Books read, May 2014 (and other months, too)

[swan_tower]

April was another month where I was terrible about recording things, and then never even got around to posting about it. But the good news is, I remembered another book from January, which is the previous time I forgot to record stuff! So this post is mostly but not entirely from May.

Sword and Fan L5R book, read for proofreading. I dug the hell out of this one, or rather the latter half thereof. While I like swords as much as the next sword-wielding woman, a lot of the focus in the first half is on armies rather than individual warriors, and I both respect L5R for making mass combat a thing you can do interesting stuff with, and have little interest in using that in my own game. But the latter half is all about courtly politics in Rokugan, and it was full of tasty tasty info.

Shattered Pillars, Elizabeth Bear. Moar Central Asian epic fantasy! I think I’m not engaging with this quite as much as I want to, and I think the reason is point of view; like many epic fantasies, this one has a lot of pov characters, but the difference here is that Bear cuts between them very rapidly, so that many scenes are only a page or two long — or even shorter. I keep wanting to sink into one strand of the story and follow it for a while before shifting to someone else. I will spare you the lengthy digression of me thinking about epic fantasy plots and the pov management thereof, in favor of saying that Hrahima is still awesome, the world of the Eternal Sky series is full of sensawunda touches, and the characters are so screwed. I’m looking forward to seeing how the story ends.

Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan. Revision. My own books don’t count.

The Master of Heathcrest Hall, Galen Beckett. Conclusion of the Jane Austen + Lovecraft trilogy (vibe only; this is secondary world, with no actual Austen or Lovecraft in it). I don’t know whether Beckett did this before and I only just now noticed, or whether the tic showed up/got worse in this book, but a certain structural pattern started to drive me up the wall. Beckett has three pov characters in this series, and mostly switches between them from chapter to chapter; as a result, many chapters begin with the character having moved forward some distance in the timeline, then pause for the text to fill you in on what happened in the interim. This is a perfectly fine technique, but if you use it again and again and again it swiftly becomes predictable and aggravating.

Or rather, it’s aggravating for most of the book, then becomes unforgivable when the following more or less happens at the climax of the novel:

CHARACTERS: “Let us outline our plan for dealing with the terrible evil from beyond the stars. Everyone clear on their part? Okay — let’s go!”

<chapter break>

NARRATIVE: “The characters staggered upstairs, having defeated the terrible evil from beyond the stars. The heroine reflected on how it had gone, which is to say, pretty much according to plan.”

I wish I were making that up. I like this series overall, and Eldyn (who annoyed the snot out of me in the previous book) is a much more interesting character this time around — but holy crap, no. You do not pull the “let’s flash back to what happened before this moment” trick with the CLIMAX OF THE BOOK. For the love of god.

The Book of Void Another L5R book; another round of proofreading. I ate this one up with a spoon: the Elemental series have been organized according to the thematic connections of each Element, and in this case that meant The Book of Void is the Book of Weird Stuff. Like, there’s a whole section on kaidan. I really want to say more, but I signed an NDA and this book isn’t out yet, so you’ll just have to take my word that it’s full of the kind of supernatural weirdness that I totally dig.

The Jennifer Morgue, Charles Stross. Second of the Laundry Files. I like this one better than The Atrocity Archives; Stross has hit more of his stride here, and Mo gets to be a much more interesting character than she was before. In particular, I am an excellent audience for the trick he plays here with the geas and using narrative as a form of magical power. The actual plot of the villain still strikes me as unutterably stupid, but hey. That isn’t out of place here.

Valour and Vanity, Mary Robinette Kowal. Full disclosure: I was on tour with Mary while she was promoting this book.

Jane Austen heist novel! I am very sympathetic to the challenges of writing a heist plot, and the result in this instance was great fun. There was a spot in the middle where I almost checked out for a while, but that’s because Kowal does a very very good job of depicting a kind of conflict that is rarely shown with such realism. (Romantically starving in a Venetian garret: not romantic at all.) There are nice touches with secondary characters knowing their jobs better than the protagonists do — as they should! — and some freaking awesome nuns. Basically, this series continues to get better as it goes along, though I’m not sure whether this or Without a Summer (the third book) will turn out to be my personal favorite.

The Fuller Memorandum, Charles Stross. Third of the Laundry Files. The entire thing with the creature code-named TEAPOT was highly entertaining, especially the bit at the end where the bad guys’ plan kind of backfired enormously on them.

However, there is one thing that’s beginning to really annoy me, which I will rot13 for avoidance of spoilers:

V nz fb irel gverq bs rirel srznyr obff be fhcrevbe Obo unf gheavat bhg gb or vapbzcrgrag, rivy, be (serdhragyl) obgu. Be, gb chg vg nabgure jnl: rirel gvzr gur Ynhaqel unf na vagreany ceboyrz, fbzr rzcyblrr cynlvat gur ebyr bs ivyynva (engure guna vg orvat na bhgfvqr rarzl), gung ivyynva vf n jbzna. Vg unccraf va “Gur Pbapergr Whatyr,” vg unccraf va “Cvzcs,” naq vg unccraf urer. Ng gur fgneg bs guvf obbx, V fnvq gb zlfrys, “uheenu, Obo unf n uvtuyl pbzcrgrag naq flzcngurgvp srznyr znantre ng ynfg!” Naq gura Vevf ghearq bhg gb or gur phyg yrnqre. Guvf vf ernyyl ortvaavat gb obgure zr — gb gur cbvag jurer vs gur arkg obbx unf gur fnzr guvat unccra, V jbhyq yvxr gb or jnearq, fb gung V pna pbafvqre jurgure V jnag gb ernq vg ng nyy.

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, Stephanie Barron. Jane Austen murder mystery (I had a bit of a theme going on this month, I guess, this book being more literally Jane Austen than most). Recommended by Mary while we were on the road. The conceit here is that, well, Cassandra destroyed many of Jane’s letters and papers, so all kinds of fascinating things could have been hidden in those lost texts! The novel stayed mostly in the mode where Jane investigates by talking to people and understanding what makes them tick, rather than engaging in feats of derring-do, which I appreciated.

Islam: A Short Guide to the Faith, ed. Roger Allen and Shawkat M. Toorawa. Nonfiction, as you might guess. This does what it says on the tin, including the part about being short: 139 pages to cover topics ranging from the founding of Islam to its role in America today. But it does a very good job of packing a lot of information into those pages, including a rundown on what the history and differences are for Sunni, Shi’ite, and Sufi traditions (which is one of those things that’s really important to current events but I’m only just starting to get a handle on). I had initially been reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Islam, having had a good experience with the equivalent Judaism book, and that one is still better as an overview of theological details (e.g. the afterlife) and daily practice (e.g. prayers), but I think this one is the superior introduction to the religion on a social level.

Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny. I ended up getting the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks omnibus of the first five, because at least it’s a good binding (unlike the more recent ten-book omnibus) and slightly more manageable in size. I wish I had known going into this that the first five tell a more continuous story, rather than being self-contained; it took me by surprise that things were not at all resolved at the end of this book. But the good news is, I have the next four right here! The shift in diction between high-flown fantasy-speak and 1970s American keeps throwing me a little, but on the whole, I like the casual awesomeness of the Amberites, and the frank understanding that they’re not terribly good people.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[bookblather]

For the record, the Jane Austen mysteries by Stephanie Barron is REALLY GOOD. Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor is not the best of them.

[swan_tower]

Good to know. Mary recommended them highly, and while the first one was entertaining enough, I wasn't blown away.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Huh, AEG actually made you sign an NDA? Either they changed policy since I was doing stuff for them or...anyway, fascinating. :)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I only had to sign the NDA when I got added to the playtest board. My impression is that they are far more concerned with us leaking mechanics to the general public than fluff etc, but I err on the side of caution.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

The next Laundry book doesn't have that happen. (OTOH it doesn't have Bob being managed by a woman.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Good to know. While that doesn't count as an active improvement, it's at least avoidance of the problem.