A little house cleaning this week - I ploughed through a bunch of books that needed to go back to the library. I even got a couple of them back to the library in time to avoid library fines.
Faith Hunter - Host
The last of the Rouge Mage trilogy. Last week, as I reviewed Seraphs, I hoped that the trilogy would improve considerably in the last book. I hoped that Seraphs suffered from 2nd book syndrome. That hope was not met, alas. The first book was very good, and the trilogy went down hill fairly steadily from there.
Points in favor of the third book - Thorn does not sleep with the odious male mage who appears at the beginning of the book. It was a possibility - they hated each other from first sight, which sometimes translates into steamy sex by the end of a book. Thankfully, not here. There was a delightful scene where Thorn does diplomacy and politics with a certain amount of flash and aplomb. I am a big fan of politics and political drama, so that scene was good. Hunter backs Thorn into a situation where she cannot call on the aid of the big, strong (male) Seraphs, and must draw on her own resources to solve a problem (great, but several of her resources are big, strong, male Champards. [ick.]). The series resolves fairly decisively - I suppose Hunter could write the continuing adventures of Thorn, Rogue Mage, but I think it unlikely. A decisive end is always a plus. Finally, the world building remained strong throughout, with a caveat.
Things I didn't like. Thorn is clearly unsuited for the role she is designed to play - either she's a big tough battlemage who can fight her own battles or she isn't. If she isn't (and she isn't), people should stop acting as though she is. Mistrend. (Mistress Friend) Ick. Rose as deus ex machina. Possible continuity error - it seemed to me (and my wife confirmed it) that Rose had been taken away while Thorn and Rose were children. Thinking back, in the first book I think it was moderately clear that this was not the case - that it had been relatively recently that this happened - but why we should both have gotten this impression from the second book, I'm not sure. And the caveat for the world building - Hunter includes some short paragraphs at the beginning explaining that, post apocalypse, the US government remains in some form, contact with Asia was cut off (because ships don't work anymore? This is unclear) and Africa has become an unlivable wasteland. (Why? Again, unclear) S.M. Stirling did post-apocalypse better, in terms of politics and such.
In the end, the world building carried this series for me. I didn't really like Thorn all that much as a character, and the further away from Thorn characters got, the less likable they became. Read the first one. If you feel compelled to do so, read the second. Skip the third. The good guys win.
Jeff Greenfield - Then Everything Changed
A work of alternate history, nominally non-fiction. As I mentioned when I picked it up, there is a word for this sort of work in the History discipline - we call them counter-factuals.* Greenfield explores three scenarios in which his narrative diverges from the original history, asking what if Kennedy died before his inauguration (there was a suicide bomber; he saw Jackie kiss JFK goodbye, and couldn't kill Kennedy with his wife watching); what if Bobby Kennedy didn't die in California, and what if Ford had taken the opportunity to clarify a flubbed question in the debate against Carter.
Greenfield's thesis is that not a lot would have changed in the biggest scheme of things. Johnson would have taken over after Kennedy's death (and would have dealt with Khruschev more forcefully, which would not have forestalled the Cuban Missile Crisis, which Greenfield takes in an unpleasant direction when Johnson takes the advice of his military advisors, resulting in the nuking of Guantanamo, and also Smolensk); Bobby Kennedy would have ushered in the era of middle right politics, with a slightly gentler and more sincere hand than Nixon, and Ford election would have resulted in a) Gary Hart running in 1980 rather than 1988 and b) a Democratic victory in 1980, instead of Reagan. The big things don't change that much, the details do.
Greenfield has a light and easily readable tone - reading this is more like reading a novel than a history (which, as far as I'm concerned, makes it a well written history). The book is filled with sly winks to the reader - for instance, Reagan chooses Sandra Day O'Conner as his running mate in the 1980 election, and one of his aides says "well, at least we don't need to worry what she'll say if someone asks her what she likes to read." - a clear jab at Sarah Palin. Greenfield also highlights the way in which people in politics are often in the background for a lot longer than they are in the foreground - Dick Cheney, for instance, crops up in all three of these scenarios, offering advice to more significant figures. It's easy to forget that politicians, as a rule, don't wake up one morning and decide "hey, I want to be President!" - they start out somewhere and work their way up to the big show.
Greenfield has extensive notes - not quite footnotes, more of explanatory notes - at the back of the book, explaining why he decided which direction the details would go, where quotations a speeches post historical break came from, and fleshing out some of the sly winks and perhaps odd moments (John McCain aiding Gary Hart in the 1980 campaign, for instance).
I would have liked more complete footnotes, or at least a bibliography. Greenfield points out that the literature on the history of the mid to late 20th century is vast - but, clearly, he chose some texts and avoided others, and it would have been better history to include some sort of bibliography. I would also have liked to have seen all three of the scenarios linked - what would the 1964 election have looked like in the post early-Johnson era? The 1968 election? That would have changed the tone of the book rather dramatically, however, and would not have allowed Greenfield to have explored the points that he did - perhaps some brief notes at the end of each section bringing that section up to the modern era would have sufficed.
All in all, a thought provoking exercise in speculative history; well worth a look.
*The difference between an alternative history (alt-history) fiction and a counter-factual non-fiction is that the counter-factual has a clear thesis, while the alt-history has a plot.
Gail Carson Levine - Ever
My wife said I needed to read this to "clear my palette". It was a lovely palette-cleanser. A quick read, more of a novella than a novel, this was a Babylonian inspired YA romance/fantasy. A young wind god falls in love with a mortal girl, and they struggle to render her immortal so that they can remain together. Part fantasy, part fairy tale, all lovely.
I honestly don't know what else to say about this book - it was sweet and fresh - a new setting for fiction (at least for me), some pleasant characters, and uncomplicated plot. It was just plain good.
Lauren Willig - The Orchid Affair
The most recent of Willig's Pink Carnation books. Eloise, our intrepid modern heroine is in Paris to support her boyfriend at a family function, and also to do some follow up research on the activities of the Silver Orchid, the latest of the British anti-Napoleonic spies to bedevil the French. Laura Grey (Griscoigne) takes a job as a governess at the behest of the Pink Carnation. Her employer is Andre Jaoune, the second in command of the Paris police, a figure of terror for British spies. Naturally, she and he fall in love (gradually, and partially against their own better judgement). They become embroiled in a complicated plot to kidnap Napoleon and replace him with one of the rightful heirs to the throne.
As with all of Willig's books, this is a story of high adventure and tasteful romance. The good guys win, there is some swashbuckling, a little fencing, some (off stage) torture, some passionate kissing, and some "fade-to-black" love scenes (Willig, as a rule, does not indulge in purple prose about long, hard eagerness and the like, which is nice).
I did notice (and enjoy) the transitions between Willig's modern plot (which is mostly a framing device) and her Napoleonic main plot. The modern plot is what holds the series together - Eloise is doing research for her dissertation, the topic of which is Aristocratic Spies of the Napoleonic Period. In the first couple of books, the Napoleonic plot followed her research quite clearly - Willig would describe Eloise reading some letters, and then go into several chapters telling us the events that lead to those letters. In more recent novels, this explicit linking of Eloise's research to the broader plot has become thinner. I think this reflects the fact that Eloise is engaged in an actual plot of her own now, which doesn't link as tidily to the Napoleonic material as it originally did. This is fine - Willig does an excellent job of crossing back and forth between the main and the framing plot. Eventually, though, Eloise is going to finish her dissertation, and her plot will have to resolve, which will end the whole series - I'm not sure I'm looking forward to that. I'm not sure that Willig is, either. (Alternatively, Willig is headed towards the end of the Napoleonic era as well, and that will end the series just as effectively.)
I remain jealous of Willig's easy prose - Willig is one of the authors I wish I could be, especially since she has a degree in history.
Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson - Science Fair
Another suggestion from my wife. Madcap hilarity ensues when the students at a middle school just outside Washington DC engage in a science fair. Rich kids try to buy first prize (as they have for several years running - getting their projects from a mysterious benefactor for $50 a project, and having them constructed by a curmudgeonly store owner at the local mall for rather more than $50 a project), and poor kids try to win first prize with projects they really did themselves (which, of course, cannot compare to the glitzy work of the rich kids.) Terrorists (from an ill defined, but horrifically backwards Eastern European nation) attempt to use the fair to get their hands on top secret devices. The Oscar Myer Weinermobile features.
It's not deep. It's really very silly, and it's clear that Barry has been able to run roughshod over Pearson, at least in terms of suggesting plot points - the Weinermobile? A levitating frog? The day saved by Rollerblade Barbie, setting fire to something? Yeah, that's all Barry. But it's funny - laugh out loud funny in some places - and it's a quick read.
Rick Bowers - Spies of Mississippi
Got a history paper to write, and you've decided to look at the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and '60s? Need a twist on the topic? Check this book out. Bowers offers a fascinating (if not terribly deep) look at an aspect of the period which is not normally covered - the Sovereignty Commission of Mississippi, an independent body accountable to the governor of Mississippi and tasked with ensuring that the state policy of segregation was upheld. The Commission infiltrated civil rights organisations like the NAACP, SNCC, and CORE in an effort to keep tabs on the movement, and possibly hinder its efforts to bring racial equality to Mississippi. Actions extend to assassinations, both of character (through the efforts of obliging Black newspaper editors) and of body (through the efforts of obliging White supremacists). Bowers' take on the period is intriguing and eye opening (even to me, who has studied the era with some rigor). His writing is punchy, and easily digested - this book is aimed at young adults. It's a good place to start, and Bowers provides some suggestions as to where one might go next to continue the research. As a professor, I would not want to see this work as a strong source in a paper by one of my students, but I would not be dismayed to see it cited in a bibliography. Were I teaching middle school, I think I would be delighted to see this book in use. I would have liked footnotes, though, and a more in depth bibliography - good use of primary sources, but not enough discussion of the secondary literature.
That's it for this week - it looks like a lot, but three of them were short. It was all in an effort to chip away at my ever growing "To read" stack. I'm grading papers this weekend, so next week's offering will probably be a little slimmer.
Showing posts with label Hunter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hunter. Show all posts
Friday, April 29, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Friday Book Review, 4/22/2011
Two this week.
Faith Hunter - Seraphs
This is left over from last week's trashy book binge - I kept the trilogy, and had hoped to review this one and Host this week, but, alas, Host will have to wait until next week, because I am not done.
I continue to find Hunter's world building delightful - there's a lot of interesting stuff to play with in the setting. My wife points out that the author's note suggests that Hunter is working on a role playing game set in her world - that would make a great deal of sense. I can easily see this as an RPG setting. Although the action does not move away from Mineral City (a smallish town in the Appalachian Mountains, where Thorn St. Croix lives and works), Hunter gives a good sense of the political and cultural landscape in this post-apocalyptic world. All good stuff there.
Hunter's characters are interesting as well, although the further away from Thorn the characters get, the less well rendered they are as characters (which is natural, I suppose, but the description gets thin fairly quickly, I think). That being said, even the primary characters are not hugely deep - Thorn is inexperienced as a mage, this gets her into trouble that an experienced mage would have avoided. Her lack of training allows her to do things that a formally trained mage would not attempt, and this helps her get out of trouble. The men in her life are either ruggedly handsome (and thus want to sleep with her), bitterly evil (and thus want to kill her), or gay (and thus want to protect her). The women in Thorn's life are either rivals for the affections of the ruggedly handsome men, married to the bitterly evil men (and are thus either inclined to hate Thorn, or possibly seek to act as diplomats), children, or more or less non-entities. There are a couple of exceptions - there is a happily and stably married couple who are friends of Thorn, and there is Lolo, Thorn's distant "mentor" (although she doesn't really mentor Thorn all that much; it's more like Thorn asks some pointed questions [by long distance magic communication; there are no phones in the Mage Enclave] and Lolo refuses to answer them - Lolo exists in the book largely as a figure in the background, someone who has knowledge and refuses to share it for some reason.). On the other hand, I wasn't really looking for depth of character or complexity of plot when I grabbed the books, so. Caveat Emptor, perhaps.
Thorn spends this book cleaning up the mess she left behind in the previous book, and setting up the mess she will have to deal with in the next book. This is, of course, the nature of a series. In terms of the nature of books in a series, I think, if forced to, you could read this book without having read the first book, but parts of it would be frustrating - Hunter provides a fair bit of back story throughout, but there are significant gaps in the narrative. Having read the first book, there were several places where I could have done with a little less back story - but not significantly so. It distracted, but it did not detract.
In this book, Thorn reconnects with the Big Bad from the last book, as she attempts to rescue a pair of Seraphim who are trapped under the local mountains (where the evil Darkness is doing ... something. Something involving blood, and breeding mages. Mages, as you may recall, require a Seraph in order to go into heat; without one, the female mages cannot ovulate. Having a trapped Seraph or two would be a vital point in any clandestine mage breeding scheme.)
I should say, at this point, I'm less thrilled with the whole mage heat thing than I was in the first book. It's clearly a significant plot element, but it really squicks me out. Plus, it has the effect of removing any sense of bodily autonomy from mages, and since the mage we see the most of is Thorn, that really means it removes the bodily autonomy of women. Thorn seems capable of keeping herself to herself, and I keep hoping that there's going to be some sort of plot revelation in which it becomes clear that the mages are revealed to be really human, or something of that nature. (I should also say, that as I approach the last 1/4 of the third book, that hope becomes increasingly fleeting. Alas.)
Another thing I'm not thrilled about is the way that Thorn charges into a combat situation, kicks a lot of butt, and then finds herself unable to go on, and is forced to call "mage in dire"*, summoning big strong (male) Seraphs to save her.
I'm also not particularly happy with Hunter's use of neologisms and portmanteau words - like champard - Champion Partners, the human folks who provide their muscle to back up a mage (mages are fast, but not all that strong. Humans are strong, but not as fast as mages. Champards balance the weakness of the mage, or something of that nature). Neologisms sometimes irk me, especially when they don't really need to be used - champion would probably have worked, in this context, just as well.
So. The world is delightful (and I think I'd like to see more of the world, perhaps), the plot is sufficiently compelling that I want to finish the third book, but there are serious problems with the characters. As I said above, I wasn't looking for great literature. These are a quick read, amusing and diverting, but my wife says (and I agree) that they leave you wanting something with more substance afterwards.
*to summon Seraphs, mages recite a little rhyme: "Mage in battle, mage in dire, seraphs come with Holy Fire", and, eventually (just in time) a seraph or two will show up. My problem here is that you can't be "in dire." You have to be in dire something - in dire need, in dire circumstances, in dire condition, in a dire badger. Of course, that breaks the rhyme, but still - "mage in dire" is silly - and it gets mentioned a LOT.
Rowan Jacobsen - American Terroir
Oh, but this was a delightful, and thoroughly dangerous, book. This was my food book for the week (the last food book for Lent!). It addresses the idea that food grown in a particular location tastes in a particular way, and so some food (because of where it is produced) is "better," or at least more interesting, than food produced elsewhere. Jacobsen is making an almost heretical argument - that the concept of terroir (generally used to described the sort of flavor affecting growing conditions that make specific vintages French wines taste in a particular way) can be applied to the New World. He makes a compelling argument (at least to me - but then, I'm not a French vinter, so I have no dog in the fight, as it were.)
Jacobsen's second argument is that, by ignoring terroir, Americans end up eating a lot of pretty crappy food, and if we concentrated on selecting foods from the regions that produced those foods best, we would eat a lot better. This argument is also compelling, but, at the same time, it is highly troubling. I've just spent the past several weeks reading books suggesting that I should concentrate on eating locally - now here's Jacobsen suggesting more or less the opposite - that I should get my maple syrup from the "North East Triangle" (Vermont up into Eastern Canada, out to the East Coast, and down as far as West Virginia, more or less - and I live in that triangle, so that's not a problem), my avocados from Mexico, my apples from Northwest Washington State, my salmon from Alaska (the Yukon River, to be specific), my coffee from some fairly limited producers (who still know how to properly roast a good coffee bean), my wine from a select few California vinters (more on that later), my chocolate from folks who know how to make chocolate the way that the Aztecs did, and my honey from Pitcairn Island. Instead of eating locally, I should eat globally - and, by eating globally, I will better support small farmers and sustainable fishermen and ancient folk/food ways all over the place. While, at the same time, eating fantastically better than I ever thought possible. Well. I like the sound of that, even while I'm torn by my desire to be a locavore.
The writing here is passionate, but the tone is light, and full of humor. Jacobsen includes several discursive footnotes (which, as a reader, I always find highly enjoyable), and his descriptions of the foods he is talking about are mouth watering. I spent most of the week wandering around craving really high end cheese and light roasted coffee and fantastic sounding chocolate, and oysters (which I don't eat, ever, at all). This is why the book is dangerous - I think I could, given a lot more money, be a really good foodie (total side note - foodie is recognized by the spell check, but mage is not? Huh.). But I can't afford it, even if Jacobsen makes it sound fantastic.
Beyond making me crave foods well outside my budget, the book had a couple of significant flaws that almost threw me out of the enjoyment of the book. First, in his chapter on wine, Jacobsen makes use of an extended metaphor, comparing cheap wine to a stripper and good wine to a lover who continues to surprise you, even after a long relationship. This is fine as far as it goes, but he feels the need to defend his use of the metaphor in a footnote, in which he suggests that anyone who might be offended by the potentially sexist nature of the metaphor lacks the intelligence to fully appreciate what Jacobsen is saying. Ick. If you feel that your metaphor needs defense so badly, perhaps you need to find a different metaphor.
Second, and perhaps more egregious, there is a strong vibe of "the best example of this sort of food is X, and it is the best because I say so." For instance, in the chapter on coffee, Jacobsen presents an interview with George Howell, a guy who has started (or re-started) a tradition of coffee "cuppings," or tastings. This guy contends that a light roast is the way that coffee is supposed to be, and that a dark roast is a trick that coffee merchants play on coffee drinkers in order to sell an inferior product. Fine, ok, I buy that, but the guy describes one of his first cuppings. Several notables in the American coffee world were presented with a blind panel of coffees and asked to say which was the best. One of the notables invariably picked the darkest roasts, saying "this one, I like this one the best." Jacobsen, and Howell, respond by saying "no, you're wrong, that's not the best. This one is." You see, perhaps, the problem - one the one hand, Jacobsen (and the people he is talking to) are suggesting that some products are superior to others, and that as a result we should like those better. But, the way they present this, they imply that if we claim to like an inferior product, it is because we are wrong - that we don't actually know what we like, that we are deluding ourselves. In the chapter on chocolate, this comes out quite strongly - Jacobsen is not a fan of the current push for darker and darker chocolates. He describes the people who enjoy a really dark chocolate as being involved in a cult - he says that he's not going to convince them of his rightness, and so it's not even worth trying. This tone of smugness was all through the book; sometimes it was a lot closer to the surface than at other times.
So. I loved the food descriptions. I'm sympathetic to the idea that support for small scale production of artisanal products result in better food, in better conditions for the producers, and in a generally better world. I wish I could afford to provide more of that support than I do. I also wish that my camp, the camp of people who like that sort of thing, wasn't full of smug folks who think that liking a superior product makes them a superior human being.
That's it for this week, but I'd like to remind you that YOU are a superior human being for reading this.
Faith Hunter - Seraphs
This is left over from last week's trashy book binge - I kept the trilogy, and had hoped to review this one and Host this week, but, alas, Host will have to wait until next week, because I am not done.
I continue to find Hunter's world building delightful - there's a lot of interesting stuff to play with in the setting. My wife points out that the author's note suggests that Hunter is working on a role playing game set in her world - that would make a great deal of sense. I can easily see this as an RPG setting. Although the action does not move away from Mineral City (a smallish town in the Appalachian Mountains, where Thorn St. Croix lives and works), Hunter gives a good sense of the political and cultural landscape in this post-apocalyptic world. All good stuff there.
Hunter's characters are interesting as well, although the further away from Thorn the characters get, the less well rendered they are as characters (which is natural, I suppose, but the description gets thin fairly quickly, I think). That being said, even the primary characters are not hugely deep - Thorn is inexperienced as a mage, this gets her into trouble that an experienced mage would have avoided. Her lack of training allows her to do things that a formally trained mage would not attempt, and this helps her get out of trouble. The men in her life are either ruggedly handsome (and thus want to sleep with her), bitterly evil (and thus want to kill her), or gay (and thus want to protect her). The women in Thorn's life are either rivals for the affections of the ruggedly handsome men, married to the bitterly evil men (and are thus either inclined to hate Thorn, or possibly seek to act as diplomats), children, or more or less non-entities. There are a couple of exceptions - there is a happily and stably married couple who are friends of Thorn, and there is Lolo, Thorn's distant "mentor" (although she doesn't really mentor Thorn all that much; it's more like Thorn asks some pointed questions [by long distance magic communication; there are no phones in the Mage Enclave] and Lolo refuses to answer them - Lolo exists in the book largely as a figure in the background, someone who has knowledge and refuses to share it for some reason.). On the other hand, I wasn't really looking for depth of character or complexity of plot when I grabbed the books, so. Caveat Emptor, perhaps.
Thorn spends this book cleaning up the mess she left behind in the previous book, and setting up the mess she will have to deal with in the next book. This is, of course, the nature of a series. In terms of the nature of books in a series, I think, if forced to, you could read this book without having read the first book, but parts of it would be frustrating - Hunter provides a fair bit of back story throughout, but there are significant gaps in the narrative. Having read the first book, there were several places where I could have done with a little less back story - but not significantly so. It distracted, but it did not detract.
In this book, Thorn reconnects with the Big Bad from the last book, as she attempts to rescue a pair of Seraphim who are trapped under the local mountains (where the evil Darkness is doing ... something. Something involving blood, and breeding mages. Mages, as you may recall, require a Seraph in order to go into heat; without one, the female mages cannot ovulate. Having a trapped Seraph or two would be a vital point in any clandestine mage breeding scheme.)
I should say, at this point, I'm less thrilled with the whole mage heat thing than I was in the first book. It's clearly a significant plot element, but it really squicks me out. Plus, it has the effect of removing any sense of bodily autonomy from mages, and since the mage we see the most of is Thorn, that really means it removes the bodily autonomy of women. Thorn seems capable of keeping herself to herself, and I keep hoping that there's going to be some sort of plot revelation in which it becomes clear that the mages are revealed to be really human, or something of that nature. (I should also say, that as I approach the last 1/4 of the third book, that hope becomes increasingly fleeting. Alas.)
Another thing I'm not thrilled about is the way that Thorn charges into a combat situation, kicks a lot of butt, and then finds herself unable to go on, and is forced to call "mage in dire"*, summoning big strong (male) Seraphs to save her.
I'm also not particularly happy with Hunter's use of neologisms and portmanteau words - like champard - Champion Partners, the human folks who provide their muscle to back up a mage (mages are fast, but not all that strong. Humans are strong, but not as fast as mages. Champards balance the weakness of the mage, or something of that nature). Neologisms sometimes irk me, especially when they don't really need to be used - champion would probably have worked, in this context, just as well.
So. The world is delightful (and I think I'd like to see more of the world, perhaps), the plot is sufficiently compelling that I want to finish the third book, but there are serious problems with the characters. As I said above, I wasn't looking for great literature. These are a quick read, amusing and diverting, but my wife says (and I agree) that they leave you wanting something with more substance afterwards.
*to summon Seraphs, mages recite a little rhyme: "Mage in battle, mage in dire, seraphs come with Holy Fire", and, eventually (just in time) a seraph or two will show up. My problem here is that you can't be "in dire." You have to be in dire something - in dire need, in dire circumstances, in dire condition, in a dire badger. Of course, that breaks the rhyme, but still - "mage in dire" is silly - and it gets mentioned a LOT.
"I told you what would happen if you quoted Monty Python at the table again. Now Zifnab has been eaten by the dire badger, and I hope that will be lesson to you all."
Oh, but this was a delightful, and thoroughly dangerous, book. This was my food book for the week (the last food book for Lent!). It addresses the idea that food grown in a particular location tastes in a particular way, and so some food (because of where it is produced) is "better," or at least more interesting, than food produced elsewhere. Jacobsen is making an almost heretical argument - that the concept of terroir (generally used to described the sort of flavor affecting growing conditions that make specific vintages French wines taste in a particular way) can be applied to the New World. He makes a compelling argument (at least to me - but then, I'm not a French vinter, so I have no dog in the fight, as it were.)
Jacobsen's second argument is that, by ignoring terroir, Americans end up eating a lot of pretty crappy food, and if we concentrated on selecting foods from the regions that produced those foods best, we would eat a lot better. This argument is also compelling, but, at the same time, it is highly troubling. I've just spent the past several weeks reading books suggesting that I should concentrate on eating locally - now here's Jacobsen suggesting more or less the opposite - that I should get my maple syrup from the "North East Triangle" (Vermont up into Eastern Canada, out to the East Coast, and down as far as West Virginia, more or less - and I live in that triangle, so that's not a problem), my avocados from Mexico, my apples from Northwest Washington State, my salmon from Alaska (the Yukon River, to be specific), my coffee from some fairly limited producers (who still know how to properly roast a good coffee bean), my wine from a select few California vinters (more on that later), my chocolate from folks who know how to make chocolate the way that the Aztecs did, and my honey from Pitcairn Island. Instead of eating locally, I should eat globally - and, by eating globally, I will better support small farmers and sustainable fishermen and ancient folk/food ways all over the place. While, at the same time, eating fantastically better than I ever thought possible. Well. I like the sound of that, even while I'm torn by my desire to be a locavore.
The writing here is passionate, but the tone is light, and full of humor. Jacobsen includes several discursive footnotes (which, as a reader, I always find highly enjoyable), and his descriptions of the foods he is talking about are mouth watering. I spent most of the week wandering around craving really high end cheese and light roasted coffee and fantastic sounding chocolate, and oysters (which I don't eat, ever, at all). This is why the book is dangerous - I think I could, given a lot more money, be a really good foodie (total side note - foodie is recognized by the spell check, but mage is not? Huh.). But I can't afford it, even if Jacobsen makes it sound fantastic.
Beyond making me crave foods well outside my budget, the book had a couple of significant flaws that almost threw me out of the enjoyment of the book. First, in his chapter on wine, Jacobsen makes use of an extended metaphor, comparing cheap wine to a stripper and good wine to a lover who continues to surprise you, even after a long relationship. This is fine as far as it goes, but he feels the need to defend his use of the metaphor in a footnote, in which he suggests that anyone who might be offended by the potentially sexist nature of the metaphor lacks the intelligence to fully appreciate what Jacobsen is saying. Ick. If you feel that your metaphor needs defense so badly, perhaps you need to find a different metaphor.
Second, and perhaps more egregious, there is a strong vibe of "the best example of this sort of food is X, and it is the best because I say so." For instance, in the chapter on coffee, Jacobsen presents an interview with George Howell, a guy who has started (or re-started) a tradition of coffee "cuppings," or tastings. This guy contends that a light roast is the way that coffee is supposed to be, and that a dark roast is a trick that coffee merchants play on coffee drinkers in order to sell an inferior product. Fine, ok, I buy that, but the guy describes one of his first cuppings. Several notables in the American coffee world were presented with a blind panel of coffees and asked to say which was the best. One of the notables invariably picked the darkest roasts, saying "this one, I like this one the best." Jacobsen, and Howell, respond by saying "no, you're wrong, that's not the best. This one is." You see, perhaps, the problem - one the one hand, Jacobsen (and the people he is talking to) are suggesting that some products are superior to others, and that as a result we should like those better. But, the way they present this, they imply that if we claim to like an inferior product, it is because we are wrong - that we don't actually know what we like, that we are deluding ourselves. In the chapter on chocolate, this comes out quite strongly - Jacobsen is not a fan of the current push for darker and darker chocolates. He describes the people who enjoy a really dark chocolate as being involved in a cult - he says that he's not going to convince them of his rightness, and so it's not even worth trying. This tone of smugness was all through the book; sometimes it was a lot closer to the surface than at other times.
So. I loved the food descriptions. I'm sympathetic to the idea that support for small scale production of artisanal products result in better food, in better conditions for the producers, and in a generally better world. I wish I could afford to provide more of that support than I do. I also wish that my camp, the camp of people who like that sort of thing, wasn't full of smug folks who think that liking a superior product makes them a superior human being.
That's it for this week, but I'd like to remind you that YOU are a superior human being for reading this.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Research Week Trashy Book Friday Review, 4/15/2011
First up, I believe today is my first blogaversary. I'd like to thank all of my readers from all over the world - according to m stats (which I check far more often than is strictly healthy), I have had viewers from every continent except Antarctica, which is very cool. I would like to say that I will give the first confirmed viewer from Antarctica something amazing, but I fear this would create undue competition. I would love more comments, though!
Next, I've spent most of a week in Norfolk, VA, at the MacArthur Library, reading Douglas MacArthur's official mail from 1943 through 1952. Well, parts of it. When I take research trips (as I may have mentioned earlier) I like to read "trashy" books, to clear my mind of the serious stuff I'm working on. I also like to use public transit as much as possible in order to a) not have to drive and b) have time to read trashy books. The public transit I got to use this week was pretty spiffy - a ferry across the Elizabeth River - but not very long, only about 10 minutes each way, so I didn't get as much reading done as I had hoped. However, I am planning a further trip for the end of June (not back to Norfolk), and hopefully a further trip in July, so I should be able to do further reading then. At any rate, of the stack of books I packed, I only managed to finished 2 and 1/4 of them. Reviews are as follow.
Faith Hunter - Bloodring
This is the first of the "Rogue Mage" series, of which there are 3, all 3 of which I had with me. Of the books I read this week, this was my favorite. I could easily have carried on and read all three of them, but I decided that it would be better to spread my trashy reading out across a wider genre spectrum. I do these things for you guys, the readers! It's because I'm noble and self-sacrificing that way.
The premise in these books is interesting. They are set post-apocalypse; the Biblical apocalypse. 150 years prior to the beginning of the books, angels and devils appeared on Earth and duked it out for all the marbles. The angels won, but God didn't show up, and so the angels have been more or less in charge since then. And the angels are kinda dicks - but still better than the devils.
In the midst of the Last War, a group of people appeared/evolved (it's not really clear); neo-mages. They could do magic. They fought on the side of the angels. At the end of the war, the neo-mages were rounded up and put into Enclaves, where they were given licenses and allowed to operate, in a limited sense, in the general population. They are not trusted, their services are expensive, and they cannot operate without the official sanction of the Seraphs (they never call themselves angels). Officially, the Seraphs state that mages do not have souls - they are not "human." This gives them certain leeway, such as the ability to call on aid from Seraphs when deeply injured (among other things).
Thorn St. Croix is an unlicensed mage, living outside of an Enclave (because, it turns out, after the death of her twin sister, living in close proximity with her fellow mages makes her crazy), hidden from her neighbors by powerful talismans. She is only partially trained, and largely cut off from her community, both the community of mages and the community she has chosen to live in. She works, along with a small group of friends, as a stone cutter, making fairly expensive jewelry, of which she sells enough to make a living and maintain a shop and living quarters.
When the daughter (and extended family) of her ex-husband are threatened by an unknown demonic force, Thorn finds herself drawn into the action, even though it may destroy her cover, putting her, and the people she loves, in danger from their neighbors (unlicensed mages are illegal, subject to death; either quickly if the official authorities catch them, or slowly and painfully if the mob does).
The plot is not particularly dense - Thorn gets drawn into fights with demons, she skirts the edges of the law, there is a happy ending - or at least a Happy For Now ending - it's not hugely complex. The world building, however, is entirely delightful. Hunter doles out little snippets of background throughout the book, avoiding entirely the standard info-dump type passages, and leaving the readers guessing for much of the book about what is actually going on with the world. For instance, there is some speculation that the reason God never showed up is that these are not really devils and angels, but rather some advanced alien beings who decided to play with a dominant cultural trope for their own ineffable purposes. Hunter does nothing to resolve this debate, and this is all to the greater narrative good - I was ready to read the next book immediately, not so much to see what happens to Thorn next, but to get a broader understanding of the world that Thorn lives in.
Other things I really liked - Thorn is competent at her day job, Hunter discusses the making of stone (and other) jewelry in some detail, and Thorn's enjoyment of the craft she pursues is realistic and enjoyable. It is not hard to believe that Thorn would regret in the extreme giving up the job of making jewelry in order to be a super hero. The cover art is good - unlike the discussion of the Brigg's covers, Thorn's description of herself matches well with the image on the cover (at least, Thorn's description of herself in full battle gear - we don't get an image of her working as a jeweler). The supporting characters are nice too - Hunter includes a very pleasant gay couple, and a variety of well realized, believably competent other characters of various genders. Thorn is not the only competent figure in the book, surrounded by an army of idiots - this is important, because a) it makes the book more believable and b) it makes Thorn's competence more impressive.
Things I did not like - mages go into "heat" in the presence of Seraphs and the offspring of Seraphs. Thorn manages to control herself, but, seriously, heat? Because they are somehow subhuman? This, I think, is something that will have to be addressed over the trilogy as Thorn becomes increasingly convinced of her own humanity - I can see the series going in that direction, and I think I will be disappointed if it veers off that particular path. Another minor thing - it's not clear on any of the books (or even, and this surprised me, within any of the books) which of the books is the first one. (This is the first one. Amazon confirms it) - each book references the other two books on the cover, and each lists the other two books on the flyleaf (do paperbacks have a flyleaf? I mean on the page between the copyright page and the title page). Trial and error were needed - I had originally picked up the second book, and was lost within a couple of paragraphs - not a trilogy to read out of order, at all.
Kathleen Bacus - Calamity Jayne Rides Again
So, I went from "dark fantasy" to modern romance. This is the second of the Tressa Jayne Turner books by Bacus - and you can totally start here, no problem. Tressa (Calamity) Jayne is a ditzy blonde from Iowa, living in a trailer on her parent's farm, working a couple of jobs, and accidentally blundering into crime solving. This book is set at the Iowa State Fair, where Tressa helps staff her uncle's ice cream concessions. The crime in this book is vandalism of the concessions, presumably in an effort to convince Uncle Fred to sell out and give the prime locations he has held for several years to someone else. Tressa, with a cast of kooky relatives and a pair of competing love interests, blunders her way through the mystery.
This is a mystery novel more than a romance novel - Tressa is far more involved in the solving of the crime than she is in securing a Happily Ever After for herself - I'm not sure that this book even has a Happy For Now ending, really. She starts the book conflicted about the guy she has a love/hate relationship with (an old friend of her brother's, she has discovered that she kinda likes him, because he's good looking, and a good kisser - and that's as far as it's gotten since the last book, where he saved her life). She ends the book torn between Rick (the old guy) and Patrick (the new guy - an Iowa State Trooper who seems more inclined to accept Tressa as she is, and less inclined to try to change her "for her own good"). I think it's fairly obvious that Tressa will ultimately end up with Rick, at least temporarily - but it doesn't happen in this book, and it's going to take at least one more book to resolve one way or the other. The key, I think, is how much Tressa is willing to compromise, and how much Rick is willing to compromise. That book, where they explore each other's feelings more than they explore an unfolding mystery - that book will be a romance. This one was not.
Stuff I liked - Tressa is irrepressible. I enjoy irrepressible characters. Her clan is kooky, and I like kooky too. The book is set at a State Fair, and I'm partial to State Fairs. A lot of the secondary action takes place around fair food - I like fair food. The mystery did not involve a murder - this is highly refreshing.
Things I didn't like - Tressa is entirely too ditzy. When I say she blunders her way through the book - she totally does. She really earns her nickname. This is part of the whole schtick of the book, so it's unavoidable, but it grated a little. Tressa is self deprecating, especially in regards her weight and her eating - this is believable, but mildly depressing. I'd like a confident heroine who eats what she wants and doesn't worry about her weight - especially since Tressa also describes herself as petite, wishes she had bigger boobs - ok, I get that this is intended to be realistic and Everywoman, but I'd rather it wasn't - that is, I'd rather that either a "realistic" Everywoman would be less concerned about body image or that less effort had been taken to make Tressa a realistic Everywoman.
I might read another of these; I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to avoid one, but I'm also not going to rush out to find the next one.
Steven Kent - The Clone Elite
I only got 1/4 of the way into this book. If I had not been trapped on a ferry with nothing else to read, I probably wouldn't have gotten that far. I'm not going to finish it.
The bad news - in the future, people no longer fuck. They speck instead. What I mean to say is, Kent has the members of a united human military cursing thusly - "mudder-specking mudder specker, I'm going to get you!" Ok, I exaggerate for effect, but not by much.
More bad news - in the future, the United States will dominate extra solar-system travel, and will translate that domination into world domination, taking over the globe, and then abandoning everything noble about the political traditions of the US while retaining the most annoying and damaging cultural behaviors. So, democracy dies, but cultural chauvinism survives.
Further bad news - the galaxy is being invaded by giant glowing Space Angels who travel in a nimbus of light. They land on a planet, "sleeve" the planet in what the United Alliance scientists call the "ion curtain," through which no communication can pass, and then move onto the next planet. It is assumed that all the humans on the planet perish in the process, although it has been impossible to confirm this assumption.
Some good news - the United Alliance has a small army of well trained clones with which to confront this threat. The clones don't know that they are clones, and, if alerted to the fact of their cloneness, will instantly die - this seems like a serious design flaw in an army. You could defeat the army with a set of loudspeakers - "think about it for a moment - does it make sense that you are the ONLY natural born human in an army of clones? Ask your neighbor what they think about themselves, go ahead, do it!" and the whole army collapses, dead, on the spot.
This is not the only weakness in the army - the leaders seem to lack any sense of logic, or strategic planning. Our hero (and I use that term loosely) and his fellow clone grunts are the only competent portion of the army - anyone above 1st Lieutenant is clearly superfluous. (This is a common feature of a lot of milfic - the front line grunts are all heroes, and the officers are all REMFs - Rear Echelon Mudder Speckers). A key point - the strategy to stop the Space Angels - defend the next planet in their path. Using 1 million soldiers (imagine Dr. Evil with his finger here). Look, at the end of World War Two, the United States alone had 8.5 million soldiers in the field, defending not the whole planet, but only a few small strategic points. 1 million soldiers, even armed to the teeth with fancy weapons, is not enough to defend a planet - it's not even enough to defend a good sized country. Nonetheless, this army is presented as massive - a huge force, entirely formidable and totally sufficient to stop any alien force coming in from wherever. There's an easy fix here - two, in fact. One, you have someone ask if 1 million soldiers is really enough to do the job, and have someone else say "not really, but it's what we've got left" - this seems to be the tenor of the book anyway, they're recalling clones in their 50s and 60s, but no one ever questions that 1 million soldiers is a lot of soldiers. Two, you have someone, possibly the narrator, comment that 1 million doesn't sound like a lot, but given the current technology - armor, weapons, etc etc, the force multiplier makes 1 million soldiers more like 1 billion, or something of that nature. Less satisfying, but also acceptable. Neither is explicitly stated, but either would fit here. The thing is, the officers are either good natured idiots with no sense of strategy, or ill natured assholes who just don't care - and there is no other option.
A final piece of bad news, and the one which really made me put the book down and take pictures instead, is that, due to UA government colonization policies, race has been eliminated - everyone is white (except for one guy, who is part of a colony of Neo-Baptists, who are, of course, all black) - this is explicitly stated. One of the soldiers says he doesn't trust Freeman, because Freeman is black, and race is supposed to not exist anymore. Oh, except for this neo-Baptist colony, and apparently some of the Catholic colonies still have Italian priests, and there was this one colony of Japanese who were evacuated back to Earth and given the Japanese islands by the UA government - except for those folks, race doesn't exist (which means everyone is white, naturally.)
The premise had potential - the clones could have been metaphors for minorities (like several of the vampires were during Vampire Month), the book could have explored modern issues of warfare in a realistic but comfortably distant way, the Marines could have sworn like Marines.* None of that was true.
I didn't finish the book. I'm not going to finish the book. I was already cheering for the Space Angels, and that's not a good sign in a book like this, because it's fairly clear they're not going to win - Waylon Harris and his buddies will figure out how to kill them after the Specking officers are all dead and everything comes down to the heroic grunt clowns. I mean clones. Unless, of course, the Space Angels get a set of loud speakers; then we're all doomed.
*There is, of course, a long tradition of military fiction in which the soldiers swear without swearing, starting with Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, where the soldiers all said "Fug", and culminating in Farscape's "Frell" and Battlestar Galactica's "Frack" - but all of those were instances of avoiding censorship. Kent is writing in a market and for a medium where it's entirely acceptable to have soldiers say "Fuck," and not get censored - if the books get made into a popular TV show on a network other than Showtime or HBO, then you can come up with some cute alternative. Until then, it just sounds silly.
Next, I've spent most of a week in Norfolk, VA, at the MacArthur Library, reading Douglas MacArthur's official mail from 1943 through 1952. Well, parts of it. When I take research trips (as I may have mentioned earlier) I like to read "trashy" books, to clear my mind of the serious stuff I'm working on. I also like to use public transit as much as possible in order to a) not have to drive and b) have time to read trashy books. The public transit I got to use this week was pretty spiffy - a ferry across the Elizabeth River - but not very long, only about 10 minutes each way, so I didn't get as much reading done as I had hoped. However, I am planning a further trip for the end of June (not back to Norfolk), and hopefully a further trip in July, so I should be able to do further reading then. At any rate, of the stack of books I packed, I only managed to finished 2 and 1/4 of them. Reviews are as follow.
Faith Hunter - Bloodring
This is the first of the "Rogue Mage" series, of which there are 3, all 3 of which I had with me. Of the books I read this week, this was my favorite. I could easily have carried on and read all three of them, but I decided that it would be better to spread my trashy reading out across a wider genre spectrum. I do these things for you guys, the readers! It's because I'm noble and self-sacrificing that way.
The premise in these books is interesting. They are set post-apocalypse; the Biblical apocalypse. 150 years prior to the beginning of the books, angels and devils appeared on Earth and duked it out for all the marbles. The angels won, but God didn't show up, and so the angels have been more or less in charge since then. And the angels are kinda dicks - but still better than the devils.
In the midst of the Last War, a group of people appeared/evolved (it's not really clear); neo-mages. They could do magic. They fought on the side of the angels. At the end of the war, the neo-mages were rounded up and put into Enclaves, where they were given licenses and allowed to operate, in a limited sense, in the general population. They are not trusted, their services are expensive, and they cannot operate without the official sanction of the Seraphs (they never call themselves angels). Officially, the Seraphs state that mages do not have souls - they are not "human." This gives them certain leeway, such as the ability to call on aid from Seraphs when deeply injured (among other things).
Thorn St. Croix is an unlicensed mage, living outside of an Enclave (because, it turns out, after the death of her twin sister, living in close proximity with her fellow mages makes her crazy), hidden from her neighbors by powerful talismans. She is only partially trained, and largely cut off from her community, both the community of mages and the community she has chosen to live in. She works, along with a small group of friends, as a stone cutter, making fairly expensive jewelry, of which she sells enough to make a living and maintain a shop and living quarters.
When the daughter (and extended family) of her ex-husband are threatened by an unknown demonic force, Thorn finds herself drawn into the action, even though it may destroy her cover, putting her, and the people she loves, in danger from their neighbors (unlicensed mages are illegal, subject to death; either quickly if the official authorities catch them, or slowly and painfully if the mob does).
The plot is not particularly dense - Thorn gets drawn into fights with demons, she skirts the edges of the law, there is a happy ending - or at least a Happy For Now ending - it's not hugely complex. The world building, however, is entirely delightful. Hunter doles out little snippets of background throughout the book, avoiding entirely the standard info-dump type passages, and leaving the readers guessing for much of the book about what is actually going on with the world. For instance, there is some speculation that the reason God never showed up is that these are not really devils and angels, but rather some advanced alien beings who decided to play with a dominant cultural trope for their own ineffable purposes. Hunter does nothing to resolve this debate, and this is all to the greater narrative good - I was ready to read the next book immediately, not so much to see what happens to Thorn next, but to get a broader understanding of the world that Thorn lives in.
Other things I really liked - Thorn is competent at her day job, Hunter discusses the making of stone (and other) jewelry in some detail, and Thorn's enjoyment of the craft she pursues is realistic and enjoyable. It is not hard to believe that Thorn would regret in the extreme giving up the job of making jewelry in order to be a super hero. The cover art is good - unlike the discussion of the Brigg's covers, Thorn's description of herself matches well with the image on the cover (at least, Thorn's description of herself in full battle gear - we don't get an image of her working as a jeweler). The supporting characters are nice too - Hunter includes a very pleasant gay couple, and a variety of well realized, believably competent other characters of various genders. Thorn is not the only competent figure in the book, surrounded by an army of idiots - this is important, because a) it makes the book more believable and b) it makes Thorn's competence more impressive.
Things I did not like - mages go into "heat" in the presence of Seraphs and the offspring of Seraphs. Thorn manages to control herself, but, seriously, heat? Because they are somehow subhuman? This, I think, is something that will have to be addressed over the trilogy as Thorn becomes increasingly convinced of her own humanity - I can see the series going in that direction, and I think I will be disappointed if it veers off that particular path. Another minor thing - it's not clear on any of the books (or even, and this surprised me, within any of the books) which of the books is the first one. (This is the first one. Amazon confirms it) - each book references the other two books on the cover, and each lists the other two books on the flyleaf (do paperbacks have a flyleaf? I mean on the page between the copyright page and the title page). Trial and error were needed - I had originally picked up the second book, and was lost within a couple of paragraphs - not a trilogy to read out of order, at all.
Kathleen Bacus - Calamity Jayne Rides Again
So, I went from "dark fantasy" to modern romance. This is the second of the Tressa Jayne Turner books by Bacus - and you can totally start here, no problem. Tressa (Calamity) Jayne is a ditzy blonde from Iowa, living in a trailer on her parent's farm, working a couple of jobs, and accidentally blundering into crime solving. This book is set at the Iowa State Fair, where Tressa helps staff her uncle's ice cream concessions. The crime in this book is vandalism of the concessions, presumably in an effort to convince Uncle Fred to sell out and give the prime locations he has held for several years to someone else. Tressa, with a cast of kooky relatives and a pair of competing love interests, blunders her way through the mystery.
This is a mystery novel more than a romance novel - Tressa is far more involved in the solving of the crime than she is in securing a Happily Ever After for herself - I'm not sure that this book even has a Happy For Now ending, really. She starts the book conflicted about the guy she has a love/hate relationship with (an old friend of her brother's, she has discovered that she kinda likes him, because he's good looking, and a good kisser - and that's as far as it's gotten since the last book, where he saved her life). She ends the book torn between Rick (the old guy) and Patrick (the new guy - an Iowa State Trooper who seems more inclined to accept Tressa as she is, and less inclined to try to change her "for her own good"). I think it's fairly obvious that Tressa will ultimately end up with Rick, at least temporarily - but it doesn't happen in this book, and it's going to take at least one more book to resolve one way or the other. The key, I think, is how much Tressa is willing to compromise, and how much Rick is willing to compromise. That book, where they explore each other's feelings more than they explore an unfolding mystery - that book will be a romance. This one was not.
Stuff I liked - Tressa is irrepressible. I enjoy irrepressible characters. Her clan is kooky, and I like kooky too. The book is set at a State Fair, and I'm partial to State Fairs. A lot of the secondary action takes place around fair food - I like fair food. The mystery did not involve a murder - this is highly refreshing.
Things I didn't like - Tressa is entirely too ditzy. When I say she blunders her way through the book - she totally does. She really earns her nickname. This is part of the whole schtick of the book, so it's unavoidable, but it grated a little. Tressa is self deprecating, especially in regards her weight and her eating - this is believable, but mildly depressing. I'd like a confident heroine who eats what she wants and doesn't worry about her weight - especially since Tressa also describes herself as petite, wishes she had bigger boobs - ok, I get that this is intended to be realistic and Everywoman, but I'd rather it wasn't - that is, I'd rather that either a "realistic" Everywoman would be less concerned about body image or that less effort had been taken to make Tressa a realistic Everywoman.
I might read another of these; I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to avoid one, but I'm also not going to rush out to find the next one.
Steven Kent - The Clone Elite
I only got 1/4 of the way into this book. If I had not been trapped on a ferry with nothing else to read, I probably wouldn't have gotten that far. I'm not going to finish it.
The bad news - in the future, people no longer fuck. They speck instead. What I mean to say is, Kent has the members of a united human military cursing thusly - "mudder-specking mudder specker, I'm going to get you!" Ok, I exaggerate for effect, but not by much.
More bad news - in the future, the United States will dominate extra solar-system travel, and will translate that domination into world domination, taking over the globe, and then abandoning everything noble about the political traditions of the US while retaining the most annoying and damaging cultural behaviors. So, democracy dies, but cultural chauvinism survives.
Further bad news - the galaxy is being invaded by giant glowing Space Angels who travel in a nimbus of light. They land on a planet, "sleeve" the planet in what the United Alliance scientists call the "ion curtain," through which no communication can pass, and then move onto the next planet. It is assumed that all the humans on the planet perish in the process, although it has been impossible to confirm this assumption.
Some good news - the United Alliance has a small army of well trained clones with which to confront this threat. The clones don't know that they are clones, and, if alerted to the fact of their cloneness, will instantly die - this seems like a serious design flaw in an army. You could defeat the army with a set of loudspeakers - "think about it for a moment - does it make sense that you are the ONLY natural born human in an army of clones? Ask your neighbor what they think about themselves, go ahead, do it!" and the whole army collapses, dead, on the spot.
This is not the only weakness in the army - the leaders seem to lack any sense of logic, or strategic planning. Our hero (and I use that term loosely) and his fellow clone grunts are the only competent portion of the army - anyone above 1st Lieutenant is clearly superfluous. (This is a common feature of a lot of milfic - the front line grunts are all heroes, and the officers are all REMFs - Rear Echelon Mudder Speckers). A key point - the strategy to stop the Space Angels - defend the next planet in their path. Using 1 million soldiers (imagine Dr. Evil with his finger here). Look, at the end of World War Two, the United States alone had 8.5 million soldiers in the field, defending not the whole planet, but only a few small strategic points. 1 million soldiers, even armed to the teeth with fancy weapons, is not enough to defend a planet - it's not even enough to defend a good sized country. Nonetheless, this army is presented as massive - a huge force, entirely formidable and totally sufficient to stop any alien force coming in from wherever. There's an easy fix here - two, in fact. One, you have someone ask if 1 million soldiers is really enough to do the job, and have someone else say "not really, but it's what we've got left" - this seems to be the tenor of the book anyway, they're recalling clones in their 50s and 60s, but no one ever questions that 1 million soldiers is a lot of soldiers. Two, you have someone, possibly the narrator, comment that 1 million doesn't sound like a lot, but given the current technology - armor, weapons, etc etc, the force multiplier makes 1 million soldiers more like 1 billion, or something of that nature. Less satisfying, but also acceptable. Neither is explicitly stated, but either would fit here. The thing is, the officers are either good natured idiots with no sense of strategy, or ill natured assholes who just don't care - and there is no other option.
A final piece of bad news, and the one which really made me put the book down and take pictures instead, is that, due to UA government colonization policies, race has been eliminated - everyone is white (except for one guy, who is part of a colony of Neo-Baptists, who are, of course, all black) - this is explicitly stated. One of the soldiers says he doesn't trust Freeman, because Freeman is black, and race is supposed to not exist anymore. Oh, except for this neo-Baptist colony, and apparently some of the Catholic colonies still have Italian priests, and there was this one colony of Japanese who were evacuated back to Earth and given the Japanese islands by the UA government - except for those folks, race doesn't exist (which means everyone is white, naturally.)
The premise had potential - the clones could have been metaphors for minorities (like several of the vampires were during Vampire Month), the book could have explored modern issues of warfare in a realistic but comfortably distant way, the Marines could have sworn like Marines.* None of that was true.
I didn't finish the book. I'm not going to finish the book. I was already cheering for the Space Angels, and that's not a good sign in a book like this, because it's fairly clear they're not going to win - Waylon Harris and his buddies will figure out how to kill them after the Specking officers are all dead and everything comes down to the heroic grunt clowns. I mean clones. Unless, of course, the Space Angels get a set of loud speakers; then we're all doomed.
*There is, of course, a long tradition of military fiction in which the soldiers swear without swearing, starting with Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, where the soldiers all said "Fug", and culminating in Farscape's "Frell" and Battlestar Galactica's "Frack" - but all of those were instances of avoiding censorship. Kent is writing in a market and for a medium where it's entirely acceptable to have soldiers say "Fuck," and not get censored - if the books get made into a popular TV show on a network other than Showtime or HBO, then you can come up with some cute alternative. Until then, it just sounds silly.
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