between the rock and the cold, cold sea

It's August, already? Why did nobody tell me half the year had happened while I was looking the other way?

So. There have been books.

*doesn't lj-cut, and makes everyone suffer*

Justine Robson's Keeping It Real mixes magic and technology for a fast and moderately enjoyable hybrid of a story - thriller, romance, genre-hopping fantasy-SF. Alas, enjoyable as it is, it felt very light - fluffy, almost - to me. Nothing wrong with fluff, nothing at all, but I was hoping for something a bit more, given Robson's reputation (this is the first of her books I've read) and the initial high-concept presentation. The elves are... elfy, the demons rather less than demonic, and the main character suffers from backstory that doesn't quite live up to its initial promise.

D&D elves - humans with magic and pointy ears - was not what I was expecting from a book subtitled Quantum Gravity Book One. Though justice forces me to admit that matociquala's Blood and Iron has probably spoiled me forever when it comes to elves and faeries.

John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades is adequately entertaining reading for the sleep-deprived, though I think he could have given more play to the politics. And, damnit, I wanted more Jane Sagan!

Holly Black's Valiant is... Eh. I read Tithe and saw that, yea verily, it was good, so when I saw Valiant, I thought I'd give it a whirl. Alas, the elements which made Tithe such a refreshing read are not present in Valiant. Drug addiction, yes. Angst-ridden teenagers, yes. Journeys into the strange and terrible realms of Faerie?

Not so much.

And of all Tithe's characters, only Roiben gets as much as a cameo. Disappointing? Yep. Will I be reading the next one, if it exists? Probably, yes.

Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword is an intriguing, well-characterised book. I'm not sure I'm precisely its target audience, considering some of the rapturous responses I've read. I'll blame my slightly lukewarm, not-quite-entirely-satisfied state upon completion upon being Young, Naïve, and Irish.

Liz Williams' Nine Layers of Sky, on the other hand...

It's a book about dreams, and places that aren't yours, or you aren't theirs, and staking out a place, a dream, a piece of the future, that is. It is refreshing to read a novel set in the former Soviet republics that treats their inhabitants as people, as opposed to stereotypes. Williams does an excellent job of characterising the sense of dislocation felt by both main characters, and evoking the contradictions and complexity of the places, as well. Solid pacing, tight plotting, and excellent characterisation make it a book that I'm more than merely lukewarm about. If you haven't read it yet, give it a go.

Non-fiction.

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Personal account of slavery in the American South, during the 1800s. Eye-opening. Sickening. What was done to people who were considered property and thus legally, morally, subhuman. If the antebellum South was not the most comprehensively morally wrong society in recent history, it's definitely right up there.

Particularly with regard to the provision that children should 'follow the condition of the mother', making children of male slaveholders by female slaves their legal property, available to be sold.

Instead of making us read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings for the Leaving, they should have had us read this.

In progress:

Non-fiction.

I'm still struggling through Thucydides, when I get up the strength required. Margaret Collins Weitz's Sisters in the Resistance: How Women Fought to Free France, 1940-1945, is far more interesting. Since I've only begun the second chapter, I'll have more to say on this later.

Robert Gildea's Marianne in Chains is proving slow going. Social history, interesting but dry. I need to get momentum going on that again.

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, by Elaine Scarry, is another book which is proving slow going. It is, however, an absolutely fascinating treatise on the intersection of pain, perception and power. The first chapter, the one I've succeeded in completing, is on torture. It deserves a post to itself: Scarry makes many interesting and useful observations, not least of which is that pain destroys the relationship - I am putting this much more crudely than she - between the world and oneself: it annihilates reason, until the world ceases, for the sufferer, to exist beyond the body in pain, and thus the idiom of 'betrayal' which is used in relation to forced confessions is itself false: how can you betray something that has ceased to exist in any meaningful form?

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V for Vendetta is a good film, but one that annoyed me. It seems to me to be three plotlines, that of Inspector Finch and his growing disillusionment with the regime which employs him; that of V, who makes no bones about the fact that his only desire is to bring down the regime; and that of Evey, whose disillusionment with the regime already exists, but who cannot bring herself to act in any meaningful way until V forces her to, in a sense, grow into self-knowledge.

Finch's growth mirrors Evey's. Alas, though both Rhea and Portman give excellent performances, the film loses something in the way of tension, as I feel that the three plotlines fail to support each other adequately - it loses out on the transitions.

Thematically? Three cheers and tour de force. Technically? Well, I'd call it sloppy, but hey, not like I could do a better job.

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In other news, I have written my letter-of-resignation to the d*mned job, before it kills me. I am now unemployed again.

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PS: If anyone knows anything about the drugs trade in Paris, information would be appreciated. *kicks story-in-progress*

Progress notes for 23 June 2006:

"The Queen’s Mirror"

New Words: 526
Total Words: 1431
Darling du jour: N/A
Reason for stopping: draft

"Untitled #3" aka the very strange angel story

New Words: 323
Total Words: 1364
Darling du jour: N/A

Books in progress: Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France during the German Occupation; Jo Walton, The King's Peace; Thucydides, A History of the Peloponnesian War.
Exercise: Reps, short run, 40 situps, 22 pressups.

The Blue Place, by Nicola Griffith, is an interesting noir-type book. It has lush language and a harsh and complex protagonist, but to my taste the love story angle drags once Aud (the main character) reaches Norway, and for fifty pages or so it became an exercise in endurance until I reached the end and things sped up again.

Last night, I forgot that one of the books I read on Monday was Jane Lindskold's Wolf Captured. Possibly this is because it is not a particularly memorable book: the fourth installment in the Firekeeper series lacks the freshness of the first two and the interesting character relationships of the third. Still a fun read, but the action drags in parts and the exposition is at times rather heavy-handed.

Tomorrow is the 5am shift. Gah.

Progress notes for 22 June 2006:

"The Queen’s Mirror"

New Words: 325
Total Words: 904
Darling du jour: Witches cast no more reflection on the future than they must.
Like cats, they are tricksy creatures.

Untitled novel #? aka the pilots story

New Words: 689
Total Words: I dunno. This has been in progress a very long time, accumulating words in drips here and there, so maybe 8,000? Really, I dunno.
Darling du jour: N/A

"Untitled #3" aka the very strange angel story

New Words: 466
Total Words: 1040
Darling du jour: The Liffey is running high, languid and dark beneath the metal arch of the new footbridge. The Sean O’Casey Bridge: streetlights reflect from its nameplate. There’s an itch in my spine and an oppressive feeling in the dark: something’s out there tonight. or maybe: The angel was still in my apartment when I left, glowering at the walls and leaking blood on the furniture.

Books in progress: Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France during the German Occupation; Nicola Griffith, The Blue Place.
Exercise: Running, reps, kata.


Before starting work, I spent Monday in a panicked, last-gasping fit of reading. It’s my reaction to the intrusion of unpleasant realities: retreat to book.

Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint is a marvellous, deft book. Alec and Richard are wonderful, imperfect characters, and the tenor of their relationship -- well, it hits the right note to be real, anyway. Also, Alec Campion? So believably self-destructive, and so right.

My only gripe with it is that it feels unfinished. Not just a dangling ending, but unfinished. Still, this could just be because I wanted more.

The Firebird Deception, by Cate Dermody (mizkit) lacks the quality of deftness which made Swordspoint so enjoyable. This wouldn’t matter, except that it also lacks the freshness and slightly snarky humour enjoyed by its predecessor, The Cardinal Rule. The Cardinal Rule was a breathless, helter-skelter ride of a -- well, spy romance, for lack of a better term. The Firebird Deception is also breathless and helter-skelter, but where its predecessor made those qualities into virtues, here the book merely feels rushed. Meh. It’s not bad, just a bit skimpy on character, and relying a little too heavily on the popular perception of spies to cover its shortcomings. It didn’t push the right buttons for me.

David Drake’s The Master of the Cauldron is another solid instalment in his Lord of the Isles series. Nothing particularly new to speak of -- it follows pretty much the same pattern as preceding volumes -- but fun nonetheless. Drake writes good character, good battle, and good magic. His worldbuilding is the next best thing to note-perfect. Yep, definitely fun.

I am holding out on reading naominovik’s Black Powder War because I know there are no more yet published, and it’s nice to have some Temeraire to look forward to. Sometime, when I’m feeling really down, I’ll treat myself to a good read of this book. But not yet, precioussss. Not yet.

Incidentally, there are paperback copies of Temeraire in the bookshop in Dublin Airport. So I guess Naomi Novik isn’t doing too badly, at all, at all.

Hughes & Hughes, Booksellers, apparently want me to come and work for them. They want me, they got me: next Tuesday, we will find out if, having seen shy, retiring, scatter-brained and medicated me, they want to keep me.

The weather continues (shock! horror!) fine and sunny and in the low twenties Celsius. My brain was mugged by a short story yesterday, which wrote itself in the space of five disjointed hours and left me gasping to keep up. When I was too tired to resist, it stuck out its tongue, laughed at me, and snuck in some blatently homoerotic implications at the end, and when I protested feebly, cried, "But it's thematic!" and then refused to pay me any more heed.

Who's in charge of this brain, anyway?

I finished off Charles Stross' The Clan Corporate yesterday: an okay book, but definitely a series one. All set-up, all the time. Also, Miriam is stupid in the cause of plot on more than one occassion. It's understandable stupid, but it still feels like handwaving. Hopefully there will be some kind of pay-off in the next book.

Kristine Smith's Law of Survival, on the other hand, is an entirely self-contained novel that slots nicely into place in the larger progression of the Jani Kilian books. Tense and extremely well-paced, with some deft character development and interesting hints of things to come. I really need to get a copy of Contact Imminent now.

I still need to read Toil properly for jmeadows, finish cataloguing this! damn! library! of mine, write this damn! brain-wormed! novel!, reshelve books, reorganise contents of boxes, write nice begging letters to archaeological companies to ask for work on a dig somewhere sometime, attend appointments, go to work next week, and not run away gibbering into a corner. Gibbering would be bad.

Onward, onward.

507 books catalogued. At least another 300 or so to go: my initial estimate of 2000+ was off by a significant margin. I still think I’ll break 1000, though.

I’ve been looking at my Amazon.com wishlist as I type this. Anyone else looking at it will probably think I’m some kind of scatter-brained research freak: brane theory, string theory, viruses, genetics, the Turks, the Crusades, Arab perspectives of the Crusades, medieval and ancient medicine, a history of chemistry, how to make things blow up, histories of ancient Greece, histories of ancient Rome, histories of the ancient Near East, mythology, histories of the Winter War, histories of the Renaissance, histories of the Great War, histories of secret agents in WWII, histories of the Boer War, histories of the Franco-Prussian War, histories of the Crimean War, histories of Russia, writings from medieval Japan, histories of China, social histories, economic histories, historical atlases, astronomy, histories of warfare, examinations of religion in history, more histories of the Classical world... Oh, and some science fiction and fantasy, did I happen to mention that?

Okay, I admit it: I am a history freak - and I’d like to know enough to be a history geek, too - with a side interest in the sciences. But 24 pages of wishlist-freakish-ness may not be a healthy sign.

Speaking of history-freakish-ness, Michele Hauf’s Rhiana seriously pissed me off. It’s a Luna book, which should have warned me off,* and I picked it up on what amounted to a rather desperate whim. It had dragons and dragon-slayers, after all: how bad could it be?

Uh-uh. Bad idea, hawkwing_lb. The answer to that question is: very, very bad. Horribly bad.

For starters, Chapter One begins, Western shore of France - 1437. The author goes on to prove she knows absolutely nothing about the middle ages, its societies, foibles, wars and relationships. Nor can she decide whether St Rénan - the heroine’s place of birth - is a village or a city.

Now this heroine, one Rhiana by name (Rhiana! In medieval France!), strides around in men’s clothes doing men’s work - dragonslaying - to no great disapprobation. (Medieval Europe! Catholic Church! Clue-by-four!) She’s apparently religious, but never interacts with a priest, has no respect for her feudal lord and his band of merry men (Middle Ages! Capital punishment! No judicial oversight! Not to mention the doctrine of - I believe - divine right, which mandated that nobles and kings and such were appointed by God), and believes in the heresy that women are just as good as men.

In short, she - and the rest of the inhabitants of her village/city - go around acting...

Well, not to point the finger or anything, but like USians. Or at least, like members of a modern democracy, and not a feudal society. Hauf tries to dodge by making out that they’re all rich, because they have gold from a local dragon’s hoard, but that doesn’t wash. Feudal society. Dirty. Hungry. Afraid of the Church. Afraid of the overlords. Afraid of the next army to pass through. Fundamentally unhygienic.

I was tempted to put the book down on the second page, because the third person narration is told in a painful accent, full of incidents of ‘twould’ and ‘twas’ and other such abominations (they always make me think of caricatures of some country farmer). Still, I paid good money for it, and so I soldiered on.

The romance. Oh gods and fishes, the romance. Clichéd is too kind a word. She hates Macarius (the name! It burns!) at first sight, of course, and must of course dwell despite herself on how attractive and manly he is. Oh, did I mention that despite declaring that women are just as good as men, she worries that she’s not womanly enough to catch a man?

And she suffers from the most abominable case of Mary Sue-ism I can recall seeing in allegedly grown-up*** fiction.

( Read more... )

I felt more sympathy for the villain than the heroine. Poor man, struggling to be an Evil Overlord(tm) with the best intentions, and such a sad, thin excuse for a plot.


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*No offence intended to the rather good authors who write for Luna, such as C.E. Murphy, but the majority of my experience with them is that they publish romantic crap** masquerading as fantasy - and because it’s ‘fantasy’, their authors seem to think that this liberates them from any requirement to write anything remotely believeable.

**No, I don’t consider all romance to be crap. But much of it is – worse, it’s formulaic crap, so you don’t ever get anything new, which makes the crap that much more crappy.

***I hate having to avoid the word 'adult' when talking about fiction. Some people really need to scrub out their brains once in a while.

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PS: WARM WEATHER CONTINUES STOP SEA WARM COMMA WAVES BIG COMMA SWIMMING GREAT EXCLAMATION END

I've been meaning to mention this for a while. I recently read Joe Abercrombie's first novel, The Blade Itself, out of my local library. If you're looking for juicy new fantasy, and read scott_lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora too quickly, check out The Blade Itself. It's got skull-splitting barbarians, effete fencing masters, compelling torturers, nations at war and the strangest kind of mage.

It's an excellent debut, with really human characters, and it's gone on my list of books to buy as soon as someone takes pity on me and gives me a paying job.

The Lies of Locke Lamora is really, truly, and astonishingly good. A little bit jumpy at the start, perhaps, but once it gets going? Worldbuilding, character and plot on crack. If you don't read it -- well, you won't regret it, because you won't know what you're missing -- but you really, really ought to. Because it is good. Pushing brilliant.

Now, who do I have to bribe, threaten or thieve from to get an early copy of the next one?