Friday Reviews for 05/14/10

Melina Marchetta - Finnikin of the Rock - I found this to be very dark for a Young Adult novel. YA has become a very exciting place to be in recent years, and this book shows why - there is room for edgy material, deep characters with believable flaws and character traits, and a plot that doesn't necessarily resolve according to a formula. Why can't we have these in non-YA fiction? That is a question that I leave to the ages. The things I liked very much in this book: Marchetta writes good characters, and has a plot which considers the huge question of "what happened next?" - after the heroes are big damn heroes, what happens to them? Marchetta includes a good, lengthy, and entirely necessary, denouement. Things I did not like: the names - I mean, Finnikin? Seriously? Hero of a Beatrix Potter book, perhaps. Hard to take seriously as the hero of a fantasy/romance. Evanjalyn was a little too cute too. That's a minor thing, though. Bigger was a lack of basic research into terms - for instance, one does not "cock" a long bow, nor does one load it with "bolts" - those are things that you do with crossbows. And yet, the weapons being used were clearly long bows - filling the air with arrows is a long bow type thing.  These are fairly basic terms of the fantasy genre. This is the author's first foray into fantasy (her other stuff is contemporary fiction - school girls and growing up type things - not my cup of tea), and some mistakes are forgivable - even these ones, as it turns out, because I would be happy to read another fantasy novel by Marchetta - but, really. This is pretty basic stuff.

John Sandford - Rough Country - Yes, another Sandford. Yes, it's still slush. But! Virgil Flowers a) does not kill the evil bad serial killer at the end - indeed, I think that as this particular series goes forward, the differences between Flowers and Lucas Davenport  (Sandford's other detective) will be revealed more clearly; Flowers is not a serial killer in a cop's uniform, while Davenport kinda is - b) does not get laid! So, it's nice when an author stretches himself a little. There's not a lot of room in these novels to stretch - the hero has to solve the crime, and the bad guy has to be brought to some form of justice - but Sandford isn't a hack. There's a new Davenport out on the 18th, so watch for a review of that.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Wench - Very nicely written historical fiction about slaves in the US, circa 1852-55, with a lengthy interlude into the 1830s and 40s. The action focuses primarily around a resort hotel called Tarawa, which actually existed. It was a hotel in Ohio (a free state: slavery was illegal in Ohio) which was frequented by Southern gentlemen, often with their slave mistresses. Slavery is bad, but also complex. It is bad because of the complexities, really - human beings will behave like human beings, regardless of the unnatural constraints you place upon them. Even an institution designed to make mothers forget their children and lovers forget their sweethearts cannot succeed, not much more than part of the time. Perkins-Valdez keeps the complexity of human life in mind throughout this work, and does so fantastically.

One thing - from our perspective as readers, we know that slavery is about to meet its end in the Civil War. Perkins-Valdez must surely know this too - but she does not go out of her way to foreshadow that fact, which is very nice. She lets the book be a book about human beings doing human things; not a gloating book about the foolishness of the Southern gentry.

The book was fascinating, it was very well written, and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Library Monday, 5/10/10, addenda

Back to the library today to pick up a book I had ordered - The Magicians Guild, by Trudi Canavan. John Scalzi noted that he had just received the first of Canavan's new trilogy. That looked neat, but it's set in the world of the first trilogy, so I have decided to read the first trilogy first. Which always seems like a wise move.

Monday Library Post for May 10, 2010

Actually, I didn't get anything at the library today. A couple of things tickled my fancy, but were both part of a series, and not the first part. Further, the branch I was at did not have the first part of the series. I hate that! I can see buying the first book in a series, discovering that no one was interested in borrowing it, and not picking up the rest. I can't see buying the second through fourth part of a series, and not going back to get the first. At any rate, my library has a pretty good delivery system inter-network, so I will probably be able to pick up the first books in those series without too much trouble.

I did pick up a copy of The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar from the free book collection at the church on Sunday, so I've got that. And I've got three nice meaty books from last week to read. Plus, in order to get to the Moon, I need to re-read the previous Moons. So there will be some sort of a review this Friday, never fear.

We're headed out of town this weekend, so library Monday next week might not happen until Wednesday. Just for variety. Stay tuned, none the less.

A word about libraries

Perhaps there is a cognitive dissonance between borrowing the books I review from the library while including links to Amazon, as I do. Perhaps I should stress this point - if one of my reviews makes you want to read the book, and you can find it at your local library, or within a broader network of libraries, or through interlibrary loan, perhaps, I strongly advocate that you do so. Libraries are amazing. Amazon, however, is much quicker. And I can't link to library listings as easily. Oh, and libraries won't pay me if you borrow a book I recommend from them, but Amazon will give me some fraction of a cent for any book you buy from them if recommended by me. And if you buy the book, the author gets paid, but if you borrow the book - well, the author got paid for the book from the library, and I don't think there are any authors who are actively opposed to libraries, but you know, no royalties from you for that book.

So, to re-cap:
1) not advocating that you spend money on books
2) firmly stating that libraries are awesome
3) happy to get money from Amazon, should that happen.

Reviews for Friday May 7, 2010

S.M. Stirling - Conquistador Stirling writes alternative history novels. The most prominent of them, I think,are the Dies the Fire novels, which chronicle life in the United States after an event (the Event) results in all combustion based power stopping work - gasoline burns slowly, gunpowder doesn't explode, etc. The inhabitants are forced to adapt to a pre-industrial era. Those novels are very good, especially considering that they were spin-off of a trilogy, the Islands in the Sea of Time trilogy, which follows the lives of the inhabitants of Nantucket after they have been thrown backwards in time to the age of Alexander the Great. (The Event which resulted in the loss of Nantucket is the same Event as the one which begins the Dies the Fire series.) Conquistador is one of his stand alone novels, and I'm not sure how to handle it, actually.

A little plot. At the end of WWII, American Marine John Rolfe accidentally discovers a gate to an alternative Earth, where, for reasons that are not actually that important, Europe did not develop, and so European settlers did not arrive in the Americas. He decides to move in, and create an alternative United States, inviting members of the unit he led in the Pacific to join him. Most of the novel takes place in 2009, on both sides of the "gate", with periodic flashbacks to earlier periods to explain the developments which led to the 2009 incidents. The critical thing is that Rolfe and his fellow founding fathers decide that the best way to find recruits to help settle the land is to find people desperate for a place to disappear. In the late 1940s, they recruit a family of Germans who are, in fact, Nazis. Over the course of several decades, they bring in British colonialists forced out of Africa (Kenya, South Africa), French colonialists forced out of Algeria, and former Soviets forced out of everywhere. In short, the population of New Virginia is very white, and often quite unpleasant in a racist sort of way. Stirling does caution readers not to take the views of the characters as the views of the author (in fact, quoting Niven, he suggests that readers who do so are idiots), and there are sympathetic Black and Jewish characters (a few) throughout the novel, and Stirling makes it clear that the younger generation of New Virginians do not necessarily share the views of the founders. Indeed, and I don't think this counts as a spoiler, but some may disagree, so: the heir of the Nazi family ends up married to the daughter of one of Rolfe's original soldiers, who is Jewish. The thing is, it's tough to read so many characters who are, frankly, odious. Some of them have redeeming characteristics which balance things out, but the villains display their villainousness (if that is a word) through highly racialized attitudes. It didn't stop me from reading the book all the way through, but, well, meh. I think, if this were my first exposure to Stirling, I might not have finished. His other books tend to be deeper, with more nuanced characters - this feels like Stirling is playing with an idea which he isn't fully committed to - and maybe that's exactly the case.

That being said, Stirling has carefully thought out the background of the novel, and there's a fair bit of research done. Why didn't Europeans arrive in North America? There is a reason, and Stirling has clearly thought through the implications of that reason. What will happen when Rolfe et al arrive in New Virginia? Stirling has through that through as well. There is solid research behind the book, that comes through in a lot of places, not the least of which are the technical descriptions of technology and the procedural passages about various police organizations on either side of the gate. Stirling does good work in that regard, and, to a greater or lesser extent, it is that which allows me to excuse the thinness of the characters.

A final thought - another author that I am quite fond of is Steven Gould, and the premise of this novel - the "what if" of a gate which offers an alternative to the heavily industrialized present - is very close to the premise of Gould's novel, Wildside. I even suspect that this is intentional, given the last scene of Stirling's book, which is highly reminiscent of an opening scene in Wildside. I'm not saying Gould did it better, or that Stirling did - these are completely different books, which go in completely different directions. I'm just saying, sometimes authors tumble to the same initial Big Idea. And that's entirely ok.

Jonathan Phillips - Holy Warriors Ha! I finished it! I wasn't entirely sure I would, actually - that is, not before today, anyway. But I did, so I can review it.

So, I don't know if I mentioned it, but professionally, I am an historian. So I have some interest in how the discipline is presented. This is a very approachable narrative history of the Crusades. Phillips knows his stuff - he is an established expert on the Crusades - but has managed to present a long (multiple centuries) and complex (vast political and dynastic networks, movements of large armies across huge spaces) period without coming across as dry or academic. As a reader, very enjoyable. As a historian, a) I'm jealous - no, jealous is the wrong word; appreciative, perhaps - this is the sort of thing that I want to write, eventually. b) I wish that there had been more in the end notes - Phillips includes only reference data in his notes, and there were several places where I wanted a little amplification, a small aside, or a piece of additional information. As a specific example, when Saladin re-captured Jerusalem, he installed a pulpit in the al-Aqsa Mosque. Phillips mentions that it was burned up by an arsonist in 1969, and I found myself wanting to know more about that - a few lines in a note would have sufficed.Historians often do not have the luxury of writing the notes they want to - publishers struggle to keep the work as succinct as possible - and often Phillips includes the sort of aside which might be put into a note within his text.

One passage which struck me as particularly apropos to the current international situation  was a quote from Louis IX of France, in 1250, "our departure would simply leave it [the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem] exposed to the Saracens, particularly since at the this time it was, alas, in such a weakened and wretched condition. In the wake of our departure the Christian prisoners ... could be regarded as dead men, since all hope of release would have been removed ... But if we stayed, some good, it was hoped, may come of our presence ... although many urged us not to remain overseas, nevertheless in our pity on the miseries and adversities of the Holy Land, to whose aid we had come, and in our sympathy for the incarceration and sufferings of our prisoners, we have chosen to postpone our passage ... rather than leave the Business of Christ in a state of such utter hopelessness."  This was after a disastrous attempt to re-capture Jerusalem which ended with a barely mutually acceptable peace with the Mamluks. It's not hard to hear any other European/Western leader justifying their (or their military's) continued presence in the region - substitute "our allies" for Christian prisoners and "democracy" for the Business of Christ, and this would fit very nicely in the media of today. Which is Phillips' point, in the end. The Middle East - the Holy Land - has become an obsession for at least three different religious groups, and many of the attitudes surrounding that obsession cab be traced back to the beginning of the second century CE. Phillips stresses that the attitudes are the same on both, or all, sides of the religious divide - indeed, in several places he points out that a sermon by a Christian cleric, with some words changed, would work just as well coming from an Islamic cleric, and vice versa.

Phillips offers no prescriptions for how to address the Middle East. It is not his job, after all. However, it is revealing to consider that the regimes which tended to be successful in the region (for instance, the Franks ruled Jerusalem and the surrounding territory for almost a century, Saladin and his children were equally successful) were the ones which treated their neighbors with respect, and sought to find common ground. Both the Christian Franks and their Muslim neighbors were equestrian people, both enjoyed hunting, both had societies which placed a high value on honor. When the rulers (regardless of their religion) grounded their relationships in these common elements, relations were relatively smooth. When the religious differences came to the fore (either due to incidents within the region or pressure from outside), relations tended to break down under the strain.

Phillips does suggest that our modern impressions of the Crusaders and the Jihadis are heavily coloured by modern and slightly pre-modern romanticism. A closer look reveals these groups to be deeply complex, and ultimately quite hard to categorize, something which a) tends to be true about every group of people and b) is very easy to forget.

Belated Monday Library Post - 5/4/10

Small collection of books today, but exciting!

Jane Yolen - Foiled Not sure if this counts as a graphic novel - possibly a graphic novella. It is, at any rate, not very long. Despite that, it is quite good - a short fantasy story about a fencer. The art is by Mike Cavallaro, and there is every indication that there will be a sequel. I actually polished this off at the library while watching the kid play.

Jason Kerstein - The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter  I am fascinated by caper novels and stories of criminals, especially con men. This looks to scratch that particular itch - it's about the real life counterfeiter who reproduced the 1996 US $100 bill (which was designed to be impossible to copy.)

Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling Second book in "Shadows of the Apt." This was a surprise, it had arrived at the library (per my request), but I had not yet received the e-mail alerting me to this, so the librarian was able to surprise me with it. I'm saving this for later.

Elizabeth Moon - Oath of Fealty Elizabeth Moon returns (finally!) to the Paksenarrion world. I'm VERY excited about this, for reasons I'll get into when I review it. I certainly hope it lives up to my expectations, but I have very little reason to suspect that it won't - Moon is very good at what she does.

That's it! This Friday, a review of Conquistador, which I finished, finally, on Saturday (it was a LONG weekend), and maybe, just maybe, Holy Warriors. We shall see.

reviews for Friday, April 30, 2010

 John Sandford - Dark of the Moon

Sandford writes a very nice Mary Sue. That is, in the "Prey" novels and in these Virgil Flowers novels (which are a spin off of the Prey novels), Sandford writes about righteous, hard-nosed cops tracking down brutal serial killers in the Twin Cities and environs - and there's a strong sense that these hard-nosed cops are more or less who Sandford would like himself to be, somewhat. We get lovely descriptions of the vehicles and weapons used by the protagonists, and they always solve the crime, frequently by killing the serial killer. The novels are very nice police procedurals, good description of how cops do what they do and think what they think. Not a lot of deep material here, though. Fluff reading; but very nice as a change from a deeper work. You know what you're going to get when you pick it up, and  you might be able to solve the crime before the cops do, which is always a nice treat.

Chris Anderson - Free: Future of a Radical Price

Anderson is an editor for Wired, and this book read like a series of magazine articles strung together. They chapters flowed nicely into each other, but each of the chapters could easily have been read by itself.  Anderson gives a brief history of the concept of Free (as in beer) in the United States - thumbnail; think of Gilette, giving away razors so that he could sell razor blades at a profit. Anderson contends that, in the Internet era, free is increasingly the marginal price for products - and, in a competitive market, prices tend to devolve to the marginal price. (The marginal price is the lowest possible price that the product can be sold at while not losing money for the seller - the price which covers production costs, basically). Because a great many things which the internet is good at distributing are produced for very little cost, they can be given away, and profit can be derived through different means.  Anderson highlights a large number of different ways in which this process works, and explains why older readers have trouble grasping the idea and younger readers have trouble thinking of the idea as anything other than normal. Interesting topic, format was a little tough.

One thing I have discovered recently is that I find reading non-fiction to be very much like work. I read fiction to avoid work, perhaps, but reading non-fiction is what I'm "supposed" to be doing on some level - keeping up with the current research, perhaps, or being ahead of where my students are (often a long way ahead). I don't even really like reading the news, although I do it. Anyway, I read A LOT more fiction than I do non-fiction.

Karen Miller - Innocent Mage

I stopped reading this book on Monday or Tuesday. I couldn't finish it. I didn't like any of the characters at all.  The "hero" is supposed to forthright, not cowed by society, capable of speaking his mind to all walks of society, and so he comes across as a jerk. Central to the plot is a prophecy which people around the hero are aware of, but requires not telling the hero about his role in the prophesy. Other characters - supposedly the hero's friends -  be-moan the fact that this means he might get hurt because he doesn't know what is happening.  My overriding feeling was "good, he probably deserves it," which is probably not what the author had in mind. Finally, it wasn't clear what it was the hero was supposed to be doing. He was a member of an underclass in his society - the ruling class have magic, the underclass does not - but there was no real sense of burden. The ruling class maintain a well protected realm with nice weather and good growing conditions. They limit childbirth, but they place the same limits on themselves as on the underclass. Perhaps I would have found some abuse the further into the book I went, but I honestly felt that if the prophets had told the hero that he was destined to overthrow the ruling order, he would have said, "but why?" Which, perhaps, was the point of not telling him what was going on.

Miller committed one of those egregious faults early on - she injected exposition baldly into dialogue - "as you know, this is why we're doing this thing, because this is the concise history of how things came to be the way they are, blah blah blah." Exposition, I think, is one of those things we only notice when it is done badly.

Julie Halpern - Into the Wild Nerd Yonder

This was a pleasant little trip back to high school. Halpern describes the plight of a sophomore in high school as she discovers that her friends are poseurs and generally unpleasant, and goes seeking new friends. She discovers a group of D&D players - nerds - but enjoys the experience, and falls in love. It was a little cheesy, but it was enjoyable. It was possible for me to recognize the titular nerds, and it felt very true to its material - that was what high school felt like. Finding yourself is always a tricky adventure, and Halpern describes it well.

In the same vein, this essay got tossed around my small circle of internet friends this week, and it fits very nicely into Halpern's description of high school.

Big busy weekend for me this week, so I don't really know how much reading I'll have done for next Friday. I suppose we'll see when we get there, won't we?