Books 2011: unexpected grace

Books 2011: 16-22


non-fiction

16. Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land. John Murray, London, 1997. With etchings by Martin Yeoman.

The first of the opening epigraphs of Mackintosh-Smith's literate, literary, digressive and fascinating travelogue-cum-meditation on Yemen reads, Our land is the dictionary of our people - this land of far horizons where the graves of our ancestors sleep, this earth trodden by processions of sons and sons of sons (Abdullah al-Baradduni, Funun al-adab al-sha'bi fi'l-y aman, 1995). The second is from Walter Harris's 1893 A Journey through the Yemen: One's ideas as to the nature of Arabia are entirely upset.

There can be no better statement of Travels in Dictionary Land than those two quotations: they give not only an idea as to the depth, both of history and of thought, which this book contains, and of how altered my assumptions as to the monolithic nature of the Arabian peninsula were in the course of reading it. (Foolish of me, of course: there is no such thing as a cultural monolith, anywhere.)

My only quibble with Mackintosh-Smith's book is that, fascinating as it is, the experience of Yemeni women, or of women in Yemen, impinges upon it very little - as is, I suppose, natural enough in a book written entirely by a man who has very limited access to the lifeworlds of Yemeni women. It is a book concerned with history, and even more, with landscape - M-S has an admirable turn of phrase when it comes to describing landscapes he clearly holds in some affection.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and recommend it without hesitation.

And Yeoman's etchings are illuminating.


17. Tim Mackintosh-Smith, The Hall of a Thousand Columns. John Murray, London, 2005. With illustrations by Martin Yeoman.


The second volume of Mackintosh-Smith's travels in the footnotes of Ibn Battutah, after 2001's Travels With A Tangerine. In this volume, M-S continues to retrace Ibn Battutah's journey, from the Arabian gulf to the Indian subcontinent (the book is divided into two parts, respectively called "Hindustan" and "Malabar"), where in Dehli he discovers that the titular "Hall of a Thousand Columns" has become something of an open-air lavatory. Fortunately, this fails to dissuade him from his quest in search of further Battutiana. This result is a literate, entertaining, lively, fascinating, and amusing read, a window onto an entirely different subcontinent than the one which I was expecting.

I highly recommend it.


18. Elizabeth Bear, The Sea Thy Mistress.

If ever there were a book about aftermaths, this is it. Unlike By the Mountain Bound or All the Windwracked Stars, it cannot stand on its own: it needs both of the previous volumes for its full emotional freight to make proper sense.

But oh. It is complex and beautiful, with a quiet lyricism of language and sentences and characters fractal-sharp and startling, and it pulled my heart out of my chest and put it back inside differently than before.

So I can't really talk about it properly, the way I'd like to. I ended up loving it far too much.


19. Tim Akers, The Horns of Ruin. (ARC, courtesy of Ideomancer.)

I understand this is Akers' second novel. In a lot of ways, it feels more like a debut. The start is a little rocky and slow, and I'm not entirely overawed by the device used on the first page - the very first line - to heighten the tension. There's a bit of aimless running around. In a fascinating setting, which Akers inclues very well - a steampunky-epic atmosphere, a whole damn lot of patented-awesome Cool Shit, a floating city, an order of warriors dedicated to a dead god, an order of enslaved scholars dedicated to another god - but until the plot gets cracking, about halfway through, all the awesome in the world was not distracting me from the fact that forward progress was a leetle slow in coming.

I'm not entirely comfortable with protagonist Eva Forge: she's not very likeable, while remaining entirely sympathetic, which I think is a tricky thing to pull off. Akers mostly manages it. I'm also not so excellently happy with some of his narrative choices, which could have used a little more set-up. The climactic scenes are, however, in my opinion, worth the price of the book alone.

While, however, I found some of Akers' narrative choices annoying, I did enjoy the book quite a lot.


20. Cherie Priest, Bloodshot.

Urban fantasy from the author of Boneshaker. Pretty damn cool characters, compelling plot, and a sufficiently interesting twist on the standard vampires walk among us schtick of so much UF that I kept reading even before the amazing drag queen made his appearance.

That guy? Makes the damn book.


21. Stephanie Burgis, A Most Improper Magick. (ARC, courtesy of Ideomancer.)

YA. Published last year in the UK, forthcoming under the title of Kat, Incorrigible in the US this April. I have a sneaking fondness for Georgian-period fantasy, and this, while shallow and perhaps aimed at a slightly younger audience than I was expecting (but then, the last YA novel I read was one of Céline Kiernan's, which did not pull many of its punches), is entertaining and occasionally reasonable hilarious.

O fantasies of manners, where are the rest of you gone?


22. Barbara Hamilton, The Ninth Daughter.

I'm informed that Hamilton is the pseudonym of Barbara Hambly, whose Benjamin Janvier novels I love with an unreasonable love. For some reason - whether of tone, or style, or simply the fact that I feel far less connected as a reader to Abigail Adams than to Janvier - I did not love The Ninth Daughter as well as I expected to.

Or, well. Perhaps it is merely than Puritan New England on the eve of the revolutionary war is that much more alien to my worldview than 1830s New Orleans. Either that, or I'm jaded as far as serial murder is concerned. It is a well done mystery, written - as well might be expected - with an understated grace. I look forward to getting my hands on the sequel.

Books 2011: unexpected grace

Books 2011: 16-22


non-fiction

16. Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land. John Murray, London, 1997. With etchings by Martin Yeoman.

The first of the opening epigraphs of Mackintosh-Smith's literate, literary, digressive and fascinating travelogue-cum-meditation on Yemen reads, Our land is the dictionary of our people - this land of far horizons where the graves of our ancestors sleep, this earth trodden by processions of sons and sons of sons (Abdullah al-Baradduni, Funun al-adab al-sha'bi fi'l-y aman, 1995). The second is from Walter Harris's 1893 A Journey through the Yemen: One's ideas as to the nature of Arabia are entirely upset.

There can be no better statement of Travels in Dictionary Land than those two quotations: they give not only an idea as to the depth, both of history and of thought, which this book contains, and of how altered my assumptions as to the monolithic nature of the Arabian peninsula were in the course of reading it. (Foolish of me, of course: there is no such thing as a cultural monolith, anywhere.)

My only quibble with Mackintosh-Smith's book is that, fascinating as it is, the experience of Yemeni women, or of women in Yemen, impinges upon it very little - as is, I suppose, natural enough in a book written entirely by a man who has very limited access to the lifeworlds of Yemeni women. It is a book concerned with history, and even more, with landscape - M-S has an admirable turn of phrase when it comes to describing landscapes he clearly holds in some affection.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and recommend it without hesitation.

And Yeoman's etchings are illuminating.


17. Tim Mackintosh-Smith, The Hall of a Thousand Columns. John Murray, London, 2005. With illustrations by Martin Yeoman.


The second volume of Mackintosh-Smith's travels in the footnotes of Ibn Battutah, after 2001's Travels With A Tangerine. In this volume, M-S continues to retrace Ibn Battutah's journey, from the Arabian gulf to the Indian subcontinent (the book is divided into two parts, respectively called "Hindustan" and "Malabar"), where in Dehli he discovers that the titular "Hall of a Thousand Columns" has become something of an open-air lavatory. Fortunately, this fails to dissuade him from his quest in search of further Battutiana. This result is a literate, entertaining, lively, fascinating, and amusing read, a window onto an entirely different subcontinent than the one which I was expecting.

I highly recommend it.


18. Elizabeth Bear, The Sea Thy Mistress.

If ever there were a book about aftermaths, this is it. Unlike By the Mountain Bound or All the Windwracked Stars, it cannot stand on its own: it needs both of the previous volumes for its full emotional freight to make proper sense.

But oh. It is complex and beautiful, with a quiet lyricism of language and sentences and characters fractal-sharp and startling, and it pulled my heart out of my chest and put it back inside differently than before.

So I can't really talk about it properly, the way I'd like to. I ended up loving it far too much.


19. Tim Akers, The Horns of Ruin. (ARC, courtesy of Ideomancer.)

I understand this is Akers' second novel. In a lot of ways, it feels more like a debut. The start is a little rocky and slow, and I'm not entirely overawed by the device used on the first page - the very first line - to heighten the tension. There's a bit of aimless running around. In a fascinating setting, which Akers inclues very well - a steampunky-epic atmosphere, a whole damn lot of patented-awesome Cool Shit, a floating city, an order of warriors dedicated to a dead god, an order of enslaved scholars dedicated to another god - but until the plot gets cracking, about halfway through, all the awesome in the world was not distracting me from the fact that forward progress was a leetle slow in coming.

I'm not entirely comfortable with protagonist Eva Forge: she's not very likeable, while remaining entirely sympathetic, which I think is a tricky thing to pull off. Akers mostly manages it. I'm also not so excellently happy with some of his narrative choices, which could have used a little more set-up. The climactic scenes are, however, in my opinion, worth the price of the book alone.

While, however, I found some of Akers' narrative choices annoying, I did enjoy the book quite a lot.


20. Cherie Priest, Bloodshot.

Urban fantasy from the author of Boneshaker. Pretty damn cool characters, compelling plot, and a sufficiently interesting twist on the standard vampires walk among us schtick of so much UF that I kept reading even before the amazing drag queen made his appearance.

That guy? Makes the damn book.


21. Stephanie Burgis, A Most Improper Magick. (ARC, courtesy of Ideomancer.)

YA. Published last year in the UK, forthcoming under the title of Kat, Incorrigible in the US this April. I have a sneaking fondness for Georgian-period fantasy, and this, while shallow and perhaps aimed at a slightly younger audience than I was expecting (but then, the last YA novel I read was one of Céline Kiernan's, which did not pull many of its punches), is entertaining and occasionally reasonable hilarious.

O fantasies of manners, where are the rest of you gone?


22. Barbara Hamilton, The Ninth Daughter.

I'm informed that Hamilton is the pseudonym of Barbara Hambly, whose Benjamin Janvier novels I love with an unreasonable love. For some reason - whether of tone, or style, or simply the fact that I feel far less connected as a reader to Abigail Adams than to Janvier - I did not love The Ninth Daughter as well as I expected to.

Or, well. Perhaps it is merely than Puritan New England on the eve of the revolutionary war is that much more alien to my worldview than 1830s New Orleans. Either that, or I'm jaded as far as serial murder is concerned. It is a well done mystery, written - as well might be expected - with an understated grace. I look forward to getting my hands on the sequel.