Cassandra Clare - The Clockwork Angel
So, this is the first book of a prequel trilogy to Clare's Mortal Instruments series, about which I know almost nothing (but the covers are pretty, in a conventional way). When I brought it home, I speculated on how one might classify it's genre - neo-Victorian, steampunk? Having read it, I'd say that it's sort of neo-Victorian, more than steampunk, although clockwork and steam machinery do play a role. I don't think it necessarily fits the steampunk ethos, although perhaps that will change over the course of the series. At any rate, a young girl from New York arrives in London to meet her brother, but discovers that she is not who she thinks she is, that her brother is not who she thinks he is, and the world is not as she thinks it is. She falls into a enduring struggle between - well, not good and evil, per se, since one of the major themes of the novel is that conventional definitions of good and evil tend not to fit well, but between order and chaos, perhaps. On the side of order are the Nephilim, descendants of an ancient race of human/angel hybrids. On the chaos side is the Shadow-world of vampires, werewolves, and other things that go bump in the night. Further on the chaos side are demons, and so the Nephilim and the Shadow dwellers have warily put aside their differences in order to deal with an influx of demons. The loose alliance between traditional enemies seems to be fraying, however, as the Shadow dwellers have begun to move into the mundane shadow world of gambling and drugs (which in Victorian London means opium and card games like Faro).
The book was fun, and well written enough that I am considering picking up the first of the Mortal Instruments books. The plot was fairly conventional, the twists were moderately predictable, and the characters were interesting enough to be worth reading. The Victorian background seemed fairly background - I suspect it was used because these books are prequels, rather than any real desire to set them in the Victorian period - but Clare has obviously done some research, and the setting was not jarring for all that it was more or less non intrusive.
Cinda Williams Chima - The Warrior Heir
I enjoyed this book. Like the Clare, it wasn't all that deep, but the characters were fun, and the plot was simple. I think I would have split the book in two, ending book one with the end of the school year and having book two cover the trip to England (England seems to feature in reading this week). This book was a romp, a quick read, with a few twists. Although part of an expanding series, this book seemed perfectly complete in its own right. I'll probably pick up the next one - Chima seems to be writing a series of interlocking stories within her world rather than following the same characters through several books -- interesting if done well.
Jill Lepore - The Whites of Their Eyes
A short work, more like a long essay than a book. Lepore is a Colonial historian, and this is an interesting musing on the ways in which Americans use (and abuse) the history of the Revolution, the early republic, and the Founding Fathers. Lepore tells three historical stories: the story of the Revolution (when did it start? 1776? 1760? Earlier? It depends on what you mean by the Revolution - the war, or the radical shift in ideology?) and the early republic (who were the Founding Fathers? When did they become Founding Fathers?); the (largely unsuccessful) effort to organize an inclusive Bicentennial celebration in 1976; and the current use/abuse of Revolutionary history by the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, and folks like the Texas School Board (who revised their US History curriculum to remove Thomas Jefferson as a Founding Father).
This was a fascinating book. I found Lepore's discussion of the Revolutionary generation most interesting. Her discussion of the current attempts to re-cast US history into a Fundamentalist mold felt mildly screed like (even if I agree with her) - it wasn't necessary to convince the people who agree with her, and wasn't sufficient to convince the people who disagree with her. The general theme of the work was that the Revolution has been a political football since 1779, and that what we are currently experiencing isn't really all that different from previous attempts to control the meaning of the beginning of the nation (although, perhaps, somewhat more shrill and certainly louder than in previous iterations.)
I have only one complaint. Much of the work, I felt, would have been better as a lecture than as written - Lepore has a fairly breezy writing style that probably works very nicely when spoken. This reflects, I suspect, her view that academic historians should write histories that non-academics can understand and appreciate (I agree!), but sometimes it is difficult to walk the line between a tone which is open and conversational and one which seems to trivialize the subject under discussion. There were places where I think Lepore crossed that line, places where, in a lecture, she might have softened the words with an ironic smile, or a wink.
Still, a solidly thought provoking work, and one which I would recommend to anyone currently frustrated by the political rhetoric in the United States.
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, although he was Canadian, of course.) and this is a fine example of that. Forsyth tells a story of a young man flying a single seater jet fighter home from Germany on Christmas Eve, 1957. Somewhere above the North Sea, the electronics in the plane fail, and a fog rolls in. Flying in irregular triangles, he hopes to attract the attention of a radar operator, who will send up a shepherd, a plane with a working radio to guide him home. Just as he is sure that no shepherd is coming, an antique Mosquito fighter shows up and guides him down. That's the story. It's very short, less than 100 pages, and the copy that I have is lushly illustrated with lots of pen and ink drawings - it's gorgeous. The whole book shouldn't take longer than half an hour to read - and Alan Maitland used to read it every Christmas Eve on As it Happens for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - here's a 
by Jaki Demerest - there are entirely too few books about musketeers currently on the market, and so it would be remiss of me not to bring this one to your attention while I have the chance.
(which, in retrospect, I'm not sure I've actually read - I think I've read the novels from that point on, though). These novels are set in a post-singularity universe. The singularity, as a concept (as I understand it) describes a technological advancement of such effect that from the far side of the advance we cannot imagine what it was like to live before the advance took place (and vice versa to some extent).* The example I offer to my students when I find the need to explain the concept is the cell phone - at least in most instances of western society, the cell phone has become more or less ubiquitous, and it's hard to imagine what life was like before we had them (even though I, for one, grew up in a world without cell phones) - think about a trip to the mall with your significant other and no cell phone, for instance. How would you coordinate? How would you know where to meet? It's hard to think about on some level. Anyway, in scifi, post-singularity as a sub-genre exists as an exploration of the world after some future singularity, which is usually one of the following: the development of strong/true artificial intelligence (AI), a significant advance in virtual reality, some form of breaking the mind/machine barrier (cyborgs, or nanites, or some form of machine which interacts directly with the human brain), or some combination of the three. Banks writes in a universe which combines all three of these advances. His universe is peopled with human beings who can experience real virtual reality on a whim, who have a wide variety of mechanical and biological body modifications (within the Culture, Banks' central civilization, it is entirely common for people to have specially designed glands which secrete carefully tailored drugs). It is also peopled (if that is the word I want) with sentient machines - drones (basically robots, but non-humanoid, somewhere between the size of a breadbox and a tea cup, with internal anti-gravity effectors) and ships. Banks' ships are, arguably, the most interesting characters in the books - they are hyper intelligent, often quite snarky, theoretically independent of their human counterparts, and they have fantastic names - Surface Detail features the Fast Picket Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints and the General Systems Vehicle Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly, and a whole cast of other ships with equally colourful names. The ships, I think, are one of the things which bring me back to these novels as consistently as they do, they are, quite frankly, brilliant.
as good entry points (because I'm not sure I've read Consider Phlebas - I'll have to see if I can find a copy) - you can build up to the denser and more complicated novels once you've fully engaged with the universe.
- both of which I read and enjoyed - are not Culture novels, per se, in that the Culture does not play a role in the plot. There seems to be some argument as to whether they exist within the same literary universe as the Culture novels - more so for Dark Background that The Algebraist - which may be what threw me. At any rate, those are also excellent novels, deeply twisty in their plots and involved in their characterization. I should also point out that Iain M. Banks and Iain Banks are the same guy, but Iain M. Banks writes sci fi and Iain Banks writes contemporary fiction.
graphic novel by the Pinis for the Kid Who Reads (didn't find it. And, decided that she's not quite ready for Elfquest anyway. Maybe in a couple of years.) and found this instead. It's old (and so the "ripped from the headlines" style might not work), but I wrote my master's thesis on conspiracy theories, so I thought I'd take a look at this.
and 
- out now], but I'm not putting it on my library reserve list.)
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