena finds isn't entirely what it seems, either, and the KGB may be gone but the bleak despair of the end of the glorious Soviet dream remains, and so do the secret police -- in this world, and in the mirror-world.

Dreams are reality, or someone else's -- or another world's -- reality, and vice versa, and for once, the hero/ine of the fantasy work is a scientist, and thinks like one, and dreams like one, and that made the real difference as the story came to a close. Very hard to describe, but it caught me far better than Moore's lighter fluff (not that I dislike fluff, but Williams' book was more powerful by far).

The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers. The only other Powers book I've read is Drawing of the Dark, which I enjoyed immensely and have reread several times, but I'm not sure if I'll reread this one, though I might just to have the ahead-of-time comprehension. Basically, mild-mannered professor Brendan Doyle is invited to England by a wacked billionaire who's got everything but his health -- including a theory on time travel. Doyle's to provide the academic flavor for a strange event over a hundred years in the past; Doyle himself is working on a text about a man named William Ashbless -- oh, and there's the rash of ape-attacks on London around the 1820s, and Coleridge, and London's east end, and an Egyptian sorcerer, and boy does time loop around and come back to bite you on the ass, with all sorts of wonderful discoveries that at first were just odd but then you find out what's going on, and it's delightful.

Strange, intense reading, though there's a chapter or two near the end that left me unsatisfied and suspecting Powers had wanted to explore further on one theme but got reeled in by his editor or agent, and had to cut that part quite short. It just feels rushed to some degree, and incomplete, like having the author say, "and then a lot of things happened that were really cool, and I'll just sum it up here." But after a chapter or two, he got back into the swing, and it was okay, though it never really lost that "whoops, must hurry up and finish" hint around the edges. For all that, though, good read.

Amnesia Moon, Jonathan Lethem. I'd read Lethem's Gun with Occassional Music last month, and thought I'd try another, but I don't think I'll read him again. Granted, his writing style is elliptical and yet sharply concrete, and his notions are big enough for a larger story even when he tries to scale the story back, and the notion of an apocalypse in which no one really knows what happened is intriguing, and a world in which dreams really can change life as we know it... Hrm, maybe I can find one of the passages I particularly liked. This part's from a scene in which Kellogg -- ostensibly Chaos' opposition -- tries to convince the protag, Chaos, not to leave the middle-of-nowhere town called Little America.

Kellogg came pounding through the sand behind [Chaos], breathing hard. He grabbed Chaos' shoulder. "You're missing vital information, sport. Geez, slow down. What I've--what we've been doing here, together, it can't just fall apart like this. the dreams are nothing, just an embellishment. You could do it too, if you tried, but that doesn't even matter. The dreams aren't the point. You're a player in what happens around here, a player in what happened in the first place. You can't just go. It'll all fall apart without you."

Chaos stopped and turned. "You're saying this is something that should be kept from falling apart? Something that didn't already fall apart a long time ago? Get to the point, Kellog. If you have one."

"Listen." He poked Chaos' chest. "The bombs never fell. That's all bullshit, something you and I cooked up between us to explain this mess. Something else happened, something more complicated. You get that? The bombs never fell."

Lethem's vaguely reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, and I do enjoy his writing style, but his inability to give even the remotest resolution at the end really grates on me. I'm not asking for the world and sunsets here, folks, just some kind of hint of a resolution, instead of having the screen cut to black just before the final showdown. Whedon could manage it -- once -- and I let Lethem do it to me in the first book by him I read. But getting it again just annoyed me. Unfortunate.

Melusine, Sarah Monette. I wasn't really sure what I was getting into with this one, but it sounded intriguing. It had some major issues in the first part, though, when there are two stories that must come together (and do, with some satisfaction) later on. But the first half of the story, Felix Harrowgate's horrific downfall and torment from skilled wizard to crazy man is on a completely separate path from Mildmay the Fox's quieter and slower downfall goes from single cat burglar to in-love cat burglar to ditched...not much of anything by then.

A lot of the opening parts with Mildmay were interesting while reading because I found Mildmay himself to be interesting, although at times I could see no way the two stories intertwined and I started to get annoyed; in hindsight, once Felix and Mildmay do meet up, I felt even more annoyed: had I read through the first half of the thick book with Mildmay's part being mostly filler? That's what it felt like.

Warning, the story has cussing (thank you, Mildmay), but it also has some intense violence of the emotionally and physically scarring (on the character) kind, including rape. Not light bedtime reading, though I never felt like any violence was out of character or gratuitous. It all had purpose, but doesn't mean it's for everyone.

Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner. I'll be frank: I wasn't that impressed with Swordspoint. I thought the style just this side of bad fic -- too much fear on the author's part of using character names, it seemed, and every scene seemed thus to be occupied by quadruple the characters speaking: is it the Duke? the blond? the tall man? Charles? or what, pick a damn name, author! -- and the relationship between Richard the swordsman and Alec the penniless student to be twisted and melodramatic, much like the character of Alec himself. I couldn't see what in the hell Richard saw in Alec, not with those hysterics and paranoia and whatever else.

Privilege of the Sword takes place, if I had to guess, maybe ten or fifteen years later? I'm not entirely certain. Maybe a little less. Alec has inherited the family's ducal titles and estates, and offers money to his now-penniless sister if Alec can have his neice, Katherine, for six months. Upon her arrival, she's dressed like a boy and set to learning to swordfight. Her movement from joy at the thought of Society balls to the first glimmerings of interest in fighting are honest, well-paced, and nicely written. (And none of those overbearing every other description can't be a name crap, either.) It's no surprise, either, that her first interest in fighting isn't because she's thinking of fighting, but because of a book, a romance, in which the hero is a swordsman. Romantic notions do it to most adolescent girls, but Katherine's soon disabused of a lot of them, almost all, by story's end.

Kushner's also grown with some grace as an author, given Alec's a rather unsympathetic character, the kind of person who's only entertaining if it's not you he's interacting with. I think some readers like those characters out of some kind of vicarious joy: he's saying what we wish we could. Or something. I find Alec too clever for his own good, and a bore at worst. But here, he begins that way -- no surprise, given Katherine's bewildering reaction to the details of her agreement -- yet as the story wears on, as Katherine becomes more sympathetic to him, more understanding of him on some deeper level, he in turn becomes a more sympathetic and human character. It's not him that changes, just our perception, thanks to seeing him through Katherine's eyes.

And this story is also more satisfying on another level, in that the crux of Alec wanting his neice to fight is because if she can, she won't need someone else to do it for her, and must never, then, feel herself beholden to hope for another's intervention. She'll get up and fight her own fights, which eventually Katherine does, and successfully. For those of you wondering, St Veir does show up, and Alec is just as whacked in the head with him, so not all the melodrama is out of the author's system, but it's not nearly as over-the-top as the first book. Thankfully.

Rain Storm, Barry Eisler. Another John Rain story, this one taking place in Macau. A bit tighter than the second book in the series (I've not read the first, and see no reason, since book two was rife with spoilers), a little less Japan-political and more US-world-power political, but John remains an intriging character, with a subtle and sharp approach to problem-solving, so to speak. Inventive, shall we say. A fast read, good page-turner.

On the downside: a bit too hung up on the details: I wish someone would point out to Eisler that just because some doctor or martial artist explains the move step-by-step doesn't mean he must in turn bore us with the details. I've found the retreat of an author into exacting fight details occurs most when the author doesn't have the skill to sum it up and paint in broader pictures -- so we get every detail about every elbow, finger, kneecap and hip. Thanks, buddy. That's also why I wasn't surprised that the author must also make sure we hear plenty of gun lingo while Rain and his old warbuddy discuss sniper rifles and various other implements.

Eisler knows these facts, and boy, you're gonna know them, too. He should take some notes from Kushner, who handled swordfighting well enough that I got the impression Katherine learns the art relatively well, but it was never hammered into my head exactly every bloomin' move -- she could write well enough I could picture it for myself, and fill in the blanks. Eisler's still working on that, or maybe his readers don't want to be bothered to fill in the blanks. I suppose the latter is just as likely.

Dragon's Eye, James Hetley. Maine isn't exactly where I'd expect the average urban fantasy, and I'm not normally big on "our family's been here since forever," let alone on the "our family's in with the Indians and/or are Indians", let alone the old Madog connection to Wales, but whatever. The characters were quirky and imperfect enough that I got into the story, rolling right along: Dan Morgan's been kidnapped while trying to figure out what his neighbors the Pratts are up to. Seems the Pratts have invited some South American brujo to deal drugs with them, but then, the Morgans are longtime professional thieves, so it's not like smuggling's the issue. It's inviting outsiders in. (Now there's logic.)

The third corner of the dynamic in the small Maine coastal town is the Haskell family, a collection of women who live/own/manage the Women's House and its mysterious spring. Ignoring the minor annoyance of why does the Morgans' guardian dragon only talk to men, I found it equally annoying that the Haskell women (while feared and not to be crossed) are in control of the Magical Wonderful Spring, oh please, stop with this nurturing bs. At least -- a surprise to me, since the book's backflap makes no hint of it -- the non-romance romance is both adult, choppy, not entirely there, and yet is the hinge for the story. A nice change.

Until the Mary Sue showed up. When the Haskell woman is talking about her niece and says something about getting her doctorate, and then there's mention that Caroline is two years older than the Morgan son, I did the math: nineteen or twenty? Doctorate? Could you please not? There's nothing wrong with being a junior in college and doing an internship, people. You don't have to make the chick god while you're at it. But that's exactly what she is, right down to the only flaw being that she runs off to battle and abandons her post as protector of whatever-it-is-this-time. Too damn flippant, too snarky, too perfect, because no matter what you say, some twenty year old kid is not going to get the jump on a man twice her age who's had twice her lifetime to study/practice sneak-thievery. Nope. Just not going to happen unless he's drunk, stoned, or dead.

Skip the parts with the snarky, oh-so-gorgeous, every-man-wants-her (I'm not kidding, that's in there), brilliant, know-it-all Mary Sue, and the rest of the story is passably entertaining.

Now I'm reading Butcher's third book in the Dresden Files, Grave Peril, and after that, the fourth book, Summer Knight. Not sure I'm as into the third as I was the first two. Hope it's not wearing thin, but we'll see. Also up for the damage, Bring it On, another Retrievers Novel by Laura Anne Gilman; she and Butcher got to me first and other than them, I'm sick of the storyline in which our intrepid hero is either a detective or a thief who finds things for people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, over it as much as last millenium's LK Hamilton's Anne-Rice retreads. And finally on the stack, Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora, another AU fantasy, but seemed like it was worth a shot.

The world needs more good urban fantasy, though. I keep saying that, but I wish someone else would write it, too, so I didn't feel entirely alone -- so long as it's not got vampires or werewolves. I am, once again saying for the record, so completely over vampires and werewolves. Getting that way about witches, too. If it weren't for Butcher's Harry being delightfully stubborn and imperfect, I probably would've thrown him against a wall halfway through the first book. Vampires, werewolves, witches, oh please.

And now, back to reading.

Comments

[maldoror-gw.livejournal.com]

One or two more for my booklist; thanks for sharing ^_^ Wish I had more time to read (in the time you read all that, I managed, lemme see, two books and three quarters. And some manga. And I STILL have no time to do more than surf the internet on occasion - where the hell are my days going?!)

I'd read the Tim Powers one quite awhile ago. It was a good read, with some interesting points that I can still remember years later. Not a masterpiece, but okay. I also sorta-liked Last Call and Expiration Date in the same way, bar one WTF moment in Expiration Date (exploding souls...? Huh...?)

It's funny how we rag the fanbrats for outrageous Mary Sues, yet those same Sues lurk throughout the published world as well. Sometimes the main character, no less. As well as suffocating hyperbole, purple prose, wangst, cardboard characterisation, cliches, and what some SF&F stories do to women, oy vey...But presumably someone buys it.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I am often saddened when an ofic Mary (or Marty) ruins my reading pleasure. I want to bonk the author over hte head with the book, or maybe just go back to the bookseller and say, "give me my money back, because I got gypped when so-and-so showed up, and you can tell the author I said that, too."

I highly recommend Heroics for Beginners, actually; it's like an ofic sendup in the style of your Monsters.