Author: katenepveu

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Novik, Naomi: (05) Victory of Eagles

In Naomi Novik’s Victory of Eagles, the fifth Temeraire book, Napoleon has finally invaded England. While I was thrilled with the wider view of the world that Empire of Ivory provided, and was initially unenthused about a return to a tight focus on the Napoleonic Wars, I was won over pretty quickly.

First, there’s the characterization: this book adds Temeraire’s point-of-view, and it’s a pleasure to see his growth—and, of course, Laurence’s after the end of the last book. Second, there’s the improved pacing: Napoleon lands at the end of the first chapter, and it seems to me that the rest of the book also moves at a brisk clip. This is particularly welcome since much of the book is not exactly cheerful, as would be expected from the subject matter.

My only quibble is that there’s one character that I don’t have a good handle on, whose importance is out of proportion to the amount of page time, and so ends up feeling a little more . . . convenient, I guess . . . than is ideal. Perhaps I should re-read the relevant bits of the series to see if that helps. Other than that small matter, though, I found this quite a satisfying and enjoyable book.

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Baker, Kage: (08) The Sons of Heaven

Well, I’ve finished Kage Baker’s Company series with The Sons of Heaven. What can I say about it outside of spoiler protection?

  • I really, really hate what happens with Mendoza. Only having read nine prior books kept me reading past chapter 7.
  • Unfortunately a lot of the resolution of the overall plot depends on Mendoza’s thread, and so it’s hard for me to decide whether I find the conclusion satisfactory. Certain elements of it, sure, but overall? Can’t really say.
  • Similarly, there are a lot of players to keep track of by this point, and the book spends a lot of time shifting among them. I think some of them might deserve more time, and a late addition was gratuitous, but again, can’t really say.
  • Though I’m pretty sure that all of the major questions get answered in terms of what happens to everyone and so on.
  • As someone who is (1) an adopted child and (2) 39 weeks pregnant, I find the attitude the novel takes toward children really very peculiar indeed.

Thus, between the pacing issues I’ve been mentioning and the serious problems I had with this book, I can’t recommend the series. But a quick look around the Internet suggests that most people’s reactions were far more positive than mine, so, well, who knows?

A spoiler post follows.

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Baker, Kage: (07) The Machine’s Child

I’d meant to take a break from Kage Baker’s Company series to read the new Temeraire novel, but I’d mistakenly left that at work on a day that I found myself needing reading material. So, The Machine’s Child it was.

There’s very little I can say about this that isn’t a spoiler. Plot ahoy, yes: though not quite to the pace of The Graveyard Game, the book still picks up most of the threads left hanging before the detour into short stories. But I’m apprehensive about the direction the series could be going, which leaves me unable to really evaluate this book on its own.

A spoiler post follows.

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Baker, Kage: (07.5) Gods and Pawns

I read Gods and Pawns, Kage Baker’s second collection of stories about the Company, out of order. Technically it was published between the last two novels of the series, but I thought it would be better to get all the stuff without narrative momentum out of the way, leaving me with—I hope—a straight shot of plot through the end of the series.

As a collection, this was mostly pretty satisfying. It contains seven stories, most of which are about the darker sides of the Company’s history. Not without some humor, though, such as the bits in “To the Land Beyond the Sunset” where Lewis and Mendoza have camping misadventures:

Lewis spent the next few minutes busily gathering fruit. Then a tarantula reached out of a clump of leaves and grabbed back a guava he had just picked, at which point Lewis discovered just how far he could jump from a standing start.

Possibly the lightest story is “A Night on the Barbary Coast,” which doesn’t work as well for me, not because of its lightness but because Joseph’s voice seems off (for all that it’s nice to see him again).

There’s also a longish backstory for the character introduced in the epilogue of The Children of the Company, which continues to puzzle me slightly. If it’s meant as a throwaway explanation for the historical character’s traits, perhaps my history isn’t sufficient to appreciate the resonance. If it’s meant to establish backstory for a character who will be prominent in the last two novels, it seems kind of late for that. But, I guess we’ll see.

Again, not anything I suggest going far out of one’s way for unless one is a completist, but a perfectly fine read.

(Also, why isn’t this trade paperback same size as the other Tor trade paperbacks of the Company books? It’s inelegant, darn it.)

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Baker, Kage: (06) The Children of the Company

The Children of the Company is nominally the sixth Company novel, but as I said before, is actually a fixup. This is annoying on two levels. First, there’s basically no movement in the overall plot, as all the stories take place before the end of The Life of the World to Come. Second, the fixup uses the framing device of Labienus reviewing documents and reflecting on his career: but I do not actually believe that a number of the stories would have been committed to paper. In particular, I’ll believe Victor’s first-person narration in a standalone story with no explicit framing device, but I refuse to believe that he would be so foolish as to keep a diary.

To the extent this book has an arc, it’s mostly Victor’s, which I enjoyed. (And I see that when I first read “Son Observe the Time,” I missed a small gesture toward my issues with the “recorded history can’t be changed” axiom.) We also are given a sense of Labienus’s personality (he has been briefly mentioned in prior books), which worked less well for me because I don’t find him as interesting, and see Latif and Kalugin again. There’s also another story with Kiu, introduced in Black Projects, White Knights, and may I take this opportunity to say that I regret that the only character with Asian ancestry is a Dragon Lady? And there is a very brief mention of a completely new character in the Epilogue, of all places, which puzzles me to no end—presumably this will be significant, but surely there was a smoother way to manage that introduction?

On the whole, I would have preferred that this were a collection rather than a fixup, because the seams and lack of coherence are distracting.

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Baker, Kage: (05) The Life of the World to Come

I am not sure that there is anything objectively wrong The Life of the World to Come, the fifth book in Kage Baker’s Company series, but it left me rather grumpy all the same.

Recall that at the end of the fourth book, before I took a detour off into short stories, I was thrilled at the plot-full nature of the book. Stuff happening! Cliffhanger! And this book opens with a return to Mendoza’s narration, in which exciting things happen . . . and then almost all the rest of the book is backstory.

It’s good backstory, that of Alec Checkerfield, and it leads up to some affecting and interestingly weird stuff; but still, not much motion on the overall plot. And the next book is a fixup, so I don’t expect much out of that, either. Grump.

Also, I would really like someone in-story to test the assertion that recorded history can’t be changed, because it would affect my opinion of some of the moral calculations. (Don’t tell me if I’m going to get it.) But then, I’m on record as having difficulty with time travel stories anyway.

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Baker, Kage: (04.5) Black Projects, White Knights; “Son Observe the Time”; “The Fourth Branch”

Black Projects, White Knights is a collection of Kage Baker’s Company stories that was published between the fourth and fifth books of the series. Two other stories, “Son Observe the Time” and “The Fourth Branch,” are uncollected but available online (the first from the Wayback Machine, the second from Fictionwise). I suspect that, first, these are only for completists, and second, that they must inevitably be so or Baker isn’t doing her job as a series novelist.

The stories fall into three categories: historically-set tales of Company operatives who we’ve already met; expansions of the Enforcers’ backstory, as described in the second and fourth books; and the early life of Alec Checkerfield, who will be appearing in the next novel. Some of them illuminate aspects of the overall plot or the recurring characters, but in very small ways—which, as I said, is kind of inevitable if the novels are to stand alone as a complete series. Thus, “Son Observe the Time” is Victor’s POV on what happened in 1906 San Francisco, but the only really new piece of information is a hint at an upcoming conflict, not a significant addition to what was deduced in The Graveyard Game. (Speaking of that book, “The Fourth Branch” is a fuller account of the event Lewis remembers there.)

(Though, to be fair, I was quite surprised by the Introduction, which outright handed me confirmation of one of my speculations—the Introduction! In retrospect, however, I can see why.)

Some of the stories with historical settings are a little slight or otherwise peculiar—”Hanuman” doesn’t sound like Mendoza’s voice to me, for instance. Combined with the side-nature of the tales, I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to find the collection or read the uncollected stories, though I don’t regret the time spent on them.

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Colbert, Stephen: I Am America (And So Can You!) (abridged audiobook)

I don’t normally listen to abridged audiobooks, but I saw Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!) in the library and thought I could use some energetic absurdity to keep me awake on my commute.

This was absurd, yes, but surprisingly lacking in energy. Perhaps it was the rehearsed, recorded nature of the audiobook, but Colbert’s delivery lacked the flair I’m used to hearing on his show. Without that, even only three CDs’ worth of material often dragged.

There were of course some good bits—our text copy is on loan, else I would quote the bit about how, to help people “not see race,” all non-white people should cover themselves in bandages—but when the bit I liked best was about how people in the future should defrost his head, well, kind of a disappointment.

(P.S.: I just made some changes to the spam filter here, which I believe will not affect the overwhelming majority of actual people; but if you have any difficulty, please let me know.)

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