Month: September 2009

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Brockmann, Suzanne: (15) Hot Pursuit

Hot Pursuit is the fifteenth book in Suzanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooters series and a bit of a departure, bumping the suspense in “romantic suspense” way, way up and featuring a character who’s already been happily and permanently paired off: Alyssa Locke is being stalked by a serial killer she pursued in her FBI days.

This book is interesting in the way it creates its tension: we’re promised, in the jacket copy, that the killer will catch Alyssa. But I, at least, didn’t know when, which kept me on the edge of my seat waiting for him to pop out from behind the corner, as it were.

That’s the part I enjoyed the most about this book. The principal secondary thread is a relationship between Dan Gillman, who has been rather a jerk for the recent part of the series and isn’t out of the jerk woods yet [*], and a new character named Jennilyn LeMay. This, well, isn’t complete, so I’ll withhold judgment.

[*] Despite a horribly anvilicious encounter with a small child who, in phonetic babytalk, lays bare (some of) his secret pain. Ack.

The other interesting thing about this book is the ending, which strikes me as the kind of thing that only an author with fourteen other books in the series, many about Alyssa herself, can get away with. (Spoilers, ROT-13: bgurejvfr univat ure uhfonaq erfphr ure sebz gur ovt onq frevny xvyyre juvyr fur vf urycyrff jbhyq unir n engure qvssrerag rssrpg.)

So: if you like the Troubleshooter books for their suspense or for Alyssa, you’ll like this one. I thought it was a fast entertaining library read.

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Wilkin, Karen: Elegant Engimas: The Art of Edward Gorey

I received a copy of Elegant Engimas: The Art of Edward Gorey through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program, a shamefully long time ago, and was very pleasantly surprised when I received it to discover it was basically a hardcover exhibition catalog, in other words, much nicer than I was vaguely expecting.

As that may suggest, there are two significant parts to this book, an introductory essay and then a large number of reproduced images. The essay is by Karen Wilkin and is titled “Mildly Unsettling.” I think this gives you a reasonable way of calibrating your tastes against hers: as I’ve said before, I find Gorey’s art considerably more than mildly unsettling, so a lot of the ways Wilkin’s essay was useful to me was crystallizing the ways I didn’t agree with her, that is, didn’t have the same reactions. But it did a very good job of pointing out some characteristics of Gorey’s art that I would not have consciously identified and describing the breadth of Gorey’s work and some of his influences.

Between the essay and the images, I now have a short list of Gorey works that I want to see in their entirety:

  • The Raging Tide; or, The Black Doll’s Imbroglio, which features “battered stuffed toys” in “ambiguous settings, simultaneously indoors and out,” and whose captions are things like: “No. 18. There’s no going to town in a bathtub. If you want to get back to the story, turn to 16. If you would like to tour the Villa Amnesia, turn to 23,” where of course the pages in question have nothing obvious to do with the text;
  • [The Untitled Book], “in which a fierce battle between real and invented creatures is elucidated by such captions as ‘Ipsifendus’ and ‘Quoggenzocker,’ ending with an enigmatic ‘Hip, hop, hoo”; and
  • The Haunted Tea-Cosy, a parody of A Christmas Carol in which “Scrooge becomes a generic parsimonious recluse, confronted by a multilimbed insect, the Bahhum Bug, whose role is ‘to diffuse the interests of didacticism.'”

The plates include some unpublished images, alternate covers and studies for later drawings; drawings that Gorey did for other authors; theater designs; and really cool illustrated envelopes he sent to his mother (never before printed). Oddly, nothing from The Curious Sofa is included, though it’s mentioned in the essay and presumably they would have had access (since other works also reprinted in Amphigorey are included). I can only assume that the exhibition didn’t want the controversy of displaying “pornographic” works, though they’re nothing of the sort.

This would be particularly good for library collections, but those who like Gorey’s work should definitely take a look.

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O’Brian, Patrick: (20) Blue at the Mizzen (audio)

I have now read all of the novels in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series with the twentieth, Blue at the Mizzen. It’s better than the previous book, and doesn’t suck as either a book or an ending, but I’m not particularly crazy about it.

It’s hard not to see this book as the series in minature: there’s an odd reprise of the rushed ending of the last book, a long journey by sea, some politicking and battling, and some personal relationship stuff. But it feels a bit subdued to me: the political stuff is less vivid and clear than usual, and despite the importance of events to Jack’s life the book is very heavily focused on Stephen. Which includes consequences of the thing that happened in the last book that I hated, la la la I can’t hear you. (But if I could, I’d say that I also dislike them on their own merits.)

Finally, though I like the ending, it is extremely abrupt and convenient.

I’ll read or listen to the unfinished book at some point, but I’m not in any hurry.

A spoiler post follows.

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King, Laurie R.: (09) The Language of Bees

The Language of Bees is the most recent book in Laurie R. King’s Russell/Holmes series, and it picks up a past reference that I thought she’d changed her mind about: Holmes’ lovely, lost son. The book indeed contains a careful, consistent, and completely unconvincing explanation why, nine books into a series, we’re only now hearing about said son in any detail. But, regardless, he’s back and needs help: his wife is missing.

This book is sort of the inverse of Locked Rooms, in that it’s principally about the psychological effects of a family-related mystery on one main character from the perspective of the other. I seem to have lost my feel for this version of Holmes since the last book in the series; this portrayal seems reasonable enough, but it doesn’t really delight me in that character-revelation kind of way that one might hope for, seeing an established character thrust into a difficult situation. But I was always more interested in Russell in these books, anyway.

There is an opening section involving Holmes’ bees, the relevance of which entirely escapes me; I suppose it must be thematic, but that feels clunky. (Or it’s just giving Russell something to do while Holmes is off getting the plot started.) And readers should be aware that the book literally ends on a “to be continued,” though it contains a reasonable amount of closure. On the whole, this book doesn’t change my general approach to the series, which is to get it out of the library.

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Pierce, Tamora: (116) Bloodhound

My backlog here is kind of alarming, so I apologize for what’re likely to be some pretty sketchy catch-up posts.

Let’s start with Tamora Pierce’s Bloodhound, sequel to Terrier. Like that book, this is the diary of Beka Cooper, now a full Guardswoman. It takes place mostly outside of Corus, Tortall’s capital city, because she’s sent to help track down a counterfeiting ring.

I didn’t like this as well as the last one for a couple of reasons. It felt a little long and a little defensive about the importance and excitement of chasing counterfeiters. And for no reason that I can pinpoint, I find Beka’s diary entries about romance and sex acutely embarrassing: I don’t object to Pierce’s handling of these topics generally, it’s something about Beka’s narration. Which also reminds me that every time Beka mentioned that she was out really late and wrote this before sleeping or whatever, it wrecked my suspension of disbelief. She’s writing in a compressed cipher, sure, but it’s a 500+ page hardcover, and so I have a really hard time accepting that she’s actually handwriting out these entries in her copious free time.

My ancient notes to myself read “okay but never felt awesome,” and I’m going to stick by that impression now.

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