Books read, May 2021

[swan_tower]

Belated!

Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan, Usman T. Malik. I met the author at, hmmmm, I think ICFA? The book is quite literally from Pakistan; at least when I placed my order, it wasn't available in the U.S. Some of these verged in more horror-ish directions than is my cuppa, but I liked the collection overall. And I found it particularly interesting to see where the text doesn't bother explaining stuff: a statue from Mohenjo-daro gets referenced as if the reader is assumed to be extremely familiar with its appearance, and one story hinges on the idea of stoves being a source of fear, without saying outright why. (In the former case, I searched online for the image; in the latter, I had a vague recollection which I then confirmed, which is that men who want to get rid of their current wives will burn them alive and then blame it on an explosion from a kerosene stove.)

The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden. An absolutely lovely historical fantasy novel set in Russia, the first of the Winternight Trilogy. It managed to make me feel sympathy for the "evil stepmother," and I like the ambiguity around the romance -- I'll be interested to see how the tension of the latter plays out in the rest of the series.

Star Eater, Kerstin Hall. Disclosure: the author is a friend. The worldbuilding here strikes a balance where on the one hand, the things people are doing are deeply messed up, but on the other hand, you see why just deciding not to do those things isn't a solution. (Example: if you stop your rituals, the floating island everybody lives on will literally fall out of the sky. Into a demon-haunted wilderness, for bonus points.) As a result, it comes with trigger warnings for things like cannibalism and a really twisted sexual scene. This book is a stand-alone -- I don't know if Hall intends more in this setting or with these characters, but the plot doesn't demand it -- but I'd be interested in more about the history behind everything we see here. You get bits of it in the last segment of this book, but my nerdy heart wanted more!

A Snake Lies Waiting, Jin Yong, trans. Anna Holmwood and Gigi Chang. Third of the ongoing English translation of the book usually called Legends of the Condor Heroes. I distinctly enjoyed the portion of this that had to be more about problem-solving than just fighting your enemies -- first with setting up a trap; then with getting someone out of it -- and chef's kiss to the bit where one of the bad guys screws up his attempted takeover of the Beggar Clan by trying to be too dignified. On the other hand, it's deeply grating when one of the two strongest female martial artists in the whole story is described as being no match for a third-tier dude who's literally had the entire lower half of his body crushed with a boulder.

A Radical Act of Free Magic, H.G. Parry. Second half of the duology that began with A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians. Robespierre is dead; Napoleon is on the rise; Haiti is in the process of becoming a free country; England is having problems. The pacing that results from a duology structure means I spent the first chunk of this book having a sad that Pitt and Wilberforce basically weren't talking to each other, but fortunately that didn't last. The ending is also interesting because of how closely this hews to the shape of real history, while providing different reasons for events: the invented threat gets thoroughly taken out, but other bits are left somewhat dangling because history says they won't be dealt with for another few years or decades. I didn't find it unsatisfying, but it definitely isn't as tidy as we usually expect from novels.

The Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer, ed. Tod McCoy and M. Huw Evans. I swear to god that someone whose blog I read regularly had a review of this book, but I've checked all the usual suspects and not found it, so either I missed it in my search or I'm imagining things. And yet, if I didn't see a review, then where did I find out about it? Anyway, this runs the full gamut from the basics of craft to some philosophical things about life as a writer. Unsurprisingly, I found the latter more useful than the former, but this could still be a good book to recommend to a newer writer.

City of Blades, Robert Jackson Bennett. Second of the Divine Cities trilogy, and it's been years since I read the first one, but that didn't materially hamper my enjoyment. I continue to be be fascinated by the type of worldbuilding I see here and in Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence, where it's a secondary world with magic but the general feel is modern rather than historical. (Who else does that?)

Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions, Henry Lien. Second of a middle-grade series about martial arts figure skating. For much of this book I was enjoying it but also a little frustrated with Peasprout's blind spots, because I keep wanting her to be more diplomatic and aware of others (while fully recognizing that the whole point is that failure to do so is a flaw she's having to grow past; this is more about me not being the target audience than anything else). Then I got to the end of the book and OMGWTFBBQ PLEASE TELL ME THERE WILL BE A THIRD BOOK BECAUSE I NEED ANSWERS. O_O

The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner. This is a series I've heard recommended many times over the years, and I finally got around to picking up the first book. Having done so, I've gotta ask . . . does it get better? Because I was seriously not impressed. Something like a fifth of the book is the characters traveling while having the same repetitive interactions and facing no particular challenges. Then they're still traveling, but at least there are some challenges and the interactions have gotten less repetitive. I semi-guessed where the story was going, but when I found out I was right, my main reaction was to be irritated by how unreliable the narration had to be in order to pull that off -- not least because it left Gen a fairly colorless character along the way. I'll keep reading if people tell me the later books are stronger, but if this is one of those cases where a person's reaction to the first installment is diagnostic of the whole, I may not bother.

Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction (Revised & Expanded), Jeff Vandermeer. So, I feel like how you react to this book will depend greatly on how well you vibe with Vandermeer's preferred aesthetic, which very much tilts toward the surreal and grotesque. I . . . don't, so from my perspective, the illustrations that pack this book mostly just make it longer and heavier. Even the ones that are diagrams intended to demonstrate some point or another about narrative add basically nothing for me. The text was mostly fine, but for me the greatest value by far comes from the mini-essays sprinkled throughout from other writers, just because I think it's good for one's writing advice to come from multiple sources. I have a harder time imagining when I might recommend this book than I do with The Pocket Workshop, unless I knew the recommendee really digs the aesthetic.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/VgrpVx)

Comments

[ursula]

Fonda Lee's Jade books have a secondary world that feels 1970-ish, with jade magic!

[swan_tower]

Ah, thank you for the reminder! The first book was a bit too gangster for my tastes, but it's good to add that to the mental list.

[yhlee]

Oh God, I think I'm the only other person who was underwhelmed by Turner's The Thief. I swore off reading any other of her books, although people keep telling me things get better.

[swan_tower]

The impression I'm getting from the comments below is that I would have lost very little, and probably gained much more, by just starting with the second book of the series.

[conuly]

I will tell both of you that The Thief is very, very much the weakest book in the series. I really don't advise anybody to start there unless they're a diehard completionist who MUST go in publication order at all times.

[yhlee]

The Thief was the only one out at the time I read it. It convinced me never to go looking for more. If other people like the series, well, there's something for everyone. But I am already drowning in books so I don't mind crossing some off the list.

[genarti]

You're not! I've now read three of them, and I liked the third one best (not coincidentally, the narrator spends much of the book having very little patience for Gen), but none of them have really fully worked for me. A lot of it is because I'm still irritated by the twist reveal from the first book. I know it works super well for a lot of people, but for me it felt like the author was very much not playing fair with her audience, in a really contrived way -- and since Turner continues to love the twist reveal and Gen continues to be a major character with chessmastery plans to reveal, I'm three for three on irritation with significant aspects of the books.

[swan_tower]

Hrm, troubling. The twist reveal did not work for me -- as you said, she really had to play unfairly to pull it off -- so if the later books tend to do the same thing, that's worth knowing and keeping in mind.

[genarti]

The reveals are different later, I think, at least in books 2 and 3 -- more about motivation, less about basic identity. It might still be worth reading book 2 to see if you like it better; the mood is quite different, and there's a lot more politicking and almost no road trip. But yeah, I think I'm never going to be more than a vaguely irritated lukewarm on these books, for all that many of my friends really love them.

[whimsyful]

I thought The Thief was just okay but I absolutely loved The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia. The second book pulls a complete genre switch into political fantasy and is much, much darker, so what you think of The Thief is not necessary prescriptive of the rest of the books (in fact, someone I know loved the road trip aspect of The Thief and was very disappointed that the sequels went somewhere darker and different).

[swan_tower]

. . . I'm having a little trouble wrapping my mind around somebody loving the road trip part, but hey, different strokes for different folks.

Political fantasy sounds much more appealing than a narrative that hides everything interesting until the end!

[sovay]

I'll keep reading if people tell me the later books are stronger, but if this is one of those cases where a person's reaction to the first installment is diagnostic of the whole, I may not bother.

With the caveat that I have not yet read the concluding volume, although I have heard good things about it, the first novel is the least characteristic of the series. I am not confident it was not written as a standalone that suddenly threw out runners of emotional complexity, of which the second novel takes a serious level.

[starlady]

She's said that she cut backstory out of the first book because she didn't anticipate writing any others. I suspect some of it is some of the stuff that people accused of being "retconning" in the final volume.

[sovay]

She's said that she cut backstory out of the first book because she didn't anticipate writing any others.

I don't think I'd heard that. In context of the series, it's kind of meta-hilarious.

(My history with these novels is that I read the first one when it came out, loved it regardless of guessing the twist in advance—that's not generally what I read for—and was startled but impressed by the zoom-out from apparent one-off heist to political long game, with a classically inflected setting I didn't want to punt into space. I used to class Turner's Eugenides novels with Elizabeth E. Wein's Aksumite Arthuriana and even with the latter's shift into WWII, I think the comparison still holds.)

[starlady]

I read the second book in Borders while waiting for my mother to be done with her hair appointments. When I worked out that it was a series I tracked down the first one at B&N.

A lot of people used to mention Wein's Arthur books in the same breath as Turner and they definitely do have some similarities. I think I only got through the first three or so of the Wein before I was stymied by library failures or something.

[sovay]

I think I only got through the first three or so of the Wein before I was stymied by library failures or something.

I like all of the ones that exist. The qualification is because the series is technically incomplete and I have no idea if it will ever be completed. Almost fifteen years ago now, I heard her read a chapter from The Sword Dance, the originally intended sequel to The Winter Prince. She said at the time that the Aksumite books had come about because the characters needed to grow into The Sword Dance and she thought it would take a novel and instead it took four which formed a sequence of their own. And now she writes about WWII, but I still hope for The Sword Dance, because the chapter she read contained the red-eared white hounds of the underworld and brought the Arthuriana back into the meta-plot really well.

[swan_tower]

Wein's series is another one I haven't read and probably should.

[sovay]

Wein's series is another one I haven't read and probably should.

The Winter Prince (1993) is one of my favorite Arthurian retellings full stop. The sequels shift focus and setting, but remain emotionally complex. And then see above to starlady for the rest.

[oracne]

I agree with this comparison. They occupy a similar space in my head, and I also read them in the same rough time period.

[swan_tower]

Good to know, thank you!

[starlady]

I adore Turner's books but The Thief is definitely MG. The series takes a serious turn into emotional complexity with the next book, which I read first. If you don't like that one, I wouldn't advise continuing.

[swan_tower]

I'm not sure I would even phrase it in terms of "definitely MG," because I've read a fair bit of MG that I think is significantly more complex on both the plot and emotional fronts. But it's good to hear that yes, the rest of the series is stronger -- I'm sort of wishing I'd started with the second book, honestly, based on what people are saying here.

[starlady]

And yet it was this one that was a Newbery honor book.

It's funny because I started with the second one and I wish I'd read them in order so that the twist wasn't spoiled for me! (Also I read them both in 2000 when the second book came out.) I find Turner's work to be sort of deceptively simple, particularly in the first book--she's kind of the opposite of someone like Dunnett for me, in that Dunnett is a maximalist and Turner is a minimalist, but they're definitely doing some similar things. I did a reread of all of them last year before the last book came out and I still found some things I hadn't appreciated before in all of the books.

[swan_tower]

Yeah, I'm a little boggled that it won the award. It just feels so structurally weak to me.

Interesting comparison to Dunnett; I'll keep that in mind as I continue along.

[duskpeterson]

Apparently, Ms. Turner hadn't read the Lymond Chronicles till after she wrote the first three books in her series, but she says that the Lymond Chronicles was a big influence after that.

I agree with what everyone else has said in this thread, that the first Queen's Thief book is the weakest in the series. If you found Gen colorless, you may or may not like the rest of the series, but there are certainly lots of other characters in the series to get interested in.

[genarti]

She HADN'T? Oh my god, that's genuinely baffling to me -- I'd just assumed they were a deep formative influence! That's hilarious.

(Mind you, I haven't actually read the Lymond books, just picked up a lot by osmosis.)

[duskpeterson]

I think osmosis could be the key here. :) Ms. Turner may have picked up Dunnett's influence second-hand, through other authors who'd been influnced by Dunnett. And Dunnett herself was influenced by earlier authors, whom Ms. Turner might have read.

[davidgoldfarb]

Odd coincidence that you just read The Bear and the Nightingale when I just finished The Winter of the Witch. (I got 'em as part of last year's Hugo packet but I wound up not voting on Best Series.) I enjoyed the trilogy and thought it was engagingly written, but used a few too many fantasy tropes — some of them got subverted but a number of others didn't.

it's a secondary world with magic but the general feel is modern rather than historical.(Who else does that?)
Brandon Sanderson's sequel series to his Final Empire trilogy advances the tech to late 19th-early 20th century levels. He's said that he plans another set of books with about modern Earth tech, and then one set in a future. There's also Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series, though that's alt-history rather than secondary world.

Later books in the Whalen Turner series get a lot better. I'd agree with starlady, try the second one and if you don't like it then stop.

[swan_tower]

used a few too many fantasy tropes — some of them got subverted but a number of others didn't.

I'm curious which tropes, if you don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say.

[davidgoldfarb]

The magical talking horse companion. The spirits who are neither good nor evil, but who are denounced by the Church as devils. Along with that, the charismatic priest who is beloved by the people but is actually wicked. (Arden tries to give him a little bit of nuance but overall doesn't do nearly enough for my taste.)

[swan_tower]

Got it. I'll happily munch on tropes if other things are being done well enough -- which in the first book they are -- but we'll see if that balance lasts.

[davidgoldfarb]

Well, if you liked the balance in the first book then you'll probably like the other two also — don't get me wrong, I did enjoy them.

[cgbookcat1]

it's a secondary world with magic but the general feel is modern rather than historical. (Who else does that?)

Doris Egan's The Complete Ivory comes to mind, as do a few space opera series (Mageworlds, Liaden Universe) and Patricia McKillip's Kingfisher. And Tanya Huff's The Silvered has a gaslamp feel to it. Not sure if Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy counts or not here . . . (goes off to peruse bookshelves).

Maybe Michelle Sagara's Chronicles of Elantra?

[swan_tower]

Not familiar with any of those except the Broken Earth trilogy -- thanks!

[oracne]

Seconding recs for the Egan trilogy if you can find it, and Mageworlds. And Kingfisher.

[bookblather]

Regarding the Queen's Thief, The Thief is the least good book in the series. They steadily get better.

[swan_tower]

Thanks! That's kind of what I assumed based on the way people talk about the series as a whole, but I had to ask.

[isis]

I really enjoy Bennett's books. This was the first of his I read - I mean, this series - but I also liked Foundryside (two books of a series so far, which has a sort-of-magic in an industrial-era type world) and American Elsewhere (a standalone which is more SF than fantasy). In addition to the "magic in a non-medieval fantasy world", which is one of my bulletproof tropes, I also think he does a great job of writing female characters that are people, not just women. Almost all his characters could be genderswapped without changing the story materially.

[swan_tower]

Yeah, I'll probably check out more of Bennett's stuff once I finish this series!

It occurs to me that Luke Arnold's Fetch Philips series also falls into this category. Though he grapples a bit with how to handle female characters when writing from the perspective of a noir detective -- I don't think he fails (there are some very pointed moments where you can see the female characters having no patience with the MC's problems), but the stricture of being in a first-person perspective with a deeply dysfunctional protagonist limits how directly that can be shown.

[sholio]

For whatever this particular data point is worth, I liked The Thief and ragenoped out hard after the second book. This seems to be a minority opinion, however.

[swan_tower]

Interesting! Why the ragenope?

[sholio]

Without getting into spoilery details, it basically had to do with not buying what the book was trying to sell, in terms of character motivations and actions. My main emotion when I found out where all of it was going was irritation.

But a lot of people really loved it, so I clearly had an idiosyncratic reaction; YMMV!

[thanate]

I got thru the third one, and then got the last out from the library when it came out but never quite managed to motivate myself to read it, since I was annoyed not only by the darker turn, but by creating a narrative that drew further and further away from the main characters. (The reasons for it make craft sense, but felt like a cheat emotionally to anyone who actually liked the first book.)