Natives was a buddy-read-by-PM with Becky, and we discussed each chapter extensively, so that means the rest of my friends will only have a very shortNatives was a buddy-read-by-PM with Becky, and we discussed each chapter extensively, so that means the rest of my friends will only have a very short review, because I am now completely tapped out on thinking about this book. :D Sorry!
Some of the material Akala presents was either 101-level, or talked about recent-to-its-time news in ways that I was very familiar with (Brexit and the election of TFG, in particular). However, a lot of it was much more new and interesting to me, especially when it came to delineating Britain's racism, and how it is both similar to, and different from, that of the U.S. A sort of autobiography of Akala was a thread running throughout the book, where he talks about various events in his life, and connects them to the concepts he was laying out.
I listened to this in audiobook, narrated by the author. I have read in another review for this book that the "black and white" edition has a bibliography, so perhaps I will track it down for further reading....more
The Book of Salt offered the appeal of a Vietnamese man's point of view, as he makes his way from his home country to France to eventually become the The Book of Salt offered the appeal of a Vietnamese man's point of view, as he makes his way from his home country to France to eventually become the home chef for Gertrude Stein and her lover Alice Toklas. And it did provide that with episodic, and also nicely interlayered chapters about various incidents in Bình's eventful life, with food and kitchens a central focus. Colonialism and Catholicism in Vietnam, queerness in the 1930s (in both France and Vietnam), and how our upbringings haunt us, are some of the themes it explores.
This isn't your typical three-act story. The intent seems to be to gradually add details that form a picture of Bình and the various people and places he lives with and comes across. It's an interesting construction, but it left me rather unsatisfied and wondering what the point was. Bình himself comes across as a cipher, keeping a psychological distance from his own life, including the parts of it that might otherwise elicit strong emotion from either himself or from me. I admired the construction of the machine, but a machine wasn't what I had come to see.
Another issue was the level of bloody events and body horror. Before we get much further, I have trouble with those things, but if I'm otherwise enjoying the story (i.e. City of the Lost, Gideon the Ninth) I can sit through them with only minor difficulty. Here they were depicted with a light hand, and at times added to that edifice of Bình's life that the narrative was constructing. But since I wasn't particularly enjoying the rest of the book, those parts ended up disgusting me and pushing me away without a corresponding reward of enjoyment to justify them.
I got about 2/3 of the way through The Book of Salt and, with very little regret, am DNFing it. I never particularly got in synch with its combination of bloodiness and bloodlessness. It's the first book since I started on Goodreads that I got far enough (more than halfway) to both rate and DNF, so congrats, The Book of Salt!...more
This is a fun romp through multiple dimensions that starts at an analog of IKEA. The writing style is simple and straightforward, which works for the This is a fun romp through multiple dimensions that starts at an analog of IKEA. The writing style is simple and straightforward, which works for the adventure portions of the story, but made the central characters and their relationship feel flat and distanced from this reader. The jabs at consumerism and capitalism are cute at times (blond consumerist zombies!), too mundane at others. Yep, I get it. Retail sucks....more
Arrows of the Queen tells the story of Talia, a young girl from a repressive society who suddenly ends up being bonded with a magical horse called a CArrows of the Queen tells the story of Talia, a young girl from a repressive society who suddenly ends up being bonded with a magical horse called a Companion*. Rolan, the Companion, takes her to the capital city of Valdemar where she learns about her role as the Queen's Own Herald and gathers a group of friends around her.
*as in many fantasy novels of the time, Important Concepts are Capitalized.
I first read this book not long after it first came out, and was so drawn in I read all the way through the trilogy back-to-back, something I almost never do. How's it held up in the intervening 30 years?... the rating should tell most of the story.
Much of this novel was enchanting. Talia's an endearing character and it was easy for me to root for her. The descriptions were good, and there's an intriguing sense of a larger world, its magic and dangers and history, beyond its "present day" story and setting. I'm interested in seeing more of Talia's friends, like Skif, who work hard to break her reticence, and love and support her. The whole thing is mostly comforting and cozy.
At the same time, I'm not that excited about the writing style, which like many fantasy novels from its time period is heavy with exposition, written with very basic sentences and vocabulary. Only a handful of the supporting characters are memorable at all, and the rest are names without any particular character traits. A lot of the action, including a number of Heralds' deaths, either happens off-screen or is abruptly resolved, depriving those parts of the story of interest and immediacy.
This was Lackey's first published novel, so I'm willing to cut her some slack. She's had a long, prolific and successful career since 1987, and her budding skill as a storyteller shows even this early on. I'll keep on going with this trilogy, and see if I can get further into the huge Valdemar universe after that!...more
The scope of the series expands in this volume, both in time and in physical scale. Children are born, the No Peak Clan extends its financial influencThe scope of the series expands in this volume, both in time and in physical scale. Children are born, the No Peak Clan extends its financial influence into Espenia, and jade smuggling becomes an international trade that No Peak tries to keep under its control, or to repress when interests outside the clan sidestep its influence.
This book took quite some time for me to read. A friend or two even wondered why it was taking so long! It ended up becoming much like a serial or soap opera as I read along--palatable in short doses, somewhat exhausting beyond that. This slower pace kept on until about the 75% mark, and the rest went much faster.
Many of the riveting, personal-scale conflicts from the first book returned or were given more depth. Shae and Wen had excellent sequences in Jade War, including a couple that hit me to the heart. Anden's time in Espenia was great, too, and introduced some characters who I hope will carry over into the next book. Hilo went through some changes that will absolutely have repercussions later on. Themes of womanhood and familial obligation added weight to the ongoing drama.
Unfortunately, a lot of this volume was also spent setting up global situations and conflicts, and the next generation of Kauls. So many strategy and board meetings! So many babies! While mildly interesting in their own right, the exposition sequences also created a distance between myself and the book. An omniscient point of view isn't bad in itself, but too much detail of this kind can siphon the life out of it. While I'm not an editor who could point to exact chapters or scenes that bogged down Jade War's story, I definitely felt that sluggishness as a reader.
On the whole, this series seems like it will be a dynastic saga, with a new generation of Kauls inheriting the domestic conflicts of its progenitors, while also trying to find its place, survive, and thrive on a global stage. I preferred the more intimate scale of the first book--and the sequences in this book that hearkened back to it--and had only a mild interest in the rest.
There's a lot to like here, but if it had been quite a bit shorter it would have had a greater impact. As is, it had some extraordinarily good moments, though not enough to make me feel it lived up to the promise of Jade City. I'm still looking forward to the last volume, albeit with a lower level of hype-fueled expectation. Three and a half stars, rounded down....more
Like many people, I first came across this story in the form of the film Blade Runner. The bare-bones plot is kinda-sorta more or less the same: Rick Like many people, I first came across this story in the form of the film Blade Runner. The bare-bones plot is kinda-sorta more or less the same: Rick Deckard, here directly employed by the San Francisco police department, is called upon to "retire" (a.k.a. kill, neutralize) a handful of androids who have killed humans while escaping their servitude.
The empathy test is another common feature, but in the novel empathy is a huge, ongoing concern. There's a religion or cult-like empathic belief system centered around a man named Mercer, whom various characters connect with via a machine where they experience a Sisyphean climb up a mountain along with him.
Another similarity is the question of what is "real" or not. Androids/humans, animals (about which more very shortly), police stations (?), Mercer himself. Toward the middle of the novel Deckard has a confrontation with an android and another bounty hunter that takes an "android or human?" cat-and-mouse dialog from suspense across the line to absurdity. This isn't a humorous novel, particularly, but it does sometimes go loopy and take some time to come back to its eccentric "normal."
Animals are a difference between the two. You can't forget the animals while reading Androids, because it won't ever let you. Are they real, or are they mechanical? In this post-apocalyptic U.S., a real one is a collector's commodity or status symbol, even small creatures like rabbits or toads. The notion of empathy surrounding them is undercut somewhat by the pet-store displays where they're treated like luxury goods, and the general assumption that one's animal will be kept in a little pen on top of an apartment building, ignored unless it can be shown off to neighbors or if it has to have its basic needs dealt with.
Deckard's not the most enjoyable character to run around in the head of. He seems rather self-involved to me, his burgeoning empathy for androids expressing itself as (view spoiler)[sex with a female-presenting one (hide spoiler)]. He rarely shows any for his wife, and in fact when he finally has an insight there--holy crap, maybe her depressions are real and not just plays for attention!--not a chapter or two later he's (view spoiler)[banging Rachael (hide spoiler)], so... yeah. Isidore, the "chickenhead," is more genuinely empathetic, falling into an agonized fugue state when (view spoiler)[one of the androids tortures a spider (hide spoiler)] in front of him.
As usual with older SF, the extrapolations, and what stays in the novel's own time period, are interesting to look at. You have collective empathy via machine, near-human-seeming androids, a colony on Mars; and you also have secretaries who adjust the heat and make coffee for you, childless wives who stay at home, and phone switchboards.
It might not be the tightest-constructed thing in the world--for example, Phil Desch, another bounty hunter, wanders off mid-book and is never mentioned again, and there are a couple other threads that are similarly dropped and not picked back up--but that in no way diminishes it as a weird, intriguing read that got the "thinky thoughts" going now and then. It was a good introduction to Dick's work, and I'm up for more once I've recovered from this one. ;)
This was a buddy read, and as often happens with those, I'm kind of talked out/"thinked out" about the book by review time.
The Necessary Beggar is a kThis was a buddy read, and as often happens with those, I'm kind of talked out/"thinked out" about the book by review time.
The Necessary Beggar is a kind of hybrid SF or magical realism, though leaning more toward the latter. Its central family come from another dimension and are exiled to the U.S.--near Reno, Nevada specifically. They quickly have to come to terms with its culture in whatever way they can. They also have to deal with a couple of ghosts who came with them from their home country.
The story has a lot to say about America's cold cruelty when it comes to refugees or the homeless or others who haven't "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps." The characters are a believable mix of sweethearts and people with terrible flaws who cause pain and havoc for those who love them....more
Od Magic starts off appealingly as the titular Od, a mysterious and magical giantess surrounded by animals, appears before an isolated young man namedOd Magic starts off appealingly as the titular Od, a mysterious and magical giantess surrounded by animals, appears before an isolated young man named Brenden to recruit him to be the gardener at the magic school in the royal city of Kelior. There Brenden finds a weird plant in the greenhouse that no one else can figure out, either. And so the story begins.
Many of the descriptions in this book are just gorgeous. Tyramin's traveling carnival, the mysteries of the snowy north, and Od herself, are fascinating and absorbing. There's a strain of feminism running throughout that's both striking and refreshing in its unobtrusiveness.
Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there. There are a couple of interesting personalities in the very large cast of characters, but quite a few of them are hard to differentiate from each other because we aren't given a lot of room to get to know them in the crowd. On top of that, aside from Od and Mistral, we don't get a good idea of what they look like--"dark hair" isn't enough for the reader to distinguish one woman from another when almost every woman has dark hair. For this reason, sometimes I lost track of who had met whom, or where we'd left them in their last scene.
There's a capital-T Theme running through the book, and every single major character's motivation centers around it. Princess Sulys with her buttons-and-threads magic, Tyramin's daughter Mistral, Brenden the Gardener, Yar the wizard, Valoren the king's counselor... everyone. Even some of the scenery is a metaphor for it. One of the characters spells out the Theme in a speech to cap things off at the end of the book, just in case you missed the point.
Aside from the aforementioned absorbing descriptions, the whole thing felt stiff, passionless, and over-considered to me, and as a result it was a slow, slow haul. Let's not even get into the romance in the book, which was so lightly sketched that it was almost invisible. The pedantic ending was just a miserable way to ice a mostly-flavorless cake.
This was my first McKillip. Despite my lukewarm response to Od Magic, I'm looking forward to reading more of her work. There was promise of better things here that I would be genuinely happy to see fulfilled in another book. 2 1/2 stars, rounded up 'cause it's Friday.
Buddy read with Mimi. We've had a pretty good record so far, this is the first one that missed the mark......more
Military SF isn't a genre that I naturally turn to, falling somewhere between mystery and horror in the middle-to-lower half of my spectrum of readingMilitary SF isn't a genre that I naturally turn to, falling somewhere between mystery and horror in the middle-to-lower half of my spectrum of reading interests. But my steadfast--and patient--buddy reader Mimi was interested in reading this one, and the first volume of the series was in that "less than $3" sweet spot in ebook, so I decided to give it a try, too. The result was a resounding "okay."
The story: newly-promoted staff sergeant Torin Kerr is assigned to gather together a group* of Marines under the "Confederation" to act as a ceremonial guard for a diplomatic tour. The planet they're going to is on the outer edges of the Confederation, and it's important for them to get the diplomatic upper hand against their long-time enemies, the "Others."
*I think it was a platoon? listen, I don't know this military stuff.
Things on the tour are going well, if not terribly excitingly, before the Confederacy's air transport is shot down en route from one parade ground to another, and the Marines have to defend themselves and the diplomats in their care from an aggressive pack of native youths who are armed and organized for a land war. The ship that dropped them onto the planet has been called back to defend the space border from the Others, so they're on their own.
It took quite a while for me to make any real headway with Valor's Choice. The early part of the story throws lots of details at the reader: half-a-dozen races, the various people in Torin's squad* and the platoon* as a whole, a sprinkling of politics. There were several occasions where a race, or someone's name, was mentioned, and I had no recollection of who or what they were. I couldn't even tell you Torin's name if I'd turned away from the book. A friend who commented on one of my updates called this phenomenon "a Teflon book," which I thought was both funny and appropriate.
*again, don't count on me to use any of these terms correctly.
This would usually be a bad sign, but things got much more interesting (and memorable) in the last third. The various one-note characters--the dark-skinned sniper, the dad, the jaunty guy who kept getting stuck with latrine duty, the guy who can hack anything, etc.--came into their own, and I felt little pangs as they were injured or killed.
Torin had had a one-night stand with a guy named Jarret who ended up being her boss (a second lieutenant) for this diplomatic mission. Their relationship arc was pretty cool in some ways. They seemed to get over the fact that they'd slept together pretty easily, and as they tried to deal with the natives' attack, they developed a comfortable professional rapport.
Torin's role as a staff sergeant seems to involve keeping the privates and [sergeants?] in good order, and also to subtly mentor Jarret into being a good leader in such a way that the grunts don't notice. She comes across as a know-it-all who never makes the slightest misstep, whose every decision or intuition is absolutely correct. I prefer my protagonists to be more nuanced than this, but if I were in the battle situation in the book, I'd prefer somebody in her position to be experienced and competent, so there's not much to complain about.
"Not much to complain about" pretty much sums up this book for me. Also "not much to get excited about." Readers who enjoy military SF would almost certainly get a lot more out of it than I did. It's very unlikely I'll be continuing this series, but I'd be willing to give Huff's books in different genres a try....more
The Cloud Roads has a lot going for it. Its world is lush and fascinating, with several different races--none human by our standards--butting up againThe Cloud Roads has a lot going for it. Its world is lush and fascinating, with several different races--none human by our standards--butting up against each other in trade, diplomacy, and battle. It's fun and suspenseful to watch over the shoulders of the main Raksura characters as they struggle to preserve their colony after an attack by the warlike Fell, and negotiate their relationships after the perhaps-not-coincidental arrival of wandering loner Moon. The Raksura are a matriarchy, which is evident in relationships on all levels of their beehive-like breeding and social structure. Very cool!
On the other side of the coin, the story is cliched, and the prose is clear but rather bland, doing little to distinguish itself beyond the absorbing descriptions of various settings. There's a whole raft of characters outside the central half-dozen or so that are just names and little else, which made me prone to skim sections that had a lot of second-stringers. These aliens also don't feel terribly alien, despite their appearance. Gestures in particular feel very Anglo-contemporary: shrugs, nods, and so forth. More strangeness would have made recognizable interactions--like Moon's with Raksura fledglings, or with a new lover--even more striking, though some of them were quite affecting as-is.
There's a lot of potential for this series to overcome my sadly tepid response to its first installment. (Trust me, I'm much more disappointed about that than anyone else could be.) This novel felt more like a prologue than a story in its own right, which makes me interested in seeing where Wells takes these characters next. More court intrigue and less good-vs.-evil existential threat, I hope!...more
I was introduced to The Martian by my husband and a friend who both loved it to death. They went to see the movie, loved it, too, and purchased the exI was introduced to The Martian by my husband and a friend who both loved it to death. They went to see the movie, loved it, too, and purchased the extended version as soon as it came out. For whatever reason, I didn't jump on the train with them, and only now got around to reading the book.
I can see why this was made into a movie! The general vibe is much like the film Apollo 13's, in this case featuring a single astronaut in the much more dangerous position of being stranded on Mars after being left for dead by his crewmates. Life-threatening situations are always around the corner, whether due to lack of food or air, huge sandstorms, or our hero Mark forgetting for a brief moment how dangerous an ungrounded charge can be to his equipment.
The style's light and brisk, and despite the lengthy descriptions of gear modification--and, yes, the nutrient cycle of a potato farm--the background calculations are left in the background. This non-scientific reader had no issues understanding what was going on at any given moment of the book and I felt this took a good deal of both skill and instinct for pacing on our writer's part.
Characterization is lacking, though. Mark is the same under-30 dudebro who's the central figure of most American media and advertising: waggish, weightless, unserious. He's also the wish-fulfillment character to end all wish-fulfillment characters. Once he's isolated on Mars, literally everyone on Earth is hanging on his every move, cheering on and fearing for him as he fixes everything with the power of science. His supporting cast, surface diversity aside, is all but indistinguishable from each other.
For a novel intended as a science thriller, The Martian didn't offer many surprises. Many of the threats were broadcast well in advance, sometimes in the form of awkwardly-inserted omniscient point of view segments. Each problem had exactly the same flow, much like an episodic TV show: problem arises (foreshadowed or no), Mark works out its solution, Mark utilizes solution with the occasional unforeseen equipment breakdown. Repeat.
I also didn't get a good sense of the hugeness or scope of Mars from this story. So much of it takes place in one tiny area on Mars that it could almost take place in a suburban home that needs frequent repairs... albeit a much riskier one. I think the movie will do much better in this respect.
Despite this not being my kind of book, for a number of reasons, I enjoyed it much more than I expected. Even the home repair stuff was fun to read, and the cross-country trek and final chapter had me on the edge of my seat.
The Martian was a buddy read with my brother. I look forward to seeing what he thinks of it. :)...more
Jade City is a thrilling gangland story with magical jade fueling both the magical powers of the characters, and the entire economy and power structurJade City is a thrilling gangland story with magical jade fueling both the magical powers of the characters, and the entire economy and power structure of the Hong Kong-like city they live in. The main characters are the Kaul family, the leaders of the No Peak clan, whose troubles and triumphs we follow from a seamless omniscient point of view.
The pace and flow of Jade City is amazing. The whole world was built unobtrusively bit by bit around me until I had a good understanding of every character, the various classes of people in the City of Janloon, and how jade's influence pervaded everything from religion to politics to the mom and pop stores. I can't overstate what an accomplishment it is on Fonda Lee's part for me to remember every single character's name without having to use the e-reader's search function to recall them, or for me not to notice background information being snuck in along the way.
Despite that, it took quite awhile for the book to grab me. Part of this isn't its fault. I'm just not a fan of gang/mafia stories, so all the politicking and territory disputes sank in well enough that I was never lost or confused, but they also didn't keep me engaged. There was also an underlying fear that there would be frequent scenes of torture or rape, that happily ended up being completely unfounded.
A little ways past the halfway mark, a Big Event happened, and about three-fourths of the way through, it became amazing! It was like all the many plot tributaries flowed into a huge torrent that swept me all the way to the end of the book.
Part of this was because the female characters came into their own, after being either near-invisible or wishy-washy for the majority of the book. Some of the changes in these women's paths felt sudden or out of character to me, but I was happy they happened.
My only real disappointment with Jade City is that some of this didn't happen sooner, so the rest of the story wouldn't have been such a testosterone-fueled mafia-riffic struggle. This could well have been a DNF if it hadn't also been a buddy read with Mimi. I stuck with it largely because of her enthusiastic, spoiler-free messages. Thanks, Mimi! It was great! :)
While things have come to a resting point at the end of Jade City, there's plenty left open for the remaining books in the trilogy. I am anxiously awaiting the release date for the second book....more
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes its first-person narrator and his son on a motorcycle trip across the north and west of the United StaZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes its first-person narrator and his son on a motorcycle trip across the north and west of the United States, with interleaved narratives both about philosophy and a mental breakdown that the Narrator, in his previous identity as "Phaedrus," had a few years ago.
I'll start off by saying that my reading in philosophy has been limited. I took a handful of low-level courses as a Philosophy minor in college, and I've read a few books on the level of The Tao of Pooh in the meantime. I'm honestly not sure what sort of philosophy enthusiast the Narrator is trying to appeal to, here. The frequent lists of categorical concepts and authors meant little to me as a newbie, and someone better-read would likely be bored.
Where the book really shines philosophically, for me, is in relating philosophical Quality (or Tao) to motorcycle maintenance, and in its occasional use of real-world metaphors such as a train on a track to explain it. Otherwise I lost the train (pun intended) of thought, and felt that much of what he talking about had more to do with lofty academia than anything connected to life as lived by most of us.
As an academician, Narrator/Phaedrus excelled, or at least managed to get the better of his professors, which I'm not sure is the same thing. I get a strong sense of self-confidence, leaning toward overweening ego, in our Narrator, and in Pirsig, whose undisguised own words we see in the preface and afterword. I sympathize with his struggles with mental health, and also get frustrated with him when his various internal arcs drag his innocent family back and forth across the country and, as Phaedrus, into the vortex of his mental breakdown.
I got the gist of Narrator's thesis despite not absorbing what he was saying half of the time, which was quite a feat. In the end, the theme seems to be one of reconciliation and synthesis: between the various forms of philosophy around the world and over time; between Narrator and his son; between Narrator and Phaedrus. As of the end of the book, this seems to have happened for him, although the afterword more than hints that Pirsig's real life doesn't tie itself up so neatly.
If nothing else, Zen has made me interested in reading more deeply into some of the philosophers that Narrator mentions in passing, specifically Plato. On its own, this book wandered dangerously close to incoherence at times--and I don't think that was just me. The trust I had that long digressions would actually lead somewhere wasn't always justified.
And the afterword, where Pirsig basically says this book has become one of the pillars of our culture? Now that is self-confidence. Since he's passed, it isn't him that gets to decide that now....more
I'm always surprised when an author can take a story that, in its original, was probably a couple of pages long, retell it in 500 pages or more, and sI'm always surprised when an author can take a story that, in its original, was probably a couple of pages long, retell it in 500 pages or more, and still make it coherent and interesting. Daughter of the Forest takes the fairy tale "The Six Swans" and does just that.
Daughter of the Forest is a combination of fairy tale, historical fantasy, and romance. Its world creates itself, immerses the reader, not so much by beauty of prose, but by an accumulation of scene and detail. Readers of big fat fantasies will recognize this effect. :) Only once or twice did I start to think "We've been summarizing for a little while too long," and a paragraph or two after that thought, something new happened. So that's pretty neat.
If you know anything about the original fairy tale, you'll also know that heroine Sorcha suffers a great deal on her quest to save her brothers from their enchantment. It doesn't start and end with weaving six shirts out of spiny stems, but extends to long separation from brothers and home, the loss of some of her hard-won work, the murder of two companions, and even her being raped. That last is a sticking point for a lot of people, and for good reason. Sorcha's suffering is more than sufficient without also involving sexual violence. And then there's the scene where she (view spoiler)[gets some good lovin' from a man who's "hung like an ox and gentle as a lamb" in a very short sex scene, and that goes a good ways toward fixing her PTSD right up. (hide spoiler)] In a novel that otherwise depicts the long-term effects of trauma in a realistic way, including issues of trust, this didn't quite work for me.
The level of psychological realism in Sorcha's suffering, and the aforementioned accumulation of detail, at times feel at odd with the magical parts of the story. A magical geas prompts Sorcha to take on her task in the first place, so obviously the story wouldn't exist without it, but other than that, the Fair Folk are convenient deus ex machina who arrive just in time to save Sorcha and/or Red, and to physically heal another character (view spoiler)[who would otherwise be irreparably mutilated for life (hide spoiler)]. It's hinted toward the end of the book that the Fair Folk are using the human characters for an unknown purpose, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. It seems like it would dilute their mysterious, capricious nature to explain why they're doing what they do.
While I'm of two minds about some things in this novel, I very much enjoyed the romance. It was the only part of the story that evoked a strong emotional response for me, in a couple of scenes that still remain strong in my mind. It's a slow burn, for sure. I think it was so effective for this reason, and also because when Sorcha and Hugh/Red finally get together for good, you feel like they've earned their happiness.
Therein lies another rub, though: no one should need to earn their happiness. Suffering is not redemptive; it only hurts. We see that Sorcha is strong where many would give up, and this is a virtue that few or none could display to the extent that she does. Is her reward worth the price she paid? The book, unfortunately, doesn't take much time addressing this. The ending was rather abrupt after the "burning at the stake" scene that ends the fairy tale. Sorcha and Red are brought together for their mostly-happy ending, the six brothers are sent to their various destinies over the course of a few pages, and that is that. For story reasons, the brothers have to be (view spoiler)[absent as of the second book (hide spoiler)], so I can see why this part exists, but it feels rushed and awkward after the leisurely 500-plus pages that preceded it.
Thanks for the buddy read, M.! This was a good introduction to Marillier's work, and has put me in a good frame of mind to continue with Heart's Blood or Dreamer's Pool... and the rest of this series, at some point....more
I read Starfarers as (what ended up being) an asychronous buddy read with the aptly-named Buddy Reads group. When I happened to find the paperback forI read Starfarers as (what ended up being) an asychronous buddy read with the aptly-named Buddy Reads group. When I happened to find the paperback for it on my home bookshelf, it also became part of my ongoing long-term project to read the SFF books by women that have been on my TBR since before 2000. This novel adds Vonda McIntyre to my slowly-growing list of read authors and is from 1989.
This novel made me ponder what it means to say "I just want to read a good story." Mainly because, for the majority of its length, this book didn't accomplish that for me. It wasn't just glacial pacing, though a long mid-book slump didn't help matters. Whatever magical combination of character, setting, concept, event, etc. that creates a good read, was missing for me here. Any of those things can be simple or largely absent and I'd still enjoy a book, I think, but for all of them to not quite be on par makes for a book that's fun at points, but on the whole not very satisfactory.
Characters: Kolya Cherenkov was only one who really caught my interest. There was a rainbow coalition of race, sexual orientation, age, and so on. As mentioned, this came out in 1989--as I say often regarding older SFF, Starfarer was not ahead of its time, specifically here in including diversity but that diversity being a kind of wallpaper and not crucial to either the characters or the story. Its being from 1989 also includes an aura-reading mood-crystal-and-silk-shirt-wearing character. :D
Setting: Starfarer, the ship, is quite cool. I know that the idea of a "biosphere in a big ol' cylinder" isn't all that unique, but filigree like the hobbit hole-like dwellings, and the rock foam, and the tiny horses, and so on, made it feel distinctive. Another aspect of the setting that stood out for me is a love for the Pacific Northwest, its sea and its shores, and for its ecology. (view spoiler)[I'm rather sad to think that there might not be any more of the PNW in the subsequent volumes of this series, now that Starfarer has arrived at Tau Ceti. (hide spoiler)]
There were a few sentences on one page, and a couple of phrases in other places, that were vividly erotic, and hinted at the author's own quirks peeking through. How often do you see the word (view spoiler)[clitoris (hide spoiler)] in a book that isn't primarily smut? Male SFF authors get away with this stuff, and with a much higher word ratio, all the time--and absolutely did in 1989--so why not.
One thing for a potential reader to bear in mind is that this book is the prologue of a much longer story that spans four books, and ends on a cliffhanger. Those who insist on each book in a series having a definitive beginning, middle and end, are bound to be disappointed with this one.
I enjoyed this, and as always when I read books for this project, it was of interest as a time capsule just as much as it was as a story in its own right. Unfortunately, it didn't quite have enough going for it for me to continue or finish this series. I'm still interested in checking out Dreamsnake or some of McInyre's Star Trek books sometime....more
The Snow Queen is part of a long-time project to read some of the books that have been in my physical library for decades. I bought this one used whenThe Snow Queen is part of a long-time project to read some of the books that have been in my physical library for decades. I bought this one used when I was in high school, I think.
Was it worth the wait? Let's see...
*
Tiamat is a planet in transition. Its approach closer to a black gate in space means that it will be cut off from the galactic Hegemony who has been in residence there for decades trading with Tiamat's queen for the "water of life," the blood of mers--a seal-like form of sea life--that can grant immortality. Per a native Tiamat tradition, Airenrhod, the Winter Queen who presently rules Tiamat, must be sacrificed during the transition. The planet's "Summers" will come into ascendancy and a new queen will be chosen from among them.
Airenrhod has her own plans to continue her reign in the form of clones raised among the Summers. But things don't quite go as she'd planned, and in the end she decides to take a different, more sinister path.
The scene-setting and world-building in this novel are great, especially on Tiamat, the main center of the action. There's the island where Moon begins her quest to become a Sibyl along with her cousin and lover* Sparks; the gradually revealed background of the Sibyls' role in the history of the galaxy and of Tiamat itself; Carbuncle, the spiraling Winter city near the Hegemony's spaceport; the mers; the tribal Winters' enclave out in the wilderness; an isolated estate where Moon learns more about herself and her quest from a conservationist who used to belong to the Hegemony... and much more. It gets a little weak when we go to Kharemough, the capital planet of the Hegemony. I didn't get a great sense of that planet, either as a whole or individual settings.
*Yeah, that's more than a little questionable. Since the reader knows from early on that there isn't any real consanguinity there, it might not be quite as distasteful, but the characters don't know that, so... yeah. Blech.
Vinge isn't shy about exposition, and one of my major problems with this book is its pages of dense paragraphs full of telling you what the characters see and feel, or long descriptions of scenery. "Show, don't tell" is limiting in its way, but The Snow Queen offers a good demonstration of how the opposite can be taken too far. I couldn't bring myself to read more than 50 pages of its dense, essentially shallow prose on any given day before my mind pleaded to experience something that took less work for the level of payoff.
There are a good number of characters that the story follows, from both the Hegemony and Tiamat. The "telling"-heavy style made them feel superficial for over half the book, but eventually the wall of words did its work and I felt I knew them and was invested in knowing what would happen to them. - Moon, the Princess of the tale. She's the one who sees more of Tiamat, and Kharemough, than anyone else in the story, and goes through several ordeals on the way to her confrontation with Airenrhod. - BZ Gundalini, a Hegemony officer who has the worst luck of anybody in the book, spending a lot of it injured, captured or ill. - Jerusha, his boss, the beleaguered Commander of police for the Hegemony in Carbuncle, the city where Tiamat and Hegemony meet and merge. - Ngenet, who chose to cut himself off from the Hegemony to run a plantation on Tiamat and create a preserve for the seal-like mers. - Fate, the mask-maker, who lives in Carbuncle and is creating masks for the Summer Queen and for the celebrants of the festival that will mark the change from Winter to Summer. - Tor and Pollux, a Tiamat Winter and her robot companion. - Herne, Airenrhod's lover early on, and also the Hunter who gathers the mers' blood for the Hegemony and for the Snow Queen's immortality. Moon's lover Sparks ends up taking his place in this role.
This is a decent place to talk about Sparks. To me, he represents one the main flaws of the book. The storytelling can't seem to decide if it wants to be a good-vs.-evil melodrama or something closer to a space opera.
Sparks' role in the fairy tale would be the brother whose sister travels the world to save him from the Snow Queen. Here, he fulfills a similar role, but I get the impression that he's shoehorned into this role to create a SF version of that tale, and his depiction is inconsistent. Sometimes he's a heartless badass. At others, he's a petulant puppy, a whining victim of circumstance. (He isn't the only one who passively follows authorial fiat and suffers for it. Jerusha and BZ do, too, among others.)
There's a give-and-take in character and in storytelling mode that doesn't quite gel, here. It's obviously told by the same author, in the same style, and I don't think the novel would have been as strong without either the Snow Queen aspect, or the Hegemony, or the idea that Airenrhod and the Hegemony's days on Tiamat were numbered. Unfortunately, I can't offer much of an argument except to say that the mix didn't work as well as I might have hoped.
Back to the question at the beginning of the review: was The Snow Queen worth waiting over 30 years to read?... sadly, the answer wasn't as strongly "yes" as I had hoped. There are several books I would recommend to others that offer a similar experience and fewer annoying problems.
- Anything by Brandon Sanderson: much less effort for an equivalent page length, fun world-building, characterization on a similar (i.e. somewhat lacking) level. - Illusion: long, detailed and dense, with a much better style and a stronger thematic throughline. (5 stars, highly recommended.) - City of Bones: wonderfully depicted setting, appealing characters, and much shorter. (4 stars, a personal favorite.)...more
Khat is a krismen, a human variant genetically engineered centuries ago to be able to survive in the post-apocalyptic desert wastes of the world. He lKhat is a krismen, a human variant genetically engineered centuries ago to be able to survive in the post-apocalyptic desert wastes of the world. He left the krismen enclave, under some duress, to make his way as a relic hunter in the human-inhabited city-state of Charisat. One day, he is approached by a Warder, a magical soldier under the Elector (essentially an emperor), to assist them in seeking out relics that power an ancient machine out in the desert Waste. Khat doesn't have a lot of choice in the matter, being in serious debt to one of Charisat's crime bosses.
What follows is a tangled tale of adventure and double-crosses that eventually leads to a climactic battle against world-threatening foes: some from this world, and some from another...
The setting of this book is so great! The Waste, the steampunk-like magical technology, the Remnant out in the desert, the relics, the varied neighborhoods and individual buildings in Charisat were all remarkably vivid. Explanations and details are interleaved gracefully throughout the story so the reader isn't overwhelmed by the dreaded "wall o' text." I could feel the dust that covered everything, the glamour of the Elector's palace on the top tier of Charisat, the grotty squalor of the lower tiers, and the dangers of the Waste, including desert pirates and venomous critters.
The amazing scene-setting is accompanied by an endearing cast of central characters. Elen, the young Warder who has more potential than she, or her mentor Riaden, realizes; Khat's housemate and relic-hunting partner Sagai, as solid a friend as anyone could ever ask for; the intimidating Constans, and the Elector's Heir, each of whom may have a more-than-businesslike interest in Khat; Arad-edelk, the grouchy and dedicated scholar who assists the relic hunters on their quest from his post at the Academia.
And, of course, Khat himself. He's a character who expresses strength not through his dominance of situations and others around him--aren't characters like that boring, anyhow?--but through stubborn resilience. He's battered and captured and imprisoned and gets ill and almost dies in the course of his quest, but he always goes down fighting and never gives up. As a krismen, unable to be a full citizen of Charisat, he lives at the whims of the state*, and even worse, krismen bones are known to be the best medium to burn when a seer is foretelling the future. He somehow inspires people to save him, so that's good...
* I didn't notice how grimly topical this was twenty years ago, but I sure do now.
The middle of City of Bones sagged for me as the world-jeopardizing threat was set up. It was fitting, and directly connected to the history of the world, and, eventually, to Khat's place in it, but as it was going along I found myself more and more willing to set the book aside. I'm hard-pressed to think of what sort of plot I'd want in its place, to be honest, so it's just a personal thing. The big story was both self-contained and opened up possibilities that could have been explored later, had this book become a series.
Unfortunately, it didn't. The last part of the book was lovely, and I grew sadder and sadder as the end drew near, knowing that this was the last I'd see of these characters. Elen really came in to her own in the last chapter, and while I didn't find her that interesting for most of the book, it was evident that she'd been held back, and there was a lot of potential for her that the reader will now have to imagine for themselves. Khat and Sagai head on to new adventures in a new city on a note that was unexpectedly bittersweet.
Another excellent buddy read with Mimi! This was a wonderful re-introduction to Wells' novels, and I'm looking forward to more....more
Kaylin was once an orphaned child on the mean streets of the fiefs of Elantra, who escaped from there into the portions of town under the Lords of LawKaylin was once an orphaned child on the mean streets of the fiefs of Elantra, who escaped from there into the portions of town under the Lords of Law when she was thirteen years old. Now twenty years old, she works for the Hawks, akin to police or detectives of the fantasy Empire that is the larger setting of Cast in Shadow. Her most recent case involves a series of child murders in the fief of Nightshade that seem directly connected to the mystical tattoos that have been growing on her arms and legs since she was young. Her partners are a mysterious dragon-man, and Severn, who shares much of her painful past.
There's a fair amount to like in Cast in Shadow. Kaylin, while her tattoos could well make her Too Darn Powerful in the long run, is also a very flawed person who constantly shows signs of immaturity, of having an extremely poor handle on her life and her emotions. This endeared her to me, although I can also see this being really irritating. Those around her, from her big boss the Hawklord to the sexy?/frightening? Nightshade, indulge her a lot. She feels more like a teen than a young adult to me, to be honest, and I think she's okay when interpreted as such. Either way, this young-acting person's presence on a detective force is hard to explain.
The setting of Elantra is interesting so far, with its several mortal and immortal races, and its good and bad sides of the tracks (or river, in this case), its modern conveniences and lack of machinery and guns. We're given broad hints of the world's ancient history, and Kaylin's connection to it, which sets things up nicely for future books. I would have liked to have some more detail in the descriptions of the various races. It was pretty evident that that Leontines look like lions, but I didn't realize that the Dragons weren't lizard-people until one of them was described as having hair. Confusing!
While both of the two gents in Kaylin's maybe-forming, maybe-not-forming love triangle have qualities that would make real-life me head for the hills--leaving plenty of caltrops and pit traps behind me, just in case--they're pretty cool book boyfriends. Unusually for me, I'm inclined toward the cool guy rather than the hotheaded guy this time around. Then again, (view spoiler)[Severn murdered Kaylin's adoptive little sisters (hide spoiler)] so he can take a hike, as far as I'm concerned. Then again, frequent threats of violence and death seem pretty normal in this setting, so maybe it's just a culture thing?
Despite the enjoyable setting and a cast of characters I'd like to know better, Cast in Shadow has some huge problems that, er, cast a huge shadow over the whole thing. They're connected to what in plays is known as Chekhov's Gun. Kaylin comes across a mysterious mage from the Arcanum once or twice, but nothing comes of it. A super-cool weapon comes into play toward the end of the novel (Chekhov's sword?), and weapon and wielder vanish from the narrative after that. Many characters have long-standing connections to Kaylin, deep waters flowing underground, and we only see tiny hints of the depth of their affection or conflicts in their sparse, fraught dialogue. While I can appreciate the lack of cruft, this takes things too far in the other direction. This lack of "pertinent, actually" detail happens constantly, making the story hard to get through, and it was even harder to pick up after a couple of days' break.
My opinion of this book is torn right down the middle. It's interesting and frustrating, engaging and tedious, in near-equal portions. I give it three stars because there's a lot of promise here, and I'm interested in seeing how well the series lives up to it in the long run. I think I'll try one of Sagara's fantasy novels, written under her pen name Michelle West first, though.
Thanks for another buddy read, M.! Let's get that last one done! ;)...more
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