You know what my problem is? My problem is that I'm lazy. I was going to do some sort of April Fools type thing, where I said I was going to switch the format of the blog from reviewing books to doing, I don't know, stock tips - but it seemed like a lot of work, and I can't even reliably post on the schedule that no one is actually holding me to, so.
Anyway. I read books this week.
Elizabeth Moon - The Echoes of Betrayal
The most recent of the Pakesenarrion books. These continue to be excellent books, strong writing, fantastic characters, especially the women. This one was a little slow, I thought. I finally decided that it was slow because it isn't the last book in the trilogy, it's the third book in a four book series. (Hopefully four books - the internet doesn't say one way or the other) As such, it suffers, a little, from middle book syndrome - there's material that needs to be gotten through in order to arrive at the climax, but the climax is postponed until a later book. It's still good, but I felt it dragged a little in the middle.
Trigger warning - there is a scene of miscarriage.
Jo Walton - Among Others
This is Walton's semi-autobiographical novel about growing up as a sci fi reading girl in Wales and England. It is a fantasy story, involving fairies (perhaps) and magic (perhaps), but what it really is is a love letter to the science fiction genre, and to libraries, and to fandom. The tone is highly confessional, and felt very true to the 14 year old protagonist. The story is related via diary entries, and the book is peppered with references to the books that Mori is reading - almost entirely science fiction, with some Plato thrown in for good measure. It's set at the end of 1979 and the beginning of 1980, which was a good period for sci fi.
The plot hinges on the existence of fairies and the ability of some people to do magic. However, the fairies are difficult to pin down, and magic, as presented in the book, is entirely circumstantial. In the opening scene of the book, Mori and her sister put some flowers into a pool of water outside an iron works, in order to rid the taint of the factory. The next day, the newspapers announce that the iron works will be closing down. Is there a causal relationship between the flowers and the decision by the company to shutter the factory? Mori and her sister think so, but the only evidence they can offer is that the fairies told them to put the flowers into the water, and Mori and her sister are the only ones who can see and hear the fairies. So.
That all sounds fiendishly complicated, but, really, the book is not about the plot - the plot exists to provide structure to the aforementioned love letter. Which is delightful (or, as Mori and her friends say, Brill!), and entirely worth reading - assuming that you are able to tap into your inner 14 year old geek fan - the sort of reader who, when confronted with a review which suggests that Lord Foul's Bane is "like Tolkien at his best!", becomes incensed, because nothing could possibly come close to Tolkien. (I had a friend who refused to read The Fionavar Tapestry because of such a review.) That is the heart of the book, that uncomplicated love of finding new books by old favorites, and then sharing them with others. The fairies? Entirely incidental, as they should be.
Trigger warning - a scene of near incest.
Zoran Drvenkar - Sorry
This is a German import. The premise is that four friends form a company which apologizes on behalf of other companies - offering the right words to employees unfairly fired, defusing complicated situations with hostile takeovers, that sort of thing. The four say what the executives ought to have said, but were unable to. They are good at it. And then, a serial killer learns about their company, and decides that this is exactly what he needs to begin his first killing spree - someone to apologize to his victims for him.
The premise was encouraging, but perhaps the book loses something in translation. First, the narrative shifts from first person (I, me) to second person (you) to third person (he, she, they), which is disconcerting (especially since the serial killer bits are in second person, as if the reader is some how complicit in the murder - ugh.)
Second, it's a revenge book as much as it is a mystery novel. The serial killer is "justified" in his actions, because he is exacting revenge for fairly heinous wrongs committed against him when he was a child. The presentation of his justification is unpleasant and fairly graphic (you can consider this a trigger warning), and seems unnecessary in its length, and its placement in the novel - it removes the mystery from the story, turning this from a detective novel into a horror thriller. The only mystery becomes "how many of the 4 friends will die before the novel ends?" - which is horrible in its own right, since the four friends had nothing to do with the crimes against the killer in the first place.
I did not finish this book.
Lenten book:
Dan Berger, Chesa Boudin, and Kenyon Farrow, eds - Letters from Young Activists
I picked this up for free somewhere. Following the 2004 elections, Berger, Boudin, and Farrow, upset at the state of the radical youth movement, decided to marshal the troops. They solicited and collected letters from a wide range of leftist radicals - labor radicals, and gender warriors, and elements of the QUILTBAG movement, and immigrant rights advocates, and race warriors, and just a whole rainbow of young, passionate authors struggling for equality on many levels. This collection is the result. The letters are hopeful, and despairing. They are wise, and naive. They are angry, and loving, and sad, and joyful. The letters encourage, and excoriate. In short, there's a lot in this book, and much - indeed, most - of it is delightful on one level or another. It's well worth a read.
That being said, I won't be hanging onto this book. It was a delight to read, but it does not, as the Quakers say, speak to my condition - I am, perhaps, too old (I'm over 30, and thus can't be trusted!). While I appreciate and support the views expressed by the letter writers, my activism is differently focused. I shall put it where it will do the most good - on the free book table on campus. Perhaps some young radical will be inspired - I can hope.
Showing posts with label Moon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moon. Show all posts
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Friday, May 20, 2011
Friday Review, 5/20/2011
Four books this week, although, to be fair, I had almost finished one of them last Friday.
Elizabeth Moon - Kings of the North
This is the sequel to Oath of Fealty, which was the first book in a new trilogy featuring Paksenarrion. Except, not really featuring her at all, just in the same world. She makes a brief cameo in this book, which is mostly about Kieri Phelan, struggling with his new duties as king of Lyonna, Dorrin Verrakai, struggling with her new duties as Duke Verrakai, and Jandelir Arcolin, struggling with his new duties as commander of Phelan's former mercenary company.
This is very much the second book in a trilogy. It has a satisfying narrative of its own, but it's clear that the overall narrative is connected fore and aft to the first and last books in the trilogy. I would not recommend, at all, picking this book up without first reading Oath of Fealty - I might even suggest that you re-read the first book before starting this one, if it's been a while.
Plotwise, there's a lot of politics here; diplomats negotiating marriages, kings balancing advisors, that sort of thing. There's action as well - Arcolin continues to fight against bandits, there's some sword fighting, there's a forest fire, an surprising assassin or two - but the heart of the book is politics. And that's great - this is a much more mature novel than any of the first trilogy. Political novels are tricky to write, I think, because you have to keep the pace up while nothing physical is going on. So, in that regard, excellent.
I was concerned going in that the novel would be scarred somehow by Moon's regrettable statements about the Park 51 Islamic Center. I think, ultimately, the only thing that the whole thing spoiled was my ability to read easily - if there's a screed in the book, it's very subtle, and I missed it. The novel remains full of the things I like about Moon's writing - deep complex characters, especially women; a celebration of choice and free will, especially for women; and, above all, a compelling story with a lot of threads leading in a lot of different directions. Existing fans of Moon will, I think, be pleased.
Scott Nicholson - Everyone Plays at the Library
Nicholson invites us to see the library as more than just a place to get books. He suggests that the library is a social forum, and that playing games is one of the things we do in social forums. He states that we've been playing games (like chess, checkers, and Scrabble) in libraries almost as long as there have been libraries in the US. He then presents a number of different sorts of games, rating them based on how well he thinks they would fit in a library setting. He ends by suggesting a number of ways in which different sorts of games can be integrated into the mission of a library.
The premise was interesting, and the presentation is very professional. As a library advocate, I found the work valuable. As a reader, however, it was a little dry, and as a game player I found a lot ... not to disagree with, I guess, but to quibble over. Games that, perhaps, I felt would work better, or less well. Nothing egregious, just the sort of things that gamers like to debate - this game is clearly superior to that game because of a,b, and q. So, interesting to an extent (especially for those involved or invested in public libraries), but not exactly a page turner - a good starting point, and a valuable reference.
Maria V. Snyder - Poison Study
A delicious political novel, with nice world building, and a little taste of romance. Yelena is scheduled to be executed for killing the son of a General. She is offered a choice - she can hang, or she can take a job as food taster for the Commander of Ixia (the nation she lives in); ensuring that his food is not poisoned. She takes the job, and discovers that there is a great deal of danger in the job, not all of which has to do with poison in the food.
The world is interesting - Ixia, previously a kingdom, is currently run by the Commander, who took power in a coup. He has imposed a fairly harsh order on society - everyone wears a uniform, everyone works at a designated job, movement is restricted, killing anyone for any reason is a death sentence - but there are suggestions that this order is greatly preferable to the random chaos that existed under the king, where citizens were killed at the whim of the aristocracy, people starved and froze in the streets for lack of clothing or employment, and there was no justice. The ambiguity of the situation was compelling - everything is grey, there is no clear black or white in Snyder's world. Compelling and entertaining.
There is magic here as well - banned in Ixia, but prominent in Ixia's neighbors - and that is, perhaps, less well explained. (I suspect that a full exploration of the magic system will come in the sequel, Magic Study). Still, the book has a great deal that I like - strong female characters, compelling plot, dark politics, devious intrigue, and a touch of romance - I'll be picking up the sequel.
Trigger warnings - torture and (mostly offstage) rape.
Michael Capuzzo - The Murder Room
This was not a great book. I'm just going to lead with that. Capuzzo is telling the (non-fiction) story of the Vidocq Society - a group of 82 forensic experts and dogged crime solvers named after E.F. Vidocq, the father of the Surete in France (and the inspiration for the first detective novels by Edgar Allen Poe, and by Arthur Conan Doyle). The club, based in Philadelphia, brings together experts to solve cold cases - murders which have not been solved for over two years. Police, and the parents and loved ones of victims, bring the cases to the Society who look into the case and provide advice which sometimes results in catching the killer.
So. Not a great book. Capuzzo's writing style is a little off putting. He likes to use little cute phrases to describe people - not all the time, because that would make the book unreadable, but often enough that it's awkward. Also, he plays games with chronology - he'll introduce a case in a chapter, then move onto another case in the next chapter, then return to the earlier case in the chapter after that - distracting. Finally, the subject material is unpleasant. Most of the cases involve very violent murders, and the book features serial killers, sexual sadism, child abuse, and any number of other unpleasantness. Consider that a trigger warning - the subject matter is unavoidable, because it's all pervasive. The Society doesn't get asked to solve simple murders where the murderer is easy to finger and the motive is fairly simple to discern - they get called in to solve complex cases where the motive is murky and the killer is playing games with the cops.
Finally, I really didn't connect with the Society members that Capuzzo chose to highlight. They were, in their own ways, psychologically off - the suspicion is that they are able to catch serial killers because, save for some indefinable elements of personal history, they could have gone down that path themselves.
So, icky subject matter, off-putting characters, and a distracting narrative style. All in all, not my thing - not bad, but not a great book. When I picked the book up, I noted that it could be dreadful - I don't know that I would go quite as far as that, but it's certainly not my new favorite.
Elizabeth Moon - Kings of the North
This is the sequel to Oath of Fealty, which was the first book in a new trilogy featuring Paksenarrion. Except, not really featuring her at all, just in the same world. She makes a brief cameo in this book, which is mostly about Kieri Phelan, struggling with his new duties as king of Lyonna, Dorrin Verrakai, struggling with her new duties as Duke Verrakai, and Jandelir Arcolin, struggling with his new duties as commander of Phelan's former mercenary company.
This is very much the second book in a trilogy. It has a satisfying narrative of its own, but it's clear that the overall narrative is connected fore and aft to the first and last books in the trilogy. I would not recommend, at all, picking this book up without first reading Oath of Fealty - I might even suggest that you re-read the first book before starting this one, if it's been a while.
Plotwise, there's a lot of politics here; diplomats negotiating marriages, kings balancing advisors, that sort of thing. There's action as well - Arcolin continues to fight against bandits, there's some sword fighting, there's a forest fire, an surprising assassin or two - but the heart of the book is politics. And that's great - this is a much more mature novel than any of the first trilogy. Political novels are tricky to write, I think, because you have to keep the pace up while nothing physical is going on. So, in that regard, excellent.
I was concerned going in that the novel would be scarred somehow by Moon's regrettable statements about the Park 51 Islamic Center. I think, ultimately, the only thing that the whole thing spoiled was my ability to read easily - if there's a screed in the book, it's very subtle, and I missed it. The novel remains full of the things I like about Moon's writing - deep complex characters, especially women; a celebration of choice and free will, especially for women; and, above all, a compelling story with a lot of threads leading in a lot of different directions. Existing fans of Moon will, I think, be pleased.
Scott Nicholson - Everyone Plays at the Library
Nicholson invites us to see the library as more than just a place to get books. He suggests that the library is a social forum, and that playing games is one of the things we do in social forums. He states that we've been playing games (like chess, checkers, and Scrabble) in libraries almost as long as there have been libraries in the US. He then presents a number of different sorts of games, rating them based on how well he thinks they would fit in a library setting. He ends by suggesting a number of ways in which different sorts of games can be integrated into the mission of a library.
The premise was interesting, and the presentation is very professional. As a library advocate, I found the work valuable. As a reader, however, it was a little dry, and as a game player I found a lot ... not to disagree with, I guess, but to quibble over. Games that, perhaps, I felt would work better, or less well. Nothing egregious, just the sort of things that gamers like to debate - this game is clearly superior to that game because of a,b, and q. So, interesting to an extent (especially for those involved or invested in public libraries), but not exactly a page turner - a good starting point, and a valuable reference.
Maria V. Snyder - Poison Study
A delicious political novel, with nice world building, and a little taste of romance. Yelena is scheduled to be executed for killing the son of a General. She is offered a choice - she can hang, or she can take a job as food taster for the Commander of Ixia (the nation she lives in); ensuring that his food is not poisoned. She takes the job, and discovers that there is a great deal of danger in the job, not all of which has to do with poison in the food.
The world is interesting - Ixia, previously a kingdom, is currently run by the Commander, who took power in a coup. He has imposed a fairly harsh order on society - everyone wears a uniform, everyone works at a designated job, movement is restricted, killing anyone for any reason is a death sentence - but there are suggestions that this order is greatly preferable to the random chaos that existed under the king, where citizens were killed at the whim of the aristocracy, people starved and froze in the streets for lack of clothing or employment, and there was no justice. The ambiguity of the situation was compelling - everything is grey, there is no clear black or white in Snyder's world. Compelling and entertaining.
There is magic here as well - banned in Ixia, but prominent in Ixia's neighbors - and that is, perhaps, less well explained. (I suspect that a full exploration of the magic system will come in the sequel, Magic Study). Still, the book has a great deal that I like - strong female characters, compelling plot, dark politics, devious intrigue, and a touch of romance - I'll be picking up the sequel.
Trigger warnings - torture and (mostly offstage) rape.
Michael Capuzzo - The Murder Room
This was not a great book. I'm just going to lead with that. Capuzzo is telling the (non-fiction) story of the Vidocq Society - a group of 82 forensic experts and dogged crime solvers named after E.F. Vidocq, the father of the Surete in France (and the inspiration for the first detective novels by Edgar Allen Poe, and by Arthur Conan Doyle). The club, based in Philadelphia, brings together experts to solve cold cases - murders which have not been solved for over two years. Police, and the parents and loved ones of victims, bring the cases to the Society who look into the case and provide advice which sometimes results in catching the killer.
So. Not a great book. Capuzzo's writing style is a little off putting. He likes to use little cute phrases to describe people - not all the time, because that would make the book unreadable, but often enough that it's awkward. Also, he plays games with chronology - he'll introduce a case in a chapter, then move onto another case in the next chapter, then return to the earlier case in the chapter after that - distracting. Finally, the subject material is unpleasant. Most of the cases involve very violent murders, and the book features serial killers, sexual sadism, child abuse, and any number of other unpleasantness. Consider that a trigger warning - the subject matter is unavoidable, because it's all pervasive. The Society doesn't get asked to solve simple murders where the murderer is easy to finger and the motive is fairly simple to discern - they get called in to solve complex cases where the motive is murky and the killer is playing games with the cops.
Finally, I really didn't connect with the Society members that Capuzzo chose to highlight. They were, in their own ways, psychologically off - the suspicion is that they are able to catch serial killers because, save for some indefinable elements of personal history, they could have gone down that path themselves.
So, icky subject matter, off-putting characters, and a distracting narrative style. All in all, not my thing - not bad, but not a great book. When I picked the book up, I noted that it could be dreadful - I don't know that I would go quite as far as that, but it's certainly not my new favorite.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Friday Reviews for 6/4/10
Elizabeth Moon - The Deed of Paksenarrion
This is one of my very favorite collection of books (there are 3 - Sheepfarmer's Daughter, Divided Allegience, and Oath of Gold). It is due to these books that I met and married my wife. I recognized a name she was using in an online game, if you must know.
According to internet rumor, Moon's intention in writing the books was to show how a paladin should behave. She had been observing a group of role players (probably Dungeons and Dragons) and felt that they were playing the role of paladin incorrectly. These books were her response. They tell the story of a farm girl who joins a mercenary unit, and eventually becomes a paladin. The middle book in particular seems to draw very heavily from role playing games - the first half feels very much like a role playing campaign, especially the bit where Paksenarrion (the fighter), along with a rogue, a cleric, and a couple of other fighters clear out an underground fortification with traps and orcs and an evil mage. Makes me want to break out my d20.
In these books, Moon excels at world building. There is considerable detail about the sort of terrain her soldiers are marching over, and what sort of clothing people wear in different places, and the architecture and agriculture of various locales. She carefully describes the relationship between various nations, fantasy races, and religious groups. She's thought out what sorts of weapons different military units might use, and how those would interact with each other, it's all quite brilliant. Her characterization, however, is less strong in these, her first three books. Paksenarrion, of course, is well rendered, and Duke Phelan, certainly towards the end, is quite well presented as well. Most of the rest of the characters are relatively thin - some are stronger than others, but few are well rounded. Even moderately significant characters do not get last names, for instance. Moon kills off secondary characters in order to display a reaction from her primary characters - she is not callous about this, mostly, but there is a strong sense of "Paks is the one you readers should care about, the rest of these people are window dressing to make Paks look good." There is a scene, or a string of scenes, which still bother me - Paks ends up joining a holy order, and it always feels a little forced - Moon wants Paks in a particular place at a particular time, and pushes until the characters match the narrative.
Since publishing these books, Moon has gone on to become a fantastic author. These books are amazing, despite the minor flaws; later books are simply better.
Things I like: nostalgia, fantastic and consistent world building, strong story telling. Things I like less: weak secondary and (especially) tertiary characters, that one scene in Fin Panir.
Michael Thomas Ford - Jane Bites Back
This was a hoot. Ford's premise - Jane Austen did not die, she became a vampire. Now, she sells books in Upstate New York, while trying to find a publisher for the last novel she wrote when she was alive, which is rapidly becoming the most rejected novel in the history of writing. Ford writes a delightful send-up of the cynicism of modern publishing; the publicity campaigns, the shallow focus on best seller lists, the current practice of mining classic literature for quick profit (the Jane Austen Cookbook! the Jane Austen Workout Plan! the Jane Austen Guide to Dating!), the crap which bookstores stock which are only very tangentially related to books (bookmarks, ok. finger puppets of famous authors, less ok.). It was a fun novel, a romp, and a very quick read. I enjoyed it a lot.
Elizabeth Moon's Oath of Fealty
This is why I was re-reading the other Moon novels. Oath of Fealty starts amidst the end of Oath of Gold, and goes ALL over the place from there. Moon says she's been thinking about this novel, or series of novels, since she finished The Deed of Paksenarrion, and that's probably true. Her other pair of novels within this setting, The Legacy of Gird (which I reviewed a week or so ago), fills in some important background material for this novel. Moon suggests that this novel can serve as an alternative entry point into the world - I'm not sure that this is true, but if you haven't read the earlier work, perhaps it is. If you have read the earlier work, you'll probably want to go back and re-read before starting this one.
This book is fantastic. Beyond fantastic. Moon is a much more mature author here, and it shows in a lot of ways. She has a fully realized world, and has some partially realized secondary and tertiary characters from her earlier books - she takes those characters and starts rounding them out in all manner of delightful ways. First, they get full names - not a minor issue, really. We see Duke Phelan (spoiler for The Deed here: Phelan is revealed to be the long lost king of Lyonya. Becoming the new king unexpectedly is difficult, especially when the kingdom is evenly divided between humans and elves, who do not see eye to eye on many things, and have entirely different views on how kingdoms ought to be run. It is this new situation which Phelan must address, and in doing so, his character grows in interesting ways.) deal with a new situation. We see Jandolir Arcolin leading a mercenary company, and exploring the differences in which he does things, and the different social terrain he has to handle. We also see Dorrin Verrakai dealing with the residual unpleasantness of her family as she starts to grow in some interesting an unexpected ways. Finally, in a much smaller sense, we see a new Prince learning the ropes, and an old sergeant feeling his way into a new life. These characters get to experience lives only loosely connected to Paks (who shows up, periodically, but is in no way the primary focus of the novel). Moon continues to explore her world, filling in gaps, telling stories about how things work in different places and at different social levels. She also continues her exploration of the struggle between good and evil (and does so without making either good or evil boring, which is a neat trick). She also pulls off a brilliant bit of writing in that she looks at three different protagonists in three different locales, and does so without a) switching back and forth with each chapter or b) making the reader wish that they were reading about one of the other protagonists. There is only one point where the transition between protagonists is rough - she transitions mid chapter, and it's a bit jarring - but otherwise, Moon pulls off a very difficult literary maneuver, and does it with style. I enjoyed this book intensely, it was well worth the wait. My only regret is that now I have to wait for the next one.
This is one of my very favorite collection of books (there are 3 - Sheepfarmer's Daughter, Divided Allegience, and Oath of Gold). It is due to these books that I met and married my wife. I recognized a name she was using in an online game, if you must know.
According to internet rumor, Moon's intention in writing the books was to show how a paladin should behave. She had been observing a group of role players (probably Dungeons and Dragons) and felt that they were playing the role of paladin incorrectly. These books were her response. They tell the story of a farm girl who joins a mercenary unit, and eventually becomes a paladin. The middle book in particular seems to draw very heavily from role playing games - the first half feels very much like a role playing campaign, especially the bit where Paksenarrion (the fighter), along with a rogue, a cleric, and a couple of other fighters clear out an underground fortification with traps and orcs and an evil mage. Makes me want to break out my d20.
In these books, Moon excels at world building. There is considerable detail about the sort of terrain her soldiers are marching over, and what sort of clothing people wear in different places, and the architecture and agriculture of various locales. She carefully describes the relationship between various nations, fantasy races, and religious groups. She's thought out what sorts of weapons different military units might use, and how those would interact with each other, it's all quite brilliant. Her characterization, however, is less strong in these, her first three books. Paksenarrion, of course, is well rendered, and Duke Phelan, certainly towards the end, is quite well presented as well. Most of the rest of the characters are relatively thin - some are stronger than others, but few are well rounded. Even moderately significant characters do not get last names, for instance. Moon kills off secondary characters in order to display a reaction from her primary characters - she is not callous about this, mostly, but there is a strong sense of "Paks is the one you readers should care about, the rest of these people are window dressing to make Paks look good." There is a scene, or a string of scenes, which still bother me - Paks ends up joining a holy order, and it always feels a little forced - Moon wants Paks in a particular place at a particular time, and pushes until the characters match the narrative.
Since publishing these books, Moon has gone on to become a fantastic author. These books are amazing, despite the minor flaws; later books are simply better.
Things I like: nostalgia, fantastic and consistent world building, strong story telling. Things I like less: weak secondary and (especially) tertiary characters, that one scene in Fin Panir.
Michael Thomas Ford - Jane Bites Back
This was a hoot. Ford's premise - Jane Austen did not die, she became a vampire. Now, she sells books in Upstate New York, while trying to find a publisher for the last novel she wrote when she was alive, which is rapidly becoming the most rejected novel in the history of writing. Ford writes a delightful send-up of the cynicism of modern publishing; the publicity campaigns, the shallow focus on best seller lists, the current practice of mining classic literature for quick profit (the Jane Austen Cookbook! the Jane Austen Workout Plan! the Jane Austen Guide to Dating!), the crap which bookstores stock which are only very tangentially related to books (bookmarks, ok. finger puppets of famous authors, less ok.). It was a fun novel, a romp, and a very quick read. I enjoyed it a lot.
Elizabeth Moon's Oath of Fealty
This is why I was re-reading the other Moon novels. Oath of Fealty starts amidst the end of Oath of Gold, and goes ALL over the place from there. Moon says she's been thinking about this novel, or series of novels, since she finished The Deed of Paksenarrion, and that's probably true. Her other pair of novels within this setting, The Legacy of Gird (which I reviewed a week or so ago), fills in some important background material for this novel. Moon suggests that this novel can serve as an alternative entry point into the world - I'm not sure that this is true, but if you haven't read the earlier work, perhaps it is. If you have read the earlier work, you'll probably want to go back and re-read before starting this one.
This book is fantastic. Beyond fantastic. Moon is a much more mature author here, and it shows in a lot of ways. She has a fully realized world, and has some partially realized secondary and tertiary characters from her earlier books - she takes those characters and starts rounding them out in all manner of delightful ways. First, they get full names - not a minor issue, really. We see Duke Phelan (spoiler for The Deed here: Phelan is revealed to be the long lost king of Lyonya. Becoming the new king unexpectedly is difficult, especially when the kingdom is evenly divided between humans and elves, who do not see eye to eye on many things, and have entirely different views on how kingdoms ought to be run. It is this new situation which Phelan must address, and in doing so, his character grows in interesting ways.) deal with a new situation. We see Jandolir Arcolin leading a mercenary company, and exploring the differences in which he does things, and the different social terrain he has to handle. We also see Dorrin Verrakai dealing with the residual unpleasantness of her family as she starts to grow in some interesting an unexpected ways. Finally, in a much smaller sense, we see a new Prince learning the ropes, and an old sergeant feeling his way into a new life. These characters get to experience lives only loosely connected to Paks (who shows up, periodically, but is in no way the primary focus of the novel). Moon continues to explore her world, filling in gaps, telling stories about how things work in different places and at different social levels. She also continues her exploration of the struggle between good and evil (and does so without making either good or evil boring, which is a neat trick). She also pulls off a brilliant bit of writing in that she looks at three different protagonists in three different locales, and does so without a) switching back and forth with each chapter or b) making the reader wish that they were reading about one of the other protagonists. There is only one point where the transition between protagonists is rough - she transitions mid chapter, and it's a bit jarring - but otherwise, Moon pulls off a very difficult literary maneuver, and does it with style. I enjoyed this book intensely, it was well worth the wait. My only regret is that now I have to wait for the next one.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Book Reviews for Friday, 5/21/2010
Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling
Book Two of Shadows of the Apt. Oooo, I do like these books a great deal. Tchaikovsky is addressing all manner of deep and important things here about loyalty, friendship, adulthood, war, empire, technology... All sorts of good things here. The march of the Wasp Empire continues, Collegium falls under siege, our principle characters are forced to make some difficult decisions about who they are, what they want, and where they see themselves in the world. A couple of things I liked most especially:
1) the contrast between Collegium and the Wasp Empire. Both are dominated by "apt" folks - both can use technology, but they treat technology differently. The masters of Collegium are excited by technology, and constantly seek to develop new things and new ways of doing things. This results in a chaotic technology. The Wasp Empire sees technology as a means to an end; a way to speed things up, but not something to be pursued for its own sake. The closest comparison I can think of - and it's not a great comparison, really - is the US and Japan during WWII. The US War Department had an office devoted to accepting, evaluating, and responding to various voluntary ideas for weapons and techniques.[1] There's a scene in the book where a huge number of proposed defenses for Collegium are described, each master has his own pet device that he wants to see mounted on the walls or tossed into the skies, or launched into the harbor - this struck me as similar to the US approach to technology. The Japanese developed excellent technology at the beginning of the war, but were not big on innovation during the war, for a number of reasons, some ideological, but most systemic - lack of resources for R&D, mostly. The Wasp Empire has good technology, but it is clear that developing new technology throughout the war is going to be a struggle against a belief that technology is a means to an end, and not an end in and of itself - this is critical to the development of several characters in the novel.
2) The response - the tension between remorse at the damage done and amazement that the theory worked - that technologists feel after seeing their devices in action. This felt very real to me, and meshes with what I've read about, for instance, the scientists who worked on the A-Bomb, and their response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I'm thinking particularly of Oppenheimer here, who lost his position within academia and within US society for his condemnation of his invention.
Things I didn't like - Tchaikovsky split his party, and that made it difficult to follow the narrative at times. He was all over the place, in three different locations at once often. So, a chapter would end, and the next chapter would pick up somewhere else. This was dealt with fairly well, but I often wished for longer blocks of direct continuity. Also, Tchaikovsky began killing off characters with some abandon in the second half of the book. Fair enough - the books are set during a war, after all, and death is bound to happen - but there was a small sense that these characters had been developed just enough so that when killed the Really Important Characters - Stenwold, especially - could feel guilty and angry and sad. And the reader too, of course. This was not a huge thing, and I might not even have noticed it had someone else not raised the objection in regards to some other book, where it was (says he - I have not read the book in question) egregious.
The third book of this series is on order at the library, and I will review it in due time. I will say, at this point, I would love to steal this setting for role playing - it has a great deal of juicy possibilities in that direction.
Elizabeth Moon - Legacy of Gird
So, somewhere in the middle of my "to-read" stack is Moon's newest book - Oath of Fealty - and, in order to get to that, I felt it necessary to re-read the previous stuff in the setting - the Paksennarion books, and the Legacy of Gird books. Legacy contains two novels; Surrender None and Liar's Oath. These books come, chronologically, before the Paksennarion books, but were written after, clearly to explain the world of the earlier books. Surrender None is brilliant, by far my favorite of the two. This addresses the revolution of Gird, a figure who has become, by Paksennarion's day, a deity, or at least a major saint. His Code has become the principle legal document for at least one nation, and the way he organized his army has become a template for society. In Surrender None, Moon explores "what really happened," and it is an excellent description of a war between a subservient group and the dominant body of society. Moon has military experience, and it shows in this book - the struggle of soldiers and their commanders to come to grips with the realities of combat are vibrant and ring true (at least to me, a committed civilian). So, yes, a very good book by itself.
Having finished Liar's Oath, I'm not sure I've ever re-read it. There's a lot in there which is good - I like, especially, the discussion of the difficulty of recording events for posterity - how do you handle reality when what you want to write is a legend? I like, also, the description of the struggle of people to establish a society after a revolution - very real, and a good portrayal of the dichotomy between idealism and realism in society. As I mentioned last week, I like authors who consider the question of "what happened next?" in all of it's possible implications, and, to the extent that Moon does that here, she does it very well. The problem is that Moon needs this book to do something else - to bridge the divide between Surrender None and Sheepfarmer's Daughter, the first book of the Paksennarion trilogy. How do we get from the society described in the first book to the society described in the second? The bits which need to act as that bridge in this book feel forced. It is clear that the narrative did not want to be such a bridge, and so there are several places where a chapter opens with "time passed," or something of that nature. Another trouble is that Moon is trying to tell three different stories from three different points of view. Each works internally, but the links between the three are weak in places. I would love to see each of the three stories handled separately - the story of Seri and Aris, the story of Luap and his people, and the story of society under the second Marshall-General (of which we get the least narrative). Additionally, I would love to see, perhaps as a pair of chapbook type publications, the full text of Torre's Ride and the full text of Gird's Code, with Commentaries. I think those would be fascinating, although perhaps not widely demanded.
Anyway, I'm going to take a break from Moon for a couple of days - Paksennarion is three books long and quite a lengthy trilogy at that - and come back to her, perhaps towards the end of next week.
___________________________________________
[1] The two which stick in my mind are the cat bombs and the bat bomb. Cats, according to the inventor, would naturally run away from water towards the interior of Japan, which was where Japan had most of its industry. So, bombs carried by cats would inevitably arrive in the interior of Japan, thus doing damage to Japanese industry. That idea was never tested, but the bat bombs were - bats, the theory went, would perch on the eaves of Japanese houses, which were highly flammable. So, incendiary bombs attached to bats would cause large fires. However, when tested, it turned out that bats were not a good delivery system, because they became disoriented in airplanes, and could not be reliably expected to land on Japanese houses.
Book Two of Shadows of the Apt. Oooo, I do like these books a great deal. Tchaikovsky is addressing all manner of deep and important things here about loyalty, friendship, adulthood, war, empire, technology... All sorts of good things here. The march of the Wasp Empire continues, Collegium falls under siege, our principle characters are forced to make some difficult decisions about who they are, what they want, and where they see themselves in the world. A couple of things I liked most especially:
1) the contrast between Collegium and the Wasp Empire. Both are dominated by "apt" folks - both can use technology, but they treat technology differently. The masters of Collegium are excited by technology, and constantly seek to develop new things and new ways of doing things. This results in a chaotic technology. The Wasp Empire sees technology as a means to an end; a way to speed things up, but not something to be pursued for its own sake. The closest comparison I can think of - and it's not a great comparison, really - is the US and Japan during WWII. The US War Department had an office devoted to accepting, evaluating, and responding to various voluntary ideas for weapons and techniques.[1] There's a scene in the book where a huge number of proposed defenses for Collegium are described, each master has his own pet device that he wants to see mounted on the walls or tossed into the skies, or launched into the harbor - this struck me as similar to the US approach to technology. The Japanese developed excellent technology at the beginning of the war, but were not big on innovation during the war, for a number of reasons, some ideological, but most systemic - lack of resources for R&D, mostly. The Wasp Empire has good technology, but it is clear that developing new technology throughout the war is going to be a struggle against a belief that technology is a means to an end, and not an end in and of itself - this is critical to the development of several characters in the novel.
2) The response - the tension between remorse at the damage done and amazement that the theory worked - that technologists feel after seeing their devices in action. This felt very real to me, and meshes with what I've read about, for instance, the scientists who worked on the A-Bomb, and their response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I'm thinking particularly of Oppenheimer here, who lost his position within academia and within US society for his condemnation of his invention.
Things I didn't like - Tchaikovsky split his party, and that made it difficult to follow the narrative at times. He was all over the place, in three different locations at once often. So, a chapter would end, and the next chapter would pick up somewhere else. This was dealt with fairly well, but I often wished for longer blocks of direct continuity. Also, Tchaikovsky began killing off characters with some abandon in the second half of the book. Fair enough - the books are set during a war, after all, and death is bound to happen - but there was a small sense that these characters had been developed just enough so that when killed the Really Important Characters - Stenwold, especially - could feel guilty and angry and sad. And the reader too, of course. This was not a huge thing, and I might not even have noticed it had someone else not raised the objection in regards to some other book, where it was (says he - I have not read the book in question) egregious.
The third book of this series is on order at the library, and I will review it in due time. I will say, at this point, I would love to steal this setting for role playing - it has a great deal of juicy possibilities in that direction.
Elizabeth Moon - Legacy of Gird
So, somewhere in the middle of my "to-read" stack is Moon's newest book - Oath of Fealty
- and, in order to get to that, I felt it necessary to re-read the previous stuff in the setting - the Paksennarion books, and the Legacy of Gird books. Legacy contains two novels; Surrender None and Liar's Oath. These books come, chronologically, before the Paksennarion books, but were written after, clearly to explain the world of the earlier books. Surrender None is brilliant, by far my favorite of the two. This addresses the revolution of Gird, a figure who has become, by Paksennarion's day, a deity, or at least a major saint. His Code has become the principle legal document for at least one nation, and the way he organized his army has become a template for society. In Surrender None, Moon explores "what really happened," and it is an excellent description of a war between a subservient group and the dominant body of society. Moon has military experience, and it shows in this book - the struggle of soldiers and their commanders to come to grips with the realities of combat are vibrant and ring true (at least to me, a committed civilian). So, yes, a very good book by itself.Having finished Liar's Oath, I'm not sure I've ever re-read it. There's a lot in there which is good - I like, especially, the discussion of the difficulty of recording events for posterity - how do you handle reality when what you want to write is a legend? I like, also, the description of the struggle of people to establish a society after a revolution - very real, and a good portrayal of the dichotomy between idealism and realism in society. As I mentioned last week, I like authors who consider the question of "what happened next?" in all of it's possible implications, and, to the extent that Moon does that here, she does it very well. The problem is that Moon needs this book to do something else - to bridge the divide between Surrender None and Sheepfarmer's Daughter, the first book of the Paksennarion trilogy. How do we get from the society described in the first book to the society described in the second? The bits which need to act as that bridge in this book feel forced. It is clear that the narrative did not want to be such a bridge, and so there are several places where a chapter opens with "time passed," or something of that nature. Another trouble is that Moon is trying to tell three different stories from three different points of view. Each works internally, but the links between the three are weak in places. I would love to see each of the three stories handled separately - the story of Seri and Aris, the story of Luap and his people, and the story of society under the second Marshall-General (of which we get the least narrative). Additionally, I would love to see, perhaps as a pair of chapbook type publications, the full text of Torre's Ride and the full text of Gird's Code, with Commentaries. I think those would be fascinating, although perhaps not widely demanded.
Anyway, I'm going to take a break from Moon for a couple of days - Paksennarion is three books long and quite a lengthy trilogy at that - and come back to her, perhaps towards the end of next week.
___________________________________________
[1] The two which stick in my mind are the cat bombs and the bat bomb. Cats, according to the inventor, would naturally run away from water towards the interior of Japan, which was where Japan had most of its industry. So, bombs carried by cats would inevitably arrive in the interior of Japan, thus doing damage to Japanese industry. That idea was never tested, but the bat bombs were - bats, the theory went, would perch on the eaves of Japanese houses, which were highly flammable. So, incendiary bombs attached to bats would cause large fires. However, when tested, it turned out that bats were not a good delivery system, because they became disoriented in airplanes, and could not be reliably expected to land on Japanese houses.
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