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Mira Grant, Deadline: Okay, I really am not a zombie fan. But blogging the zombie apocalypse won me over, and this second book in the planned trilogy was just as force-me-to-keep-reading as the first. Now Shaun’s the narrator (for most of the book, anyway) and he’s struggling to deal with the fallout from the conspiracy revealed in the first book. Also, the zombie outbreaks are getting, unbelievably, worse—and the reason why is more terrible than he could have imagined. Getting Shaun’s surprising perspective on his relationship with George also turns this thriller into a fascinating inquiry into the nature of truth and how, if at all, we can trust secondhand reports filtered through someone else’s experiences. And then there is the epilogue, which made me jolt up screaming “What! How can you make me wait for the third book when you did that?” So, go read it!
Sarah Rees Brennan, The Demon’s Surrender: This book is from a new POV, that of Sin (Cynthia), the former presumptive leader of the Goblin Market now forced to compete with Mae for that position, much to her dismay, while also taking care of her two young siblings (including hiding a dangerous secret about one of them) and being subjected to the varied attractions of Nick and Alan Ryves. It’s effective in many ways, not least because we know a bit more than Sin about certain emotional dynamics and thus can enjoy our superior knowledge, but it also helps Brennan hide some key plot points from Sin and from us—very effective authorial manipulation. I’m not sure I’m happy with the final outcome, both in its neatness and its treatment of Sin, whose ultimate reactions are not impossibly out of character but needed a firmer grounding beforehand. Also you have to ignore that they are all way too young to know this much really hard in a way that wasn’t quite as apparent to me in the earlier books, but I think I can do that.
Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension: The second book of the Mistborn trilogy. Having ended the first with the death of the main bad guy, Sanderson now switches course: our heroes have a republic, if they can keep it … which it turns out they can’t, what with the multiple armies converging on the capital city from every direction intent on establishing a new emperor, and Elend Venture’s difficulty leading a fractious council with the power to depose him. Meanwhile, Vin is the regime’s strongest weapon, and she’s running out of atium, the metal that allows her to fight on a fair basis against other Allomancers. And there’s a strange Allomancer following her around, and maybe a creature in the Mist, and she’s beginning to think she might be the prophesied Hero of Ages who can defeat the evil threatening the world. Sanderson was definitely trying something different with a whole book on the difficulties of the aftermath of tyranny, and I also liked that Vin and Elend ended up having mirrored insecurities about their relationship that they eventually (spoiler alert) actually talked about, though I wouldn’t say that characterization was Sanderson’s strong suit. However, something that worried me a lot happened at the end, and the worrisome thing seems to be going exactly the way I feared in the third book and I also found out that Sanderson holds Orson Scott Card-like anti-gay beliefs, so I’m now depressed that I gave this guy money (and still have two books left to read on my shelf). Still a font of neat ideas, but kind of a John Birmingham-type disillusionment.
Will McIntosh, Soft Apocalypse: This is a short if-this-goes-on novel, told with big jumps forward in the protagonist’s lifetime, about the collapse of the world and, specifically, the United States, as wealth disparities, mass unemployment, continued militarization, global warming and food shortages, for starters, take their toll. If anything, it’s the sf elements that add a bit of hope, with designer viruses that kill horribly but also one that makes you peaceful. It was a very hard book to read, because it didn’t have the usual distance provided by the background assumption that this-will-never-get-that-far, because the disintegration of society into smaller groups struggling to survive, even if that survival is yanked out of others’ hands, seems perfectly plausible to me. Contains rape, violent death, starvation, and other familiar horrors.
Sarah Rees Brennan, The Demon’s Surrender: This book is from a new POV, that of Sin (Cynthia), the former presumptive leader of the Goblin Market now forced to compete with Mae for that position, much to her dismay, while also taking care of her two young siblings (including hiding a dangerous secret about one of them) and being subjected to the varied attractions of Nick and Alan Ryves. It’s effective in many ways, not least because we know a bit more than Sin about certain emotional dynamics and thus can enjoy our superior knowledge, but it also helps Brennan hide some key plot points from Sin and from us—very effective authorial manipulation. I’m not sure I’m happy with the final outcome, both in its neatness and its treatment of Sin, whose ultimate reactions are not impossibly out of character but needed a firmer grounding beforehand. Also you have to ignore that they are all way too young to know this much really hard in a way that wasn’t quite as apparent to me in the earlier books, but I think I can do that.
Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension: The second book of the Mistborn trilogy. Having ended the first with the death of the main bad guy, Sanderson now switches course: our heroes have a republic, if they can keep it … which it turns out they can’t, what with the multiple armies converging on the capital city from every direction intent on establishing a new emperor, and Elend Venture’s difficulty leading a fractious council with the power to depose him. Meanwhile, Vin is the regime’s strongest weapon, and she’s running out of atium, the metal that allows her to fight on a fair basis against other Allomancers. And there’s a strange Allomancer following her around, and maybe a creature in the Mist, and she’s beginning to think she might be the prophesied Hero of Ages who can defeat the evil threatening the world. Sanderson was definitely trying something different with a whole book on the difficulties of the aftermath of tyranny, and I also liked that Vin and Elend ended up having mirrored insecurities about their relationship that they eventually (spoiler alert) actually talked about, though I wouldn’t say that characterization was Sanderson’s strong suit. However, something that worried me a lot happened at the end, and the worrisome thing seems to be going exactly the way I feared in the third book and I also found out that Sanderson holds Orson Scott Card-like anti-gay beliefs, so I’m now depressed that I gave this guy money (and still have two books left to read on my shelf). Still a font of neat ideas, but kind of a John Birmingham-type disillusionment.
Will McIntosh, Soft Apocalypse: This is a short if-this-goes-on novel, told with big jumps forward in the protagonist’s lifetime, about the collapse of the world and, specifically, the United States, as wealth disparities, mass unemployment, continued militarization, global warming and food shortages, for starters, take their toll. If anything, it’s the sf elements that add a bit of hope, with designer viruses that kill horribly but also one that makes you peaceful. It was a very hard book to read, because it didn’t have the usual distance provided by the background assumption that this-will-never-get-that-far, because the disintegration of society into smaller groups struggling to survive, even if that survival is yanked out of others’ hands, seems perfectly plausible to me. Contains rape, violent death, starvation, and other familiar horrors.
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And then there's He Died With A Felafel In His Hand, which is a based-on-true-stories comedy about junkies, con artists and uni students.
...and then there's the fiction :P (which I haven't read). It's just a bit dissonant.
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I've been tempted by the earlier books--maybe I should check them out.
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Seriously, we may be dealing with some sort of evil twin/parallel universe scenario here.
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Books 1 & 2 than between 2 & 3. Perhaps it's because we learned a lot about Mae in Book 1 before switching to her POV in Book 2, whereas Sin seemed less central. Eh, all will be forgiven if I like the ending. ;)
I got to see Brennan at an event in NYC a few weeks back, and she talked a little about her next book, which she's co-writing with Justine Larbalestier. Sounds quite interesting.