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I couldn't resist getting Z. to make this icon, now that I have 100 to play with. Nip/Tuck snippetage is in progress; I'm still thinking about how to pull off the XF and SV prompts.
Michael Marshall, Blood of Angels: This is the third book about a evil conspiracy to harm civilization in any way possible, led by a strange group, the Straw Men. Marshall (who writes sf as Michael Marshall Smith) has a gift for language and a bizarre vision, here played out as the darkest kind of paranoia. His sf blows me away, but this sequence of novels – which may now be finished; it was hard to tell – was just a serial killer-type thriller made notable only by the underlying premise of an organized, centuries-old cult of like-minded serial killers.
Naomi Novik, Temeraire (to be published in the US as His Majesty's Dragon: Using my advance review copy for an actual review! I'm not generally a fan of historical fiction, but if you take the Napoleonic Wars and add in the slight difference that all sides have an air force – a dragon air force! – the results are wonderful. William Laurence, a naval captain, takes a French ship as a prize, and discovers it's carrying a dragon's egg that's about to hatch; the dragon must be bonded to a handler immediately after hatching if it's to be of any military use, and in war-harried England no hatchling can be spared. Laurence finds himself forced to surrender his captaincy and turn to the life of an aviator, a socially despised and misunderstood class. His only consolation is Temeraire, the dragon himself, who is entirely too sweet for his own good (and smarter than Laurence, besides). The combination of Laurence's well-developed sense of self and position with his new isolation and social diminishment makes for a very effective emotional arc, while his adventures as he relearns how to fight a battle – ultimately a battle for all England – provide plenty of narrative excitement. And Temeraire is a total sweetheart, young and hungry for experience and information as well as devoted to Laurence. Though the jacket copy compares the book to Robin Hobb's work, I'm not sure I agree, just because the one trilogy of Hobb's I've read has focused more on high-level politics rather than the vital policy-implementation work of captains and their crews. "Patrick O'Brien with dragons" would be the easy high-concept definition, but the reference to Hobb does indicate a greater focus on the main character's interior life than I saw in the little O'Brien I read. Highly recommended. (Disclosure: I was privileged to read this in draft, so I have an extra interest.)
Rob Thomas, Rats Saw God: I bought this because of Veronica Mars and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffee_and_ink. Steve York, son of an astronaut, is flunking high school in California and on his way to flunking life; a counselor assigns him a hundred-page writing project, which he uses as an opportunity to write the story of his high school years in Texas, from which he has recently fled. The story felt conventional; I could tell what was going to happen, from the betrayal to the healing, but the writing wasn’t contrived and there were some sharp observations along the way. The presence of “Wanda Varner” – not the same character as in VM – was fun, but I think that I’m going to stick to watching Rob Thomas’s work rather than reading more.
Terry Pratchett, Thud!: It’s a Night Watch novel, featuring Sam Vimes. Need I say more? If it makes a difference, the subject here is growing conflict between trolls and dwarfs, brought to a boiling point by the anniversary of a famous battle and by the presence in the city of a group of fundamentalist dwarfs with a deep agenda. Also, a vampire wants to join the Watch, putting Vimes’ supposed commitment to equal treatment for all species to a very hard test. Combine all that with a threat to Lady Sybil and Young Sam, and there’s really no telling how far Vimes will go. Once again, laugh-out-loud funny isn’t the point and isn’t needed, though I wouldn’t have minded seeing CMOT Dibbler in a walk-on role. Several noticeable typos also disrupted the Pratchett spell; I hope his editor does better next time.
Octavia E. Butler, Fledgling: I was really looking forward to Butler’s new novel, but I was disappointed. I’m trying to figure out why – was it because the protagonist seemed too much a Mary Sue? She’s an amnesiac vampire who is nonetheless super-powerful, as other vampires acknowledge, and instinctively seems to know what to do in most situations even though she doesn’t know what she is. Butler’s other powerful protagonists have always faced more constraints than Renee (who drinks blood and, occasionally, eats meat but is in other ways not classically vampiric) and I felt the story was unbalanced by her superiority. I guess the amnesia seemed more like a trick to keep the plot moving than a real problem integrated into the character. More generally, Butler didn’t win my trust this time – Renee reads a bunch of books on vampires early on, as she tries to figure out what’s going on, but then doesn’t recognize a crucifix or remember the lore about vampires’ aversion to crucifixes when confronted with one. Likewise, about thirty pages apart the number of people killed in an attempt on Renee’s life changes from nearly two hundred to slightly over one hundred. Those seemed like sloppy continuity errors to me. Then there was all this tedious detail about what the characters ate and when they stopped for lunch, as if the manuscript came in short or Butler was having difficulty creating a sense of realism. Authenticity shouldn’t require a lunch menu.
Diana Wynne Jones, Conrad’s Fate: Another Chrestomanci novel, yay! As usual, Jones excels at making adults realistically self-involved – sometimes well-meaning, sometimes vindictive, but always living in a slightly different world than their children. In this case, the protagonist is Conrad, a young boy sent to an estate in the English Alps in order to find and kill a person who (his uncle insists) has caused him terribly bad karma. Taken into training as a valet, Conrad teams up with Christopher – uh, Smith – to investigate the secrets of the estate, which involve a lot of family drama and some serious magic. I would call this a solid work by Jones, not as inspired as she can be but entertaining nonetheless, with a rushed but wacky denouement and an oddly flat epilogue.
Michael Marshall, Blood of Angels: This is the third book about a evil conspiracy to harm civilization in any way possible, led by a strange group, the Straw Men. Marshall (who writes sf as Michael Marshall Smith) has a gift for language and a bizarre vision, here played out as the darkest kind of paranoia. His sf blows me away, but this sequence of novels – which may now be finished; it was hard to tell – was just a serial killer-type thriller made notable only by the underlying premise of an organized, centuries-old cult of like-minded serial killers.
Naomi Novik, Temeraire (to be published in the US as His Majesty's Dragon: Using my advance review copy for an actual review! I'm not generally a fan of historical fiction, but if you take the Napoleonic Wars and add in the slight difference that all sides have an air force – a dragon air force! – the results are wonderful. William Laurence, a naval captain, takes a French ship as a prize, and discovers it's carrying a dragon's egg that's about to hatch; the dragon must be bonded to a handler immediately after hatching if it's to be of any military use, and in war-harried England no hatchling can be spared. Laurence finds himself forced to surrender his captaincy and turn to the life of an aviator, a socially despised and misunderstood class. His only consolation is Temeraire, the dragon himself, who is entirely too sweet for his own good (and smarter than Laurence, besides). The combination of Laurence's well-developed sense of self and position with his new isolation and social diminishment makes for a very effective emotional arc, while his adventures as he relearns how to fight a battle – ultimately a battle for all England – provide plenty of narrative excitement. And Temeraire is a total sweetheart, young and hungry for experience and information as well as devoted to Laurence. Though the jacket copy compares the book to Robin Hobb's work, I'm not sure I agree, just because the one trilogy of Hobb's I've read has focused more on high-level politics rather than the vital policy-implementation work of captains and their crews. "Patrick O'Brien with dragons" would be the easy high-concept definition, but the reference to Hobb does indicate a greater focus on the main character's interior life than I saw in the little O'Brien I read. Highly recommended. (Disclosure: I was privileged to read this in draft, so I have an extra interest.)
Rob Thomas, Rats Saw God: I bought this because of Veronica Mars and
coffee_and_ink. Steve York, son of an astronaut, is flunking high school in California and on his way to flunking life; a counselor assigns him a hundred-page writing project, which he uses as an opportunity to write the story of his high school years in Texas, from which he has recently fled. The story felt conventional; I could tell what was going to happen, from the betrayal to the healing, but the writing wasn’t contrived and there were some sharp observations along the way. The presence of “Wanda Varner” – not the same character as in VM – was fun, but I think that I’m going to stick to watching Rob Thomas’s work rather than reading more.Terry Pratchett, Thud!: It’s a Night Watch novel, featuring Sam Vimes. Need I say more? If it makes a difference, the subject here is growing conflict between trolls and dwarfs, brought to a boiling point by the anniversary of a famous battle and by the presence in the city of a group of fundamentalist dwarfs with a deep agenda. Also, a vampire wants to join the Watch, putting Vimes’ supposed commitment to equal treatment for all species to a very hard test. Combine all that with a threat to Lady Sybil and Young Sam, and there’s really no telling how far Vimes will go. Once again, laugh-out-loud funny isn’t the point and isn’t needed, though I wouldn’t have minded seeing CMOT Dibbler in a walk-on role. Several noticeable typos also disrupted the Pratchett spell; I hope his editor does better next time.
Octavia E. Butler, Fledgling: I was really looking forward to Butler’s new novel, but I was disappointed. I’m trying to figure out why – was it because the protagonist seemed too much a Mary Sue? She’s an amnesiac vampire who is nonetheless super-powerful, as other vampires acknowledge, and instinctively seems to know what to do in most situations even though she doesn’t know what she is. Butler’s other powerful protagonists have always faced more constraints than Renee (who drinks blood and, occasionally, eats meat but is in other ways not classically vampiric) and I felt the story was unbalanced by her superiority. I guess the amnesia seemed more like a trick to keep the plot moving than a real problem integrated into the character. More generally, Butler didn’t win my trust this time – Renee reads a bunch of books on vampires early on, as she tries to figure out what’s going on, but then doesn’t recognize a crucifix or remember the lore about vampires’ aversion to crucifixes when confronted with one. Likewise, about thirty pages apart the number of people killed in an attempt on Renee’s life changes from nearly two hundred to slightly over one hundred. Those seemed like sloppy continuity errors to me. Then there was all this tedious detail about what the characters ate and when they stopped for lunch, as if the manuscript came in short or Butler was having difficulty creating a sense of realism. Authenticity shouldn’t require a lunch menu.
Diana Wynne Jones, Conrad’s Fate: Another Chrestomanci novel, yay! As usual, Jones excels at making adults realistically self-involved – sometimes well-meaning, sometimes vindictive, but always living in a slightly different world than their children. In this case, the protagonist is Conrad, a young boy sent to an estate in the English Alps in order to find and kill a person who (his uncle insists) has caused him terribly bad karma. Taken into training as a valet, Conrad teams up with Christopher – uh, Smith – to investigate the secrets of the estate, which involve a lot of family drama and some serious magic. I would call this a solid work by Jones, not as inspired as she can be but entertaining nonetheless, with a rushed but wacky denouement and an oddly flat epilogue.
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Temeraire
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I am overwhelmed by the adorableness!
(and thanks for the preview of Temeraire - I am now looking foward to it even more.)
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Temeraire is going to be great fun for all, I believe.
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Thud! hasn't even been released up here yet (or at least in my part of up here, anyway), which makes me bitter. I want my Vimes, dammit!
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(I suppose it's fitting that, while in line at the Pratchett signing last week, I frantically soothed my fussy girl by reciting Hippos Go Berserk from memory.)
The typos were annoying.
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The baby is adorable!
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What I mean is, awwwww.
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Ooo! New Pratchett! Thanks for the Butler review. I'll pass. Looking forward to NN's book. March? *sob*
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*Adorable*
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Hurrah!
And I would think that icon is adorable, even if I didn't know it was Rivkid.
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Awww! So cute. :)
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I love your book reviews even when I don't have much to say. I am sad to hear about the Butler, which I was anticipating. I too miss CMOT Dibbler. The other Thomas novel I've read, Slave Day, is stronger but not as strong as Veronica Mars, so I wouldn't recommend seeking it out.
I'll have to look up Michael Marshall Smith. Possibly in my to be read pile -- I think I may have Only Forward hiding somewhere.
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I think I was extra disappointed in Butler because I'd enjoyed the other books so much. This wouldn't have been a terrible generic vampire novel, but it's not what she can do.
I think Michael Marshall Smith (writing as Smith) is just fantastic; I think Spares is my favorite, but Only Forward is good too.