Big post of updatery, 4/17/2012

Ummm, so, there was a week last week? And stuff happened? And I read some stuff.

I finished my Lenten book:

Tee Morris and Lisa Lee - Moravi


So, as I mentioned, I've met Tee, and he's pretty cool. This was his first book. Parts of it are really excellent, and it gets progressively better over the course of the book. Even the bits that are not quite excellent are pretty good. Still, it's a first book, and it has some flaws. Some of the dialogue is stilted. Ok, actually a lot of the dialogue is stilted - like, scary-clown-at-the-circus-teetering-two-stories-up stilted. That makes a little sense; Rafe Rafton is a gentleman of Henry VIII's court, and Askana is the queen of a highly ritualized (vaguely Asian) other-worldly society. Both can be expected to speak somewhat artificially. Still. It gets a bit much in places.

The action, which is by far the strongest part of the book, is abundant and highly cinematic. There is a lot of swinging on chandeliers, flashing blades, and well timed explosions. Morris and Lee clearly had fun with this part, and equally clearly want their readers to have fun with it as well.

There is some depth to the main characters as well. Both grow as people over the course of the novel, and that is highly satisfying. However, the secondary characters are less well rounded, and beyond that narrow inner circle the characters may as well not have names. Additionally, I found the death scene of Rafe's First Mate to be in poor taste - he's a Moor, a Muslim, and he blows himself up with a barrel of gunpowder. I don't think it was intentionally in poor taste, I think it was accidentally in poor taste, but regardless of the reasons ... ick.

So. Parts of this book are really really good, and those parts make reading the less good parts worth doing. I'm not planning on keeping the book, but rather than donate it to a library, I thought I might do another give away. Which means I have to think of a way to do that. So, watch for that.

Saladin Ahmed - The Throne of the Crescent Moon


This was an entirely delightful book.  Ahmed offers a delightful new fantasy setting - Arabian Nights type background, without being specifically in the Middle East - a whole cast of exceedingly well rounded characters (deeply complex, with complicated motivations, moral quandaries, and general humanity - fantastic), and a really creepy villain. Ahmed plays with some zombie tropes - and, if my wife and I are a good measure, you WILL dream of zombies after finishing this book - but with some setting specific tropes. The magic is consistent with the setting, the combat is fast paced and breathlessly swashbuckly, everything works, and nothing doesn't work. Go, now, read this book.

Oh. I guess I should mention the cover art. It is sadly misleading - the characters are very cartoony, and that makes me sad, because it's not a cartoony book, not at all. In fact, consider this a trigger warning - the violence and the horror elements are a little shocking, they start right at the beginning of the book, and if you go in expecting something lighter, based on the cover, you're going to be doubly shocked. So, in this case, Mom was right - you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

See? Cartoony. Gorgeous, but misleading.

Holly Black - Tithe


Fairy courts converging in New Jersey to enact a once every seven years tithe to the independent fae, in order to keep them in line. Black is playing with the Tam Lin story, and she does a highly competent job of it. She translates the classic fairy tale tropes nicely to the modern world, she includes enough darkness to satisfy modern readers (which is, of course, entirely consistent with the sources - fairies, traditionally, are not nice!). On some level, the book is like Laurel K. Hamilton's Merry Gentry, but without the outrageous sex - Merry Gentry lite, for an YA audience. Enjoyable, but a little fluffy. I'll read the second book, though.

Heather Donahue - Growgirl


This is the one with the scandalous cover art - Donahue, naked, behind a pot plant. Donahue is, perhaps, best known as "that girl from The Blair Witch Project," but, sometime in the early 2000's, she decided that she wanted to make a clean break from that limiting past, and ended up in Northern California, growing (legal) medical marijuana for a year. This is the story of that year.

As with any memoir worth reading, Donahue struggles with her new life. The struggles are presented in the most entertaining light possible. Donahue is a good writer, and the book is decidedly easy to read. She invites readers to laugh at her predicaments, to cheer on her triumphs, and to cry at her abject failures. Throughout, she explains the process of growing marijuana. She ends the book with a short essay in which she passionately calls for a wide scale decriminalization of marijuana as a source of restoring the US economy.

Look, you probably wouldn't be able to read this if it weren't for the Blair Witch thing, but the book stands entirely on its own, and is well worth reading as a year in the life of a somewhat average mid-30s Californian girl who finds herself in an unusual situation. Go, find a copy, read it.

Oh, and in the whole "don't judge a book by its cover" theme - if you're going to read this book on public transit, especially if you're female and don't want unsolicited proposals from your male fellow passengers, you probably want a Kindle version, or a plain dust jacket - the back cover is, if possible, more provocative than the front:

Ok. So those are reviews. I did go to the library on Monday, I did grab a book:

Martin Greenburg, ed - The Leiber Chronicles


Ahmed's book was compared to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (perhaps a little overly enthusiastic; there are elements, but Ahmed is clearly writing his own work; not a rehash of Leiber), and so I wanted some Leiber, and this is what the library had. I'm pretty sure I've read most of these short stories and novellas before, but that doesn't hurt, sometimes.

Friday Reviews, 5/13/2011

After last week's deeply complex novels of politics, real and fantastic, I wanted something a little lighter this week. I managed two books (and most of a third, but you'll have to wait until next Friday for that).

Dorothy Sayers - Whose Body?


A fairly straightforward mystery novel, and the first of Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey novels. Wimsey is an aristocrat who dabbles in solving crimes. We learn, over the course of the novel, that he has served in World War One (the book was published in 1923), and suffers from shell shock - what we would call PTSD now. Bunter, his butler/valet, was also his sergeant in the war. Both characters are surprisingly well developed for what is, after all, not a particularly deep novel.

Wimsey's mother brings him word of a body which has been discovered by the architect who is helping to re-roof her local church. Wimsey investigates the mysterious body. Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard, a good friend of Wimsey's, is investigating the disappearance of a Jewish financier. It is suspected that the two mysteries are linked, and so Parker and Wimsey investigate together. The connection they discover is not one they expect.

I don't know much about the mystery novels of the inter-war period, but this novel seems fairly robust for the genre. With only a few alterations, it would work quite well in a modern setting - the plot is good, but the character of Wimsey, the aristocrat doesn't fit in a modern setting, he would have to be the son of wealth rather than the son of feudal privilege, perhaps. Some alterations for technology would be needed as well. Those points aside, Sayer's novel stands up very well to the test of time. It has humor and horror, it combines very nicely the amateur sleuth with the police procedural. It has surprisingly deep characters and a good twist ending. Fans of the genre who have, for some reason, not read Sayers, will find this delightful.

Holly Black - Red Glove


This is the second of Black's "Curse Workers" series, a sequel to White Cat, which I reviewed last year. They are a very pleasant combination of the YA "boarding school coming of age," "magic works in our real world," and "caper/con artist" genres. Actually, I don't know if those are real genres, but those are the themes these books combine, and Black does a wonderful job.

I think, in my previous review, I praised Black's use of the caper novel - a genre I adore, especially with con artists - and her creation of a realistic magical system that fits neatly into a world which is very much like our own. She has put considerable thought into how the world would be different if people could do magic, down to the constant wearing of gloves in public, and often in private. (Magic/curses are done by touching someone with your bare hands. Thus, wearing gloves is expected, not wearing gloves is a serious social infraction. Porn, in Black's world, features bare hands as often as it does bare anything else.) All of that continues here. I love the attention to detail; the little snippets of standard history that Black offers - the things that everyone knows about their world, stated in off-hand comments, or as part of a class session - excellent world building. I also recall that, in the previous novel, I didn't really like the characters. This book has the same characters, but I liked them better. Perhaps it's familiarity, perhaps Black is layering elements of depth on her characters, perhaps it's the mood I'm in right now - in the previous novel, I found many of the characters grating; in this book I am more sympathetic.

In this book, Cassel Sharpe (the protagonist) must balance his loyalty to his family (criminals all) with his loyalty to his friends and his desire to do what is right. He is torn between an offer to work for the magical mob (which is tempting because lucrative) and an offer/order to work for the FBI. The FBI are investigating the murder of Cassel's older brother, which they think is linked to a series of disappearances. Casssel recognizes the earlier cases as incidents that he was involved in, somewhat against his will. He must decide how much he owes to his brothers, how much he wants to give to the FBI, and how much he wants to protect himself. On top of that, he has to deal with his emotions regarding Lila Zacharov - a girl he's loved most of his life, who is a) the daughter (and heir) of the mob boss, and b) has been enspelled by Cassel's mother to love Cassel - any sort of interaction between Cassel and Lila will be marked by that fact. And Lila has decided to enroll at the boarding school where Cassel is taking classes. Awkwardness ensues.

So, I liked the characters better in this book than in the previous one, I still like the plot elements - I'll absolutely pick up the next book when I see it. Cassel has at least one semester left at high school - will the series follow him to college? I'm thinking at least one more novel (perhaps something Blue? Or would that just be cheesy?), possibly two. Either way, I heartily recommend the books.

Friday Review, 7/9/10

Three books this week. I swear I used to be able to read more books in a week. Of course, when I was taking classes, I often had to read two or three texts over the course of a week, but those were gutted and skimmed, mostly. Still.

Holly Black - White Cat

Oh, I love the premise of this book - our world, but magic works within a limited scope. "Curse Workers" have to touch you with their bare hands, and different "workers" can achieve different effects, from minor changes in luck up to transformation. Black put a lot of thought into how that would affect society, and a little thought into how it would have affected history. As such, everyone wears gloves always - at one point, the protagonist is looking through some porn, and the shocking thing is not the nudity, per se, but the lack of gloves. "Workers" are both elites and second class citizens - there's a political movement to force them to register, and a political movement opposed to it. "Workers" are often a key element of weddings (where luck would be nice to have) and christenings, for instance. In terms of history, Black includes a few notes about how previous societies dealt with the whole concept of magic - I would have liked more of that. At any rate, A+ for world building.

This book is also a caper novel - the hero is a con artist in a family of con artists, and he runs cons to get what he wants. Delicious, I love this particular genre, and Black describes some very nice cons, and includes some very good descriptions of legerdemain - she doesn't leave her audience in the dark about what's going on in the con scenes, either. That's a tactic which works very well on screen, but comes across as irritating in a novel, I find. So, A+ for capers, too.

The book is fairly twisty, but the twists are telegraphed well in advance. B+ for twists.

I didn't like some of the character building, especially the hero. Some of his motivations are messed up for obvious reasons within the context of the novel, but others are just messed up. Some of his reactions are off, too. He discovers some major secrets about himself, but seems to take them in stride far too easily - I didn't buy the shock. C+ for the protagonist.

I will happily read a second book in this world, because I really want to see what Black does with the background material. I want more history, and I want a deeper appreciation of the social environment. I'm not sure I'm keen on reading a lot more about this set of characters, however.

Albert Castel - The Presidency of Andrew Johnson


Johnson was a fascinating president. Castel wrote this political biography during the 1970s, and it comes at the end of a series of scholarly works dealing with Johnson, many of which were highly critical of Johnson and especially his approach to Reconstruction. Castel is mildly sympathetic towards Johnson - he doesn't deny Johnson's many flaws, but presents the man in a sympathetic light.

I learned some details about Johnson and the period in question, but nothing hugely enlightening.  While I still feel that the 14th Amendment was well conceived, I think that some of the strategies used to get the Amendment ratified were questionable. That is, I applaud the ends of the Republican Congress in the late 1860s, but deplore their means. Castel is mildly cynical about the Radical Republicans - seeing that they had a great deal to gain from the policies of Reconstruction in the form they championed - but agrees that at least some of their motivation was ideological rather than pragmatic.

As a scholarly work, this book was quite accessible, I would recommend it to a general audience. Castel is informative, and his knowledge of Johnson and Reconstruction is exhaustive. He includes detailed end notes, and abundant (but not to the point of being distracting) quotations. The final chapter is an excellent historiography, up through the 1970s, detailing the odd trajectory that Johnson's story has taken since the 1870s.

Jim Hines - The Mermaid's Madness


I really liked this novel. This is the second of the "Princess" novels. Hines is documenting the story of what happened to fairy tale princesses after their "happily ever after". His protagonists are Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty woke to find that everyone she knew and loved was dead, and that a rival neighbor had taken over the kingdom, and forced her re-awakening so that the last possible restraint upon them could be removed. Her fairy given gifts translate nicely into martial arts - grace in dancing = grace in fighting, for instance. Snow White was raised by a powerful witch, and makes use of said witch's training in her use of mirror magic - she is a powerful self-taught sorceress. And Cinderella has the magical protection of her mother (later revised into a Fairy God Mother, but originally, Cinderella was protected by her mother, who inhabited a tree in Cinder's backyard.), currently embodied in a magical glass sword.

This novel opens with the princesses travelling to provide a token tribute to local mermaids - or undines, as they prefer to be called - only to discover that the political situation has changed rather significantly over the winter. The adventure which follows involves twists, back stabbing, treachery, magic, fencing, and a great deal of other fantastic stuff.

What I like: Hines has thought out his characters very well. They have entirely realistic motivations, even given their fantastic origins. He has done excellent world building as well, considering the implications of mermaids - how do they work? What motivates them? - etc. The book is a quick read, but has some depth for all that. This is a well thought out and well written book.

What I didn't like: Very little. I did find the inclusion of Christianity to be a little odd - it threw me out of the world briefly, and really, given the world building, doesn't make a lot of sense. Oh well - it was a minor point, and not nearly enough to prevent me from recommending this book quite highly.