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Subject line from "Your Pearly Whites," by These Arms Are Snakes. Cool line. Another good one in my recent playlist: "Carved your name/across my eyelids/You pray for rain/I pray for blindness," from "Crown of Love" by The Arcade Fire. Also, for Tori Amos fans, check out Michelle Cross, who has an album's worth of mp3s for free download at her site. My favorites: "Cold Light," "Cinderella," and "Sushi Queen."
Before the books, I need to ask for help: I need beta readers/viewers for (a) what I'm pretty sure is the most pornographic story I've ever written, SV of course, about 25 pages, futurefic/AU; (b) a SV vid, sadly not pornographic in the slightest; and (c) a Buffy vid, which I suppose marks my switch from SV fan who vids to vidder. Let me know here or drop a note to RivkaT at aol if you're interested.
David Gerrold, Bouncing off the Moon: This is a sequel to Gerrold's YA novel of the near, fairly dystopian but high-tech future. Charles Dingillian, the narrator and middle child in a family of three boys – recently divorced from their parents – has to figure out how to survive in the harsh environment of the moon, and also how to deal with the dozens of people who want to catch the boys and their mechanical monkey. I really liked the first book in the trilogy, Jumping Off the Planet; this was not as good. Although Gerrold makes the family dynamics real, it's less fun to watch the boys work hard to get along and change themselves than it was to watch them squabble, and Gerrold spends a lot of time describing the mechanics of space transport and moon life; Heinlein is a clear model. I suspect that I would have a lot more fun with the science speculation and lectures on moon survival if I were actually a young adult. I'll read the third book, but I'm in no rush.
Jim Butcher, Blood Rites: Wow, six Harry Dresden books already? And I see at the back that he's about to start a new Tolkien-esque series, so Jim Butcher is working hard. Unlike Laurell Hamilton, I think Butcher's improving, though not so much so that if you hated the first book you'd want to give it another try. This time, Harry has to deal with a porn filmmaker who's got the Evil Eye on him, along with various vampires (of course). The hitman he hires to help out might be even more hazardous to his health than the vampires, especially if Harry doesn't pay the man (?) on time. Oh, and we learn some interesting things about his family. And there's a puppy. But it doesn't talk and Harry doesn't have a special psychic bond with it, so that's okay. I wish Harry would talk a little less about how goddamned chivalrous he is – though, thinking about it, as narrator he is entitled to give us his self-presentation; I'm just bored with that.
Orson Scott Card, Treasure Box: I'll say this for Card: he'll try anything once. This time it's a ghost story, sort of. Quentin Fears (pronounced "fierce," so he sounds one way on paper and another orally) is an independently wealthy ex-computer programmer who walks the earth, looking for some purpose. He hasn't really been connected to humanity since the death of his beloved elder sister when he was very young. Then he meets a woman who promises to change all that – but she's far from what she seems. The idea was interesting and the execution competent, but I found myself dissatisfied. The characters felt curiously flat. I think that's how Quentin was supposed to be, but it made it hard to empathize, and when it turns out that he has – albeit unknowingly – done something that society regards as horrific, he doesn't seem to notice. I suppose my complaint is that even the characters who weren't being used by other people/beings seemed to do things because the plot required them, rather than because they were the kind of people who did the things that drove the plot.
Orson Scott Card, The Call of Earth: Here, at least, a really smart computer is ordering people around, so there's a diegetic reason for people to move like puppets – hey, I've discovered one of Card's themes! This is actually volume two of a series, and probably would have made more sense if I'd read the first one. Basilica, the city of women, is plunged into political instability as the result of power plays among the ruling families, possibly ordered by the Oversoul (the aforementioned computer). Meanwhile, a foreign general plots to take Basilica for his own, as part of his plan to rebel against his emperor. Here, the people were colorful and driven, but again I found it hard to empathize with concerns so different from mine. Somehow I rarely feel that I know Card's characters, regardless of POV; their thoughts are just a few degrees off true from what I can recognize. So, Rivka, why read all these books? Well, I'm probably going to terminate the experiment; Z. really likes the Alvin Maker books, and I picked up a bunch of cheap paperbacks at the St. Agnes book sale, but Card is unlikely to drive me to buy anything more.
Year's Best SF 9, ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer: Okay, I admit it – in the past I've failed to see the appeal of Octavia Butler's work. But "Amnesty," her contribution here, about a woman who is an unwilling ambassador between a group of aliens who've arrived and colonized some of Earth's desert areas, is a fabulous story about complicity, compromises, and hard choices. Geoff Ryman offers, swear to God, an MPREG about being gay in four future decades – well, let's just say that it wouldn't get much feedback if posted on LJ. Tony Ballantyne's "The Waters of Meribah" is about a convicted rapist who's forced to participate in a rather odd scientific experiment in which he is turned into an alien; it's a bit wacky but made me think. I didn't much like Nancy Kress's "Ej-Es," about a world subject to a strange, will-sapping plague that may be the same thing as perfect happiness. Joe Haldeman's "Four Short Novels" are pretty much that, too short for real impact but cute ways the world could end. "Rogue Farm," by Charles Stross, offers a slice of life in a world transformed by cloning and biomanipulation; while the concept of an entity that includes dozens of people and wanders around the countryside is interesting, I didn't get enough sense of the main character and his partner to make their struggle compelling. "Coyote at the End of History," by Michael Swanwick, is a witty variant on the Coyote story, with aliens. John Varley's "In Fading Suns and Dying Moons" is a creepy little story about how we might not be the most important species on the planet after all. Gregory Benford's "The Hydrogen Wall" questions whether communication is really possible, not just between species but between individuals. Other authors: Angelica Gorodischer, Gene Wolfe, Ricard de la Casa & Pedro Jorge Romero, Cory Doctorow, Robert Reed, Kage Baker, Nigel Brown, Allen M. Steele, M. Rickert, Stephen Baxter, and Rick Moody (practically incomprehensible to me, but did make it into McSweeney's, which suggests that I lack a modern literary mind).
Laurie J. Marks, Delan the Mislaid and The Moonbane Mage: Marks appears to like world-building with a vengeance, plunging us into a strange society of Walkers (who seem pretty close to human, though furrier, if the cover art is any indication), Aeyries (winged fliers), and even Mers (yep, seadwellers), though the last don't play a big role in the books. The first book is a fairly standard YA-type coming-of-age story in which the ugly duckling Delan is, to mix a metaphor, not allowed to play the other ducklings' reindeer games. The reason Delan is such an ugly, clumsy Walker, it turns out, is that it (Marks has her own gender pronouns for the hermaphroditic Aeyries) is not a Walker at all but an Aeyrie, and an important one at that. So you know the plot, but the execution is decent, and if the world-building is perhaps overly ambitious there's no harm in that. The second book involves one of Delan's descendants, who turns out to have its own role to play in major events after it gets kicked out of its home for fighting. In this book, the endangered-species status of the Aeyries is more significant, as the species struggle to work together to bring peace. I've seen recommendations for Marks' later books, and these are certainly entertaining enough to get me to look for the others.
John Ridley, Those Who Walk in Darkness: After a metahuman battle takes out San Francisco, the US bans all those with metahuman abilities; people who won't leave for Europe get hunted down and shot by elite police teams. Soledad, a new member of such a team, has made herself a special gun for use on particular varieties of metahuman (there are only a few basic types, which I have to say makes more sense to me than each one being unique). She kills one with the unapproved gun, getting herself in a spot of trouble with Internal Affairs – and then she kills what looks to be an angel, wings and all. This setup sounds good – Ridley is a screenwriter, and has high concept down to a science – but he can't write, by which I mean that he and complete sentences are not really on speaking terms, and the best you can say for his use of language is that it conveys what the action is. It's not even fun bad writing, which at least would be good for quoting. He also drops the "angel" aspect with no resolution. I think the ending is supposed to be disturbing, but I'm not sure. Maybe some of the hints are supposed to be fleshed out in future books, but I won't be buying, despite my love for superhero stories.
Before the books, I need to ask for help: I need beta readers/viewers for (a) what I'm pretty sure is the most pornographic story I've ever written, SV of course, about 25 pages, futurefic/AU; (b) a SV vid, sadly not pornographic in the slightest; and (c) a Buffy vid, which I suppose marks my switch from SV fan who vids to vidder. Let me know here or drop a note to RivkaT at aol if you're interested.
David Gerrold, Bouncing off the Moon: This is a sequel to Gerrold's YA novel of the near, fairly dystopian but high-tech future. Charles Dingillian, the narrator and middle child in a family of three boys – recently divorced from their parents – has to figure out how to survive in the harsh environment of the moon, and also how to deal with the dozens of people who want to catch the boys and their mechanical monkey. I really liked the first book in the trilogy, Jumping Off the Planet; this was not as good. Although Gerrold makes the family dynamics real, it's less fun to watch the boys work hard to get along and change themselves than it was to watch them squabble, and Gerrold spends a lot of time describing the mechanics of space transport and moon life; Heinlein is a clear model. I suspect that I would have a lot more fun with the science speculation and lectures on moon survival if I were actually a young adult. I'll read the third book, but I'm in no rush.
Jim Butcher, Blood Rites: Wow, six Harry Dresden books already? And I see at the back that he's about to start a new Tolkien-esque series, so Jim Butcher is working hard. Unlike Laurell Hamilton, I think Butcher's improving, though not so much so that if you hated the first book you'd want to give it another try. This time, Harry has to deal with a porn filmmaker who's got the Evil Eye on him, along with various vampires (of course). The hitman he hires to help out might be even more hazardous to his health than the vampires, especially if Harry doesn't pay the man (?) on time. Oh, and we learn some interesting things about his family. And there's a puppy. But it doesn't talk and Harry doesn't have a special psychic bond with it, so that's okay. I wish Harry would talk a little less about how goddamned chivalrous he is – though, thinking about it, as narrator he is entitled to give us his self-presentation; I'm just bored with that.
Orson Scott Card, Treasure Box: I'll say this for Card: he'll try anything once. This time it's a ghost story, sort of. Quentin Fears (pronounced "fierce," so he sounds one way on paper and another orally) is an independently wealthy ex-computer programmer who walks the earth, looking for some purpose. He hasn't really been connected to humanity since the death of his beloved elder sister when he was very young. Then he meets a woman who promises to change all that – but she's far from what she seems. The idea was interesting and the execution competent, but I found myself dissatisfied. The characters felt curiously flat. I think that's how Quentin was supposed to be, but it made it hard to empathize, and when it turns out that he has – albeit unknowingly – done something that society regards as horrific, he doesn't seem to notice. I suppose my complaint is that even the characters who weren't being used by other people/beings seemed to do things because the plot required them, rather than because they were the kind of people who did the things that drove the plot.
Orson Scott Card, The Call of Earth: Here, at least, a really smart computer is ordering people around, so there's a diegetic reason for people to move like puppets – hey, I've discovered one of Card's themes! This is actually volume two of a series, and probably would have made more sense if I'd read the first one. Basilica, the city of women, is plunged into political instability as the result of power plays among the ruling families, possibly ordered by the Oversoul (the aforementioned computer). Meanwhile, a foreign general plots to take Basilica for his own, as part of his plan to rebel against his emperor. Here, the people were colorful and driven, but again I found it hard to empathize with concerns so different from mine. Somehow I rarely feel that I know Card's characters, regardless of POV; their thoughts are just a few degrees off true from what I can recognize. So, Rivka, why read all these books? Well, I'm probably going to terminate the experiment; Z. really likes the Alvin Maker books, and I picked up a bunch of cheap paperbacks at the St. Agnes book sale, but Card is unlikely to drive me to buy anything more.
Year's Best SF 9, ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer: Okay, I admit it – in the past I've failed to see the appeal of Octavia Butler's work. But "Amnesty," her contribution here, about a woman who is an unwilling ambassador between a group of aliens who've arrived and colonized some of Earth's desert areas, is a fabulous story about complicity, compromises, and hard choices. Geoff Ryman offers, swear to God, an MPREG about being gay in four future decades – well, let's just say that it wouldn't get much feedback if posted on LJ. Tony Ballantyne's "The Waters of Meribah" is about a convicted rapist who's forced to participate in a rather odd scientific experiment in which he is turned into an alien; it's a bit wacky but made me think. I didn't much like Nancy Kress's "Ej-Es," about a world subject to a strange, will-sapping plague that may be the same thing as perfect happiness. Joe Haldeman's "Four Short Novels" are pretty much that, too short for real impact but cute ways the world could end. "Rogue Farm," by Charles Stross, offers a slice of life in a world transformed by cloning and biomanipulation; while the concept of an entity that includes dozens of people and wanders around the countryside is interesting, I didn't get enough sense of the main character and his partner to make their struggle compelling. "Coyote at the End of History," by Michael Swanwick, is a witty variant on the Coyote story, with aliens. John Varley's "In Fading Suns and Dying Moons" is a creepy little story about how we might not be the most important species on the planet after all. Gregory Benford's "The Hydrogen Wall" questions whether communication is really possible, not just between species but between individuals. Other authors: Angelica Gorodischer, Gene Wolfe, Ricard de la Casa & Pedro Jorge Romero, Cory Doctorow, Robert Reed, Kage Baker, Nigel Brown, Allen M. Steele, M. Rickert, Stephen Baxter, and Rick Moody (practically incomprehensible to me, but did make it into McSweeney's, which suggests that I lack a modern literary mind).
Laurie J. Marks, Delan the Mislaid and The Moonbane Mage: Marks appears to like world-building with a vengeance, plunging us into a strange society of Walkers (who seem pretty close to human, though furrier, if the cover art is any indication), Aeyries (winged fliers), and even Mers (yep, seadwellers), though the last don't play a big role in the books. The first book is a fairly standard YA-type coming-of-age story in which the ugly duckling Delan is, to mix a metaphor, not allowed to play the other ducklings' reindeer games. The reason Delan is such an ugly, clumsy Walker, it turns out, is that it (Marks has her own gender pronouns for the hermaphroditic Aeyries) is not a Walker at all but an Aeyrie, and an important one at that. So you know the plot, but the execution is decent, and if the world-building is perhaps overly ambitious there's no harm in that. The second book involves one of Delan's descendants, who turns out to have its own role to play in major events after it gets kicked out of its home for fighting. In this book, the endangered-species status of the Aeyries is more significant, as the species struggle to work together to bring peace. I've seen recommendations for Marks' later books, and these are certainly entertaining enough to get me to look for the others.
John Ridley, Those Who Walk in Darkness: After a metahuman battle takes out San Francisco, the US bans all those with metahuman abilities; people who won't leave for Europe get hunted down and shot by elite police teams. Soledad, a new member of such a team, has made herself a special gun for use on particular varieties of metahuman (there are only a few basic types, which I have to say makes more sense to me than each one being unique). She kills one with the unapproved gun, getting herself in a spot of trouble with Internal Affairs – and then she kills what looks to be an angel, wings and all. This setup sounds good – Ridley is a screenwriter, and has high concept down to a science – but he can't write, by which I mean that he and complete sentences are not really on speaking terms, and the best you can say for his use of language is that it conveys what the action is. It's not even fun bad writing, which at least would be good for quoting. He also drops the "angel" aspect with no resolution. I think the ending is supposed to be disturbing, but I'm not sure. Maybe some of the hints are supposed to be fleshed out in future books, but I won't be buying, despite my love for superhero stories.
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I shall beta pr0n!
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The hard-working Mr. Butcher
As you once said of LKH, it's the sort of thing you like, if you like that sort of thing. I go into coma alert when near any epic fantasy, and this had the various tropes in place. Wise old wizard testing the young mage in her first spy/diplomatic mission. Rivals for political power. More women than I usually see when cracking open one of these things in the bookstore, but they sounded alike and could just as easily have been male characters.
I gave up on the Dresden books in the second one, when I recognized the web page Bob the skull was quoting (pretty much verbatim) to explain All About Werewolves to Harry. This is pretty much a Lego-like series, for me. All research and marketing - no pulse or surprises.
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Re: The hard-working Mr. Butcher
I'm happy with tropes, as long as they're well-executed. I figure that the reason they become cliches is that when done right they say a lot about character and/or tap into deeply satisfying story structure. So I may well check the trilogy out.
Of course, I'm also going to read LKH's next book, as much as I bitch, so there you go.
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OH MY GOD.
More coherent FB to follow, I need some time :)