Take comfort wherever you can
Sep. 14th, 2006 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbThings done today: went running on the beach. Discovered that live firing exercises were in progress at the army-range-cum-airfield adjacent to the beach, and was turned back halfway through the run by a nice young man in uniform (I'll cop to being unobservant: I didn't see the warning flag) who looked like he'd been stuck with the boring job of turning back other people as unobservant as myself.
No one wants to risk being bullet-riddled by accident, least of all me, so I'm glad they had someone out there.
---
At the library this evening, I ran into someone I knew from school. She was three years ahead of me, but we were both members of the Bad Poets' Society (AKA the school writers' group: I cringe in memory. She wasn't a bad poet, though; quite the contrary, a prizewinning one.), so we were friendly enough. She's just finished her degree (going back this year to start a Ph.D. in children's literature) and she was telling me that one of her final year options was in Old Norse/Icelandic literature.
I am reconfirmed in my desire to read the sagas. Preferably in the original, should I ever finagle the time to learn Old Norse.
---
Brought home from the library: Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel and The Enemy by Lee Child. Can't remember whether I ever read this particular Child book before. Possibly.
I'm not really going for the brain food in books, lately.
---
Books. Well, the postman didn't perform the usual miracles. I still await Farthing and Fires of the Faithful. I suppose I shouldn't have hoped to have them earlier than the beginning of next week, but, well. An Post so frequently does bring packages to my door earlier than I ever expected them.
Instead, my reading this week consisted of:
The Invisible Ring, Anne Bishop. Set in the same world as Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy. Nicely paced, with well-drawn characters and fairly... lush, I think the word is... worldbuilding. Jared, a red-jewelled warlord slave who killed his last mistress, is bought by a rather infamous queen. All is not, however, precisely as it seems, and when Jared discovers that, he has a choice to make.
The book is more about Jared's internal world and his growth from slave into man than anything else, though the intrigues present in the background - and occasionally the foreground - are quite central to the character arc.
I've enjoyed the Black Jewels trilogy. I enjoyed this book, too. Despite that, I've a niggling bone or two to pick: I don't like the fact that Dorothea SaDiablo, antagonist, is Evil with a capital E. Mutilation and execution out of pure sadism don't get a ruler very far, particularly when such threats are deployed against your allies as well as your enemies. Cf. all the insane emperors, kings, and dictators of history, and just exactly how long they lasted, on average, when everyone knew they weren't safe from a royal or imperial caprice.
I don't like characters who are Evil for the sake of it. A little bit evil-with-a-small-e, fine, but chopping up genitals left and right is just a leetle bit too far over the top for me. It's right up there with the Bad Guy who tortures puppies and kittens.
Snake Agent, Liz Williams. A superb, and I mean absolutely superb, urban fantasy. Well, part fantasy, part science fiction, all fun. Chen is a detective inspector with the Singapore Three police department, with responsibility for supernatural crime. When a soul that was supposed to go to Heaven ends up in Hell, instead, Chen gets involved in a perilous investigation into the illegal trade in souls.
Oh, did I mention? His wife's a demon, his patron goddess is offended at him, his colleagues don't trust him and the other person investigating the soul trade is one of Hell's own vice officers, Seneshal Zhu Irzh.
And the stakes are getting higher all the time...
Read it. Read it now. Go forth and get your hands on a copy immediately.
I'll wait.
---
I've started Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides. Looks interesting, but it's not compelling me to read on. Bit like Robert Charles Wilson's Spin, in that way. I've been at page 106 of that for the last month. Yeah, yeah, pretty concept. I mean, it's really pretty, okay? But damn, man, Tyler is getting the hell all over my nerves, and Jason and Diane, as seen from Tyler's point of view, annoy me even worse.
Pretty, pretty idea. But please couldn't it have been done without the feels-like-a-trainwreck-in-progress soap opera character stuff?
Air is sitting on my shelf staring at me, too. The big red letters on the spine look kind of accusing.
The shelf of I'll-read-it-sometime-soon-but-not-now (IRISSBNN) books is all male authors, now, and has been for a while. Some of those guys have been there since the first week in August. Oops.
Soon, guys. Soon. Just not right now.
No one wants to risk being bullet-riddled by accident, least of all me, so I'm glad they had someone out there.
---
At the library this evening, I ran into someone I knew from school. She was three years ahead of me, but we were both members of the Bad Poets' Society (AKA the school writers' group: I cringe in memory. She wasn't a bad poet, though; quite the contrary, a prizewinning one.), so we were friendly enough. She's just finished her degree (going back this year to start a Ph.D. in children's literature) and she was telling me that one of her final year options was in Old Norse/Icelandic literature.
I am reconfirmed in my desire to read the sagas. Preferably in the original, should I ever finagle the time to learn Old Norse.
---
Brought home from the library: Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel and The Enemy by Lee Child. Can't remember whether I ever read this particular Child book before. Possibly.
I'm not really going for the brain food in books, lately.
---
Books. Well, the postman didn't perform the usual miracles. I still await Farthing and Fires of the Faithful. I suppose I shouldn't have hoped to have them earlier than the beginning of next week, but, well. An Post so frequently does bring packages to my door earlier than I ever expected them.
Instead, my reading this week consisted of:
The Invisible Ring, Anne Bishop. Set in the same world as Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy. Nicely paced, with well-drawn characters and fairly... lush, I think the word is... worldbuilding. Jared, a red-jewelled warlord slave who killed his last mistress, is bought by a rather infamous queen. All is not, however, precisely as it seems, and when Jared discovers that, he has a choice to make.
The book is more about Jared's internal world and his growth from slave into man than anything else, though the intrigues present in the background - and occasionally the foreground - are quite central to the character arc.
I've enjoyed the Black Jewels trilogy. I enjoyed this book, too. Despite that, I've a niggling bone or two to pick: I don't like the fact that Dorothea SaDiablo, antagonist, is Evil with a capital E. Mutilation and execution out of pure sadism don't get a ruler very far, particularly when such threats are deployed against your allies as well as your enemies. Cf. all the insane emperors, kings, and dictators of history, and just exactly how long they lasted, on average, when everyone knew they weren't safe from a royal or imperial caprice.
I don't like characters who are Evil for the sake of it. A little bit evil-with-a-small-e, fine, but chopping up genitals left and right is just a leetle bit too far over the top for me. It's right up there with the Bad Guy who tortures puppies and kittens.
Snake Agent, Liz Williams. A superb, and I mean absolutely superb, urban fantasy. Well, part fantasy, part science fiction, all fun. Chen is a detective inspector with the Singapore Three police department, with responsibility for supernatural crime. When a soul that was supposed to go to Heaven ends up in Hell, instead, Chen gets involved in a perilous investigation into the illegal trade in souls.
Oh, did I mention? His wife's a demon, his patron goddess is offended at him, his colleagues don't trust him and the other person investigating the soul trade is one of Hell's own vice officers, Seneshal Zhu Irzh.
And the stakes are getting higher all the time...
Read it. Read it now. Go forth and get your hands on a copy immediately.
I'll wait.
---
I've started Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides. Looks interesting, but it's not compelling me to read on. Bit like Robert Charles Wilson's Spin, in that way. I've been at page 106 of that for the last month. Yeah, yeah, pretty concept. I mean, it's really pretty, okay? But damn, man, Tyler is getting the hell all over my nerves, and Jason and Diane, as seen from Tyler's point of view, annoy me even worse.
Pretty, pretty idea. But please couldn't it have been done without the feels-like-a-trainwreck-in-progress soap opera character stuff?
Air is sitting on my shelf staring at me, too. The big red letters on the spine look kind of accusing.
The shelf of I'll-read-it-sometime-soon-but-not-now (IRISSBNN) books is all male authors, now, and has been for a while. Some of those guys have been there since the first week in August. Oops.
Soon, guys. Soon. Just not right now.
