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.

Webcomics

I've just added a set of links to the web comics I read on a regular basis. It seems that I read a lot of web comics. Perhaps, some slow week, I'll do a review of one or more of those too.

Library Post - 5/1/10

Libraries are not open on Memorial Day, and so I did not go to the library yesterday.

On Friday, I picked up the third of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series, Blood of the Mantis. As you know, I've been enjoying these books a great deal, so I'll have that to look forward to once I get to the bottom of my "to-read" list.

Today, I grabbed Jane Bites Back by Michael Thomas Ford - a very amusing reaction to the whole Pride and Prejudice and Zombies phenomenon which is currently afflicting bookstores and libraries across the country. Ford's premise is that Jane herself is a vampire, now running a small bookstore in upstate New York, specializing in Jane Austen books. She is, incidentally, mildly amused by P&P&Z. I chewed through it in about an hour and a half, I'll review it on Friday. I also picked up The Novice by Trudi Canavan - this is the second of Canavan's Black Magician Trilogy. That will have to wait.

My "to-read" list is getting larger than I had expected. I don't know if that's a reaction to blogging about the books in a systematic way, or if I've always borrowed books at this rate, but haven't always read the books I've borrowed. That's a possibility, actually. At any rate, I have something like ten books in my stack right now, and a couple of them are quite hefty.

Friday Review Post, 5/28/10

Trudi Canavan - The Magicians' Guild - interesting question - what if you were offered a way out of a bad situation, but decided to fight to stay in the bad situation? Are situations ... situational? Does it matter where you are standing - from within the situation, is it less bad than from outside?  Canavan's principle protagonist is a young girl, raised on and just barely off the streets in a city where the king has the Magicians' Guild annually purge the streets of the city of beggars and other undesirables. Not a good place to have grown up in a marginal situation. In the opening scene of the book, Sonea (the girl) discovers entirely by accident that she is a magician herself. So the first half of the book, the Guild is trying to find her before she destroys a sizable part of the city playing with power she doesn't understand, and Sonea is trying to avoid the organization which has made her life, and the life of people like her, miserable for generations. This is a book about trust, and about magic, and about love, a little. Canavan has an interesting set of core characters who, for the most part, are well rendered and enjoyable. This is also the first of a trilogy.

Things I liked - good characters, excellent world building.  The behavior of the characters was logical in context, the behavior of the government was logical in context too. I wish Canavan had expanded her discussion of magic a little - how does it work, why does it work? - but that wasn't central to the book. Things I didn't like so much - potentially complex villain turns out to be pretty two-dimensional - this bugged me, actually. Canavan could have given her villain a nice juicy motive, and some depth, instead he was duplicitous and out for petty revenge. At least there was no extended period in which Sonea was convinced that said villain was the bees' knees while everyone else knows that he's evil. Or vice versa. That gets tired fast. The defeat of "big bad" reveals "bigger badder", which flows neatly into the sequels, naturally. Fair enough, you're giving Sonea a reason to stay in a situation she isn't entirely happy with; otherwise the series goes in a different direction. However, there is going to need to be some significant establishment of background for bigger badder at the beginning of book two. The sense that protagonist compromised her values, although that is likely to become a "changing the system from within" type deal, which works quite nicely. I will pick up book 2 of this series, but not until I've hacked at my "to read" list a little.

Jason Kersten - The Art of Making Money Kersten tells the story of Arthur Williams, Jr, the counterfeiter who "broke" the New Bill - the $100 which was released in the late 1990s, and was supposed to be un-counterfeitable. If, in fact, that is a word. Kersten writes for Rolling Stone, and this book started as an article on Williams. Kersten was clearly looking to write about a Frank Abagnale, Jr [1] for our generation, and Williams comes close on a couple of levels to Abagnale. However, Abignale was a conman, and part of what made him tick was a pathological need for people to like him. Consequently, when you write his life story, you are writing the story of a man who people like. Kersten describes Williams as likeable on several occasions, but the overall sense I got from the book was the Williams saw himself as much smarter than everyone around him. He used his fake $100 bill as a business card, offering it to prospective clients and challenging them to find fault with it - in effect, saying "I'm smarter than you because I can do this and you cannot". I think it was this factor which ended up getting Williams into trouble. Kersten suggests that this is actually a common problem for counterfeiters - they get so caught up in the thrill of being able to do something that others cannot that they don't stop to find a safe way to turn that into profit. Kersten frequently says, or quotes others as saying, that Williams could have done anything he set his mind to, and it's probably true. The problem is, Williams got caught in the fact that he could literally make money, and didn't stop to come up with a plan whereby he could safely stop making money. At any rate, the smartest guy in the room, especially if he's particularly interested in showing how smart he is, tends not to be the most likable guy in the room. As a result, Williams is not the most likable protagonist. In the end, Kersten tells the story of a badly damaged man caught in a series of bad situations - abandoned by his father, trapped in the projects in Chicago, forced into a gang, forced into crime - who found a way out which ended up being as bad as the life he was trying to escape. Williams is presented as a womanizer, as a foolish risk-taker, and as a very smart, very talented, man who lacks the ability to plan for the long term. This was a good book, a fascinating discussion of counterfeiting as a phenomenon, and a brilliant character description of Williams. I would have liked to see some sources listed, if only for the historical material - this is the problem when journalists write historical pieces - but the book was readable and generally enjoyable. If I care, I can probably look up Kersten's historical sources.

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[1] Abagnale was the subject of the book and movie Catch Me If You Can, Leonardo DiCaprio played him in the movie. The movie was good, the book was better. Abagnale ended up working for (indeed, as far as I know, still works for) a company devoted to preventing the sort of check fraud for which Abagnale was known. In an odd coincidence, while shopping recently I ran across a pen endorsed by Abagnale - it's designed to prevent "check washing", a process whereby a criminal could bleach your original text off of a check, put a different "pay to the order of" and a different amount, and empty your bank account. This pen, apparently, leaves ink residue which prevents check washing.

library Monday post on a Tuesday, 5/25/10

Just a small list this time out, because I picked up books on Thursday last.

Robert Harris - Imperium - a novel about ancient Rome. It's a courtroom drama. And it's in ancient Rome. I have no particular connection to ancient Rome, but nor am I completely unaware of it, so, why not?

Cory Doctorow - For The Win - This is Doctorow's latest. I really liked Little Brother, which showed the very broad possibilities of the YA tag - this promises to be similar. I'm not really sure what to say about it - it's about teens and late pre-teens organizing online in online games to challenge the status quo offline. Doctorow has some interesting ideas, some of which are scary (because I'm over 30), and some of which are refreshing (because I'm not particularly committed to the status quo), and many of which are both.

Albert Castel - The Presidency of Andrew Johnson - I've decided to do a reading of presidential biographies, post Civil War - to fill in some gaps, to enhance some non-gaps, and to keep my hand in over the summer. This is the obvious place to start.

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.

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[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.

Library Monday on Thursday 5/20/2010

Hauled into my library net today:

Ian Tegillis - Bitter Seeds
An alternate history of World War Two exploring the narrative difficulty of precognition in characters. Its got magic, its got Nazis, it looks good, but also depressing.

Guy Gavriel Kay - Under Heaven
Kay is one of my favorite authors. Here, he takes on ancient China in his usual style - highly researched, and then twisted just a little. I'll need to clear a week to read this, at least. Very much looking forward to this one.

Nicholas Thompson - The Hawk and the Dove
Cold War history about Paul Nitze and George Kennan. Professionally interesting, we'll see how well I enjoy it.

Keiji Nakazawa - Barefoot Gen, Vol. 1
A Manga (although printed western style, or else I would not have picked it up) about Hiroshima, part of a lengthy (2000 pages) series on Hiroshima. Not light and fluffy.

The first two came from Scalzi's Big Idea series.