Books

[hawkwing_lb]

My book-buying and book-reading habits are way up.

Everything else is way down. You know, one day I may have to do some serious thinking about balance, among other things.

But not tonight.

Books 133-144, Fiction 126-137:

126. Territory, Emma Bull.

The world needs more magical Westerns. Particularly Westerns like this one, written with compassion and verve and an eye for detail. It's a quiet, almost low-key story, with well-drawn characters and a somewhat bittersweet arc, and I loved it. Lots.

127. Spellbinder: A Love Story with Magical Interruptions, Melanie Rawn.

This book is pretty much exactly what it says on the cover. It's an excellent romance, but I have an ambivalent relationship with that particular genre: romance is inherently predictable.

Fortunately, this is one of those books where that doesn't matter so much, because you're just enjoying the ride.

128. Off Armaggeddon Reef, David Weber.

Now I remember why I was putting off reading this. It's written in Weber's usual reasonably engaging style, but he's covered much the same ground with rather more energy in Heirs to the Empire. Ultimately, a disappointing read. Since I was hoping for something with a little more freshness about it.

129-131. Linnea Sinclair, Games of Command, Gabriel's Ghost, and An Accidental Goddess.

Fairly straightforward science fiction romance, whose debt to the likes of Star Wars is obvious at first glance. That doesn't make them any less enjoyable: in fact, their unapologetic space western tone makes them rather refreshing. Games of Command is probable closest in spirit to space opera, with Gabriel's Ghost falling in behind, and An Accidental Goddess is nearly all romance.

Not suprisingly, I enjoyed Games the most. But they're all decent reading for an evening on the train.

132-133. Laurell K. Hamilton, Danse Macabre and The Harlequin.

About what you'd expect. Harlequin shows signs of moving away from the all sex, all the time, Anita Blake that's been so irritating. I enjoy the tone and the emerging politics, but we're not seeing a return to the early days any time soon, I'd bet.

134. Seeker, Jack McDevitt.

McDevitt's Alex Benedict novels can be described in two short phrases: future history! and archaeology in space!

It's this latter, along with excellent characterisation and an attention to detail in laying clues and false trails that puts a murder mystery to shame, that makes my heart go pitter-pat. So to speak. Great stuff.

135. Inda, Sherwood Smith.

Fairly standard coming-of-age novel. It feels a little long-winded to me: I was running out of reasons to care by the time we hit the closing pages, though it wound up with a bang-up revelation that'll probably see me reading the second volume of the trilogy when it reaches paperback.

I'm ambivalent.

136-137. Rosemary Kirstein, The Lost Steersman and The Language of Power.

I hold Rosemary Kirstein in awe. The Steerswoman books can only be described as tours de force of language, and characterisation, and theme, and direction. They are wonderful, amazing, stunning, thought-provoking, stimulating, marvellous, with a fluidity of prose that is at once transparent and at times magnificently lyrical.

Um. I could go on, but I suspect that might prove embarrassing.

---

I've just counted the books on my TBR shelf. They number 28, not counting the 15-odd non-fiction awaiting my attention. Eep.

I should direct my attention to balance, lest some of them fall over.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Tell me, how familiar were you with the Gunfight at the OK Corral and surrounding people and incidents before you read Territory ? I ask because I very much was not - unless you count having read Walter Jon Williams' "The Last Ride of German Freddy", which adds Friedrich Nietszche having come west for his health into the mix - and I felt that the book failed in setting up and making one care about the historical figures in ways that could just be assuming everyone already knew who they were. I also thought the pacing was really weird, I spent about the last third or so going "I didn't think this was supposed to be the first part of a series", which jarred.

My take on the Weber was that those are really extraordinary lengths to go to to get a sea battle at the tech level that lights one's fire, and that the names were like fingernails on glass, and that I probably won't be bothered with any more of them. I'm right with you on the Kirstein, and glad to have yet more confirmation that The Harlequin is another step for the better, and it's nearly the end of September and I haven't even posted my booklog for August yet, damn it.

fwiw, my formally defined inpile is at 42 at the moment, not counting what I'm currently reading, but there will be four or so things going onto that within the week, now that I have actually got paid for this month.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I know zilch about the OK Corral. I think Bull may have been assuming her audience would have at least some familiarity with the historical characters, but for me the story worked well anyway. I read it as more like marginalia to the event: the emphasis on Jesse and Mildred, and around them events spiralling out of control.

I did find the ending slightly unsatisfactory, since it appears to assume a continuation. But I'm starting to get used to that in books, alas.

The Weber. Yes. That. Plus the fact that the android main character is woefully indestructible and infallible.

The interesting thing about Harlequin is that Anita's male harem is developing politics on a more than just personal scale. Which might just be a worthwhile development all on its lonesome, since I don't think the Anita Blake books are ever going back to simple supernatural murder mysteries.

42? That makes me feel so much more on top of things. *g*

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The Weber. Yes. That. Plus the fact that the android main character is woefully indestructible and infallible.

Oh yes, and I really wondered whether having that character start off female and then become a man for reasons of fitting in was pure tokenism, becuase the thing's desperately short of female characters.

The interesting thing about Harlequin is that Anita's male harem is developing politics on a more than just personal scale. Which might just be a worthwhile development all on its lonesome, since I don't think the Anita Blake books are ever going back to simple supernatural murder mysteries.

I liked that Danse Macabre didn't even try, after the increasing pahteticness of the mystery bits in the previous couple; I like that in Danse Macabre it feels like most of them have grown up a bit and are actually being somewhat more sensible and realistic about making a complex multi-relationship situation actually work, and I have felt that the sex writing has gone up from terrible to merely bad in the last couple of books, though still not good and there's still way too much of it.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was really, really irritating. It could have been a much more interesting novel if becoming a man hadn't been an option. (But probably less easy to go directly to the Grand Sea Battle.)

I can't speak for Hamilton's sex writing: I've had a general rule of skipping ahead to the aftermath since Narcissus in Chains, and only looking back if it sounds like something plot-related might have happened in the middle.