Friday Review, 1/28/2011

(It has been suggested that, if I include an image of the book being reviewed, the break between reviews is cleaner. I'll give it a shot - let me know what you think!)

Scott Lynch - Red Seas Under Red Skies


This is the second of the Locke Lamorra novels. (Amazon tells me that the 3rd one is due out in the middle of February, so not too much longer to wait!) If I were lazy, I'd say that this was Oceans 11 meets Pirates of the Caribbean, and that would be moderately accurate.  There's a casino, and a couple of con men, and also pirates. Locke is not all that far from Jack Sparrow in several scenes - he's a fast talker, he can get other people to cover up his own inadequacies, he likes dressing up - but I think that such a description would seriously cheapen the book, which is considerably deeper than either of those movies.

Ok. First up, I liked the first book better. Much of what I liked about the first book was still present in this book, but not quite to the same extent. Lynch ran out of flashbacks half way through the book - I really liked the conceit in the first book, and was sad when it wasn't continued throughout the second. Where the first book was proud to stand entirely on its own, this book more or less requires a sequel to be complete - good marketing, perhaps, but lacking in chutpah. (That being said, I'm not sure how one might end this book without a cliff hanger ending, so what do I know?) Finally, at the end of the first book, Locke is battered, but arguably triumphant - in this book, not so much.

With that out of the way, I still really really liked this book. It had much of the energy of the first book, and it touched on a lot of the same themes - justice, class warfare, charming rogues and cunning plots, that sort of thing. Further, you could totally read this book without having read the first - Lynch includes many grace notes that reference the first book, but I think they are not so much that, if you started here, you would feel that you missed something.

I especially liked several scenes which present a compelling philosophy of heroism - what does it mean to be a hero? Making hard choices, says Lynch, and being willing to face the consequences of those choices. There were also several scenes which were deeply moving; I may have cried a time or two. If I become emotionally invested in the characters of a book I'm reading, I'd say that it's a pretty good book. In fact, I'm going to go out of something of a limb here and say this: if the third book is as good as the first two, I'm going to have to start watching for these at a price I'm willing to pay.

Taylor Anderson - Destroyermen: Distant Thunders


Anderson is four books into this series of alternative history.*  Midway through World War Two, the USS Walker and the USS Mahan, US destroyers, have found themselves thrown through some sort of portal into a world where humans did not evolve. A world dominated by enormous monsters, both on land and in the sea. A world in which the most prominent sentient species are a group of highly evolved lemurs (the Lemurians) and a group of highly evolved lizard critters (the Grik). The Grik seek to control the planet, and eat anything that gets in their way. The Lemurians become critical allies for the American sailors, who help repel a major assault by the Grik, who have human assistance of their own - from the crew of the Japanese cruiser, Amagi.

In this book, things have become more complicated. There have clearly been several groups of humans from our world who have wandered into this new world, and they've started to have some sort of an influence. The Americans find themselves forced to deal with citizens of New Britain, a colony founded by remnants of an East Indian Company expedition, established on Hawaii. Alliances become complex, and the things which were black and white in the first trilogy suddenly seem less so in this book.

Ok. It's not great literature, but it's an interesting read. Taylor has done his research on the ships of World War Two, and has clearly thought about the attitudes and behaviors of his human protagonists, based on their historical contexts. (Some of this is a little off putting - Americans in the early 1940s were not exactly enlightened as regards gender equality, for instance)  He's also put a great deal of thought into the world he's developing - there is depth there, and complexity. There is a strong element of war porn - lots of loving descriptions of specific weapons and what they are capable of - and towards the end of the last trilogy I was getting an icky sense that the Grik existed so that Taylor could have his protagonists slaughter enemies without Taylor feeling guilty about having his protagonists slaughter enemies.  That icky sense is largely mitigated in this book - Taylor offers considerable nuance as his characters have some luxury of thought away from the confines of impending doom. Also, Taylor's characters develop nicely here - it's easy, I think, to have flat characters in a series like this, but Taylor continues to provide layers for his characters. So, good writing, good characters, lots of action and adventure, and giant fish. It's fun.

I would say, though, that I don't think you could reasonably start reading with this book - there's a lot of backstory that won't make sense if you don't start at the beginning.

Two final things. First, needs more maps. Taylor provides some; and in the past, there have been more - also, the maps come more or less where they are relevant in the book, which minimizes flipping back and forth between the front of the book and where you are reading. Still, there were several times when I wanted to know more accurately where things were happening - the Pacific Ocean is a big place, and narrowing things down a bit would have been nice. Second, Taylor seems to be introducing new ships and crews and such from our world with each book - that's going to get a little old if it continues. It already feels a little like deus ex machina - if the characters can't succeed without additional infusions of modern technology, perhaps they are not doing it right.

*is it alt-hist, though? I'm not sure. I think I described it as "folks from here sent off to somewhere that history went entirely different," so I'm not really sure it qualifies. Clearly, I need to define my terms. I'd say that alt-hist suggests a novel set entirely within a history not our own - Harry Turtledove comes to mind, as does Cherie Priest - and this represents something different. I'll have to think about it.

Cassandra Clare - City of Bones


I read the prequel to this some weeks ago - The Clockwork Angel - and I liked it enough to pick up the first part of the original trilogy. It's a YA novel in the urban fantasy genre. It has a spunky female lead, and she doesn't fall in love with the vampires. There's considerable action, lots of secrets and running around New York with shadowy denizens of the shadows, fighting against other shadowy figures. The plot was fairly twisty. Although Clare telegraphed a lot of her twists well ahead of time, there were a couple of plot twists I didn't see coming, which is always nice.

This book is deeply rooted in the experience of being 15, and I think you need to approach it with that in mind. There was a great scene early in the book where one of the supporting characters presents some truly awful poetry - one of the other characters suggests that it sounds like the poet has eaten a dictionary and is now vomiting up words. This made me wince a little as I thought about the poetry I was writing when I was 15 - it sounded very much the same. With your inner 15 year old firmly in charge, however, you may find this to be an amusing book. My wife has requested that I bring home the next two books, so watch for reviews of them as well.

Next week - Blood and Honey Month begins!

Friday Review Post, 1/14/2011

I read a lot of books this past week. Next week, I start teaching again, so my average should go down.

Charles de Lint - Waifs and Strays


The last bit of de Lint week from last week.  As I mentioned, this book references and interview I did with Mr. de Lint, although my name is misspelled.

This is a collection of YA short stories.  De Lint likes to write short stories - there are several collections - and this is a collection of older works featuring young adults.  He explains in his introduction that he doesn't write stories specifically for young adults, but feels that his work probably appeals to a broad range.

There is one new work in this collection, but the rest had already been published elsewhere.  That means that this represents an interesting cross section of de Lint's growth as an author. The stories become increasingly character driven the further into the collection you get and the further from "traditional" fantasy de Lint gets (although there is a story in a "traditional" fantasy setting, and one in a rare sci fi setting as well - there's even a story which has nothing fantastical about it at all; great characters, but no magic.). Because I spent several of my formative years in Ottawa, I especially like the Ottawa stories, which take place in and around parts of the city and nearby country that I know and recognize.  Ottawa, I think, is an under exploited narrative setting, I'd love to see more books set there.

Anyway, last week I suggested some places to start reading de Lint's work, and this is an excellent place to start.  This is a broad selection of works, touching on a range of topics and a range of characters.  There's not a lot of continuity to worry about - you aren't going to meet lots of characters that have lengthy back stories, for instance - and you should be able to track back to a set of short stories or novels that you liked best - the Ottawa stories, or the Newford stories, or something else, perhaps.  De Lint plays with fairy tale tropes - no, that's not quite right, actually. More like, there's a strong feeling of fairy tale about these stories. If you like fairy tales, you'll probably like this collection, with the proviso that they are a little darker than Disney, much closer to the original Brother's Grimm.


Graham Moore - The Sherlockian


So, I needed to finish this one over the weekend, because it was due back, and had a hold on it, so I could not renew.  The premise is interesting, this is actually two short novels woven around each other.  In the modern setting, Harold White (a young fan of Sherlock Holmes) attempts to track down the killer of a fellow Sherlockian.  In the historical setting, Arthur Conan Doyle, shortly after killing off Sherlock Holmes, attempts to track down the person who mailed him a letter bomb, and solve a series of grisly murders at the same time.

I found the book entertaining enough. The two mysteries were sufficiently complex to hold my attention, and  the historical touches were well done. At the same time, over the past three or so years, I've read a novel about Ian Fleming working as a spy, about Oscar Wilde solving a crime and I'm pretty sure there was something about Bram Stoker doing something with vampires - it's getting hard to be a dead white guy. People keep digging you up and sending you off on adventures. (Stoker plays a secondary role in this book, btw, but no vampires that I saw.) I guess what I'm saying is that the Doyle half of the story was nice, but I'm not sure it was necessary. I'm not sure it added anything spectacular to the work. It didn't take anything away, though, and I did enjoy the read.

Two things more.  First, Moore has a scene where Doyle, an ardent opponent of granting the right to vote to women, is more convinced by arguments of conservative suffragettes (if government is going to meddle in the affairs of women, like education and child rearing, then women should be allowed to vote) than radicals (women should be allowed to vote because they have a natural right to do so).  This was an interesting observation, although not necessarily good strategy - Doyle never became a supporter of women's suffrage. Better to go radical and keep your rhetorical options open.

Second, this book was published by Twelve Publishing, which pledges to publish and market only one book a month, thus ensuring that they publish only the best works available and market it as effectively as possible. The purpose of this, says the company, is to produce books which further the national conversation.  I'm not entirely sure how this book furthers the national conversation - other works that the company has published touch on religion, and politics, on race/ethnicity, on the environment, on war, and a whole myriad of other meaty topics, some presented more reverently than others. I'm just not sure how this work fits with the rest of their catalogue - is there a burning desire to talk about Sherlock Holmes right now?

Anyway, it was a fun book, and intelligent, worth a read.


Rick Riordan - The Titan's Curse


After the heavier stuff I read last week and earlier this week, I wanted something to cleanse my palate. This book was perfect for that, a little fluffy while still well written; not too deep or too complex, but fun, and short. This is the third of the Olympians books, which follow the adventures of Perseus (Percy) Jackson and his fellow offspring of the classical Greek gods. Olympus is in New York; Hades is in Los Angeles, the Titans are imprisoned off the coast of San Francisco, Las Vegas is the Lotus Land - Riordan has clearly had a good time writing these, and that makes them good fun to read too. If you've got a young adolescent reader in the family, I'd toss these at them (if they haven't found them already by themselves!)


Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamora


This book was the high point of my week.  Rushputin and Arashi recommended it, and they were right on the money.  This is a caper novel (the plot involves a group of con artists practicing their art - a genre for which I have much love) set in a well realized fantasy setting. What's not to enjoy?

Oh, but it's so much better than that. Lynch has a delightfully dark and sarcastic tone. His characters are marvelously witty (and they know it!), and there were several places where I literally laughed out loud. The book isn't humorous, however - if there is comedy, it's very much gallows comedy; Lynch's characters are in dire, desperate straights for most of the novel.  Lynch clearly draws from the "put the characters in peril, and keep them there" school of writing - which I enjoy as well.

So. Dark humor, witty characters, lots of peril, delightful con artists too smart for their own good - what more could you want?  How about excellent world-building?  Lynch has written a deep and well thought out fantasy setting, full of well realized nuance and interesting cul de sacs. He reveals this world through a very well done series of flash backs, each revealing a minor plot point just before it becomes important in the next chapter - but wrapping that plot point in enough extra material that you aren't sure which bit to be watching for - delightful! By doing this, he avoids needless exposition - "surely you know that this is such and so!", and invites the readers to explore the world as his characters are doing likewise. This is just superb writing craft. Makes me jealous.

That's it. Enjoyable fantasy, plus enjoyable caper novel, all rolled together with wit and good craft - a must read, I think. In addition to that, despite the fact that there is a sequel (which, you will note, I have a copy of to read in the near future), this book is complete in and of itself, no cliff hangers, no dangling loose ends. That, my readers, is confidence - Lynch doesn't feel the need to trick his readers into picking up the next book.  He trusts that readers will be sufficiently engaged with the world and the characters that they will want to investigate further, but he's not going to force the issue. You could, he suggests, stop reading right here, and pretend that Locke Lamora's adventures are over, but if you wanted to see where Lamora goes next, well...