SPOILERS for The Commodore; here’s the non-spoiler post if you got here by mistake.
Continue reading “O’Brian, Patrick: (17) The Commodore (spoilers)”
O’Brian, Patrick: (17) The Commodore (audio)
The Commodore is the seventeenth Aubrey-Maturin novel and an enjoyable single-mission tale. Home from their circumnavigation, Aubrey is given command of a squadron with the public purpose of suppressing the slave trade and the private purpose of confounding France’s planned invasion of Ireland.
I really enjoyed the parts of the book where they set about the slave trade (poor dear Jack, I hate to see him distressed but was glad to see his complacency about slavery shattered). I was also glad to return to Jack and Stephen’s families. I’m not quite satisfied with the book’s ending, but thought this was a solid installment overall.
Finally, a bit of conversation that expresses my own feelings so well I may quote it at people:
When Jack came in he found [Stephen] sitting before a tray of bird’s skins and labels. Stephen looked up, and after a moment said “To a tormented mind there is nothing, I believe, more irritating than comfort. Apart from anything else it often implies superior wisdom in the comforter. But I am very sorry for your trouble, my dear.”
“Thank you, Stephen. Had you told me that there was always a tomorrow, I think I should have thrust your calendar down your throat.”
I do so love Jack and Stephen.
Pratchett, Terry: Only You Can Save Mankind (audio); Johnny and the Dead; Johnny and the Bomb
More backlog catchup, Terry Pratchett’s Johnny Maxwell trilogy. I’d been vaguely meaning to re-read this for a while, and bumped it up my list after the news that Pratchett had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Yes, as he said, he’s not dead, but I think it’s best to pay tribute while people are still around to appreciate it.
I listened to the first book, Only You Can Save Mankind, read by Richard Mitchley. Johnny Maxwell is playing a bog-standard computer game in which he’s supposed to shoot as many alien spaceships as possible . . . but then the aliens surrender to him. Defending the aliens turns out to be a lot harder than killing them.
There’s quite a lot I hadn’t remembered about this book, such as its being set during the first Gulf War. I’d like the resulting parallels better if they weren’t paired with explicit statements of The Message, which I found suboptimal for listening purposes. A happier rediscovery was Johnny’s home life and friendships, which I thought were pleasingly complicated and realistic, as best I can judge. Overall, I like the concept of this book better than the execution, particularly since I’m not sure the worldbuilding ends up being coherent.
I read the next two books, because they don’t appear to exist in unabridged audio format. My favorite of them is Johnny and the Dead, but I read it very quickly as pre-bed distraction during a difficult time, and thus didn’t subject it to nearly as much analysis at Only You. In this book, Johnny starts seeing dead people in a local publicly-owned cemetery, which is scheduled for sale to a corporation. As I said, I’m not sure whether this book is actually less anvilicious than the first, but even it’s not, I like the way the central message comes around in the end. I also enjoyed the look at a 1990s British city; so many fantasies are set in a non-modern Britain that this was a nice change of pace.
The last Johnny book, Johnny and the Bomb, is a World War II time-travel story. I am—not precisely allergic to stories of time travel, but tend to be unable to get my head around them. As a result, I have nothing useful to say about this book, other than it still has Johnny and his friends, and I like reading about them.
[For many years, these were only available in the U.K., but have been recently printed in the U.S.; actually, on checking, Johnny and the Bomb will be released next week.]
Stroud, Jonathan: (02-03) The Golem’s Eye (audio); Ptolemy’s Gate
Some backlog catchup, here. I’d read Jonathan Stroud’s The Amulet of Samarkand because I was interested in the audiobooks narrated by Simon Jones. A year and a half later, I finally got around to the rest of the series, The Golem’s Eye and Ptolemy’s Gate.
I listened to The Golem’s Eye, and though Jones does a fine job, I didn’t find the book well-suited to the audio format. As the first book provided Nathaniel’s backstory, so this book provides Kitty’s backstory. And I like her, but her backstory is slow, anvilicious, and copious, or at least feels that way out loud.
The book does have good action sequences and Bartimaeus remains entertaining (though the combination of his first-person narration and the omniscient of the rest of the series is a bit odd), so I went on to read the concluding volume, Ptolemy’s Gate. This had the virtues of the prior books, with the bonus of Bartimaeus’s backstory. I was, however, dissatisfied with the ending, which resolved less than the series had promised—and in a manner that suggested I wasn’t supposed to notice. Yes, problems are easy and solutions are hard; but if you can’t solve a problem, at least don’t try to disguise your inability with sleight-of-hand.
Kirstein, Rosemary: (02) The Outskirter’s Secret
Rosemary Kirstein’s The Outskirter’s Secret (reprinted as the second half of The Steerswoman’s Road) is even better than The Steerswoman and made me extremely happy. In it, the steerswoman Rowan and her friend and traveling companion Bel journey to the Outskirts, where Rowan hopes to find the source of the mysterious jewels that brought her in conflict with the wizards.
Exploring Outskirter society and the Outskirts is one of the best things about this book, as they are fascinatingly different from those of the first book. Early on, Rowan and Bel meet an Outskirter tribe that is very stereotypically barbarian, living only by stealing and treating the non-warriors with contempt. And just as this stereotype fully registers, Bel expresses her disgust with their primitive and dishonorable ways. Rowan, and through her the reader, is often reminded of her assumptions about Outskirter culture as the book unfolds and the reasons for Outskirter customs and organization are explored.
One of the fun things about reading these books is that the reader gets to be a steerswoman or steersman too, putting clues together with their external knowledge to assemble a bigger picture than is available to the characters. The Outskirts and their inhabitants eventually resolve into such a picture, and I think an author’s really done an excellent job when three little words (big spoilers, see sidebar for ROT13) — “ebhgvar ovbsbez pyrnenapr” — can crystallize an entire understanding of a world.
The plot and the characters here are also better, more layered, more twisty, and (I think) more exciting; I particularly admire the handling of the title character. The prose continues to be transparent, which was why I picked it up Friday night: my weird prose sensitivity (see prior entries) had recently continued with an inability to sink into the retrospective omniscient of David Anthony Durham’s Acacia, plus I had a headache and was tired. Which last admittedly was not helped by my staying up later than I’d planned to finish this . . . but the lift in my mood from reading a really good book made up for it. All in all, my only complaint about this book is that now I’m torn between finding out what happens next and saving the other two published books for when I really need them.
Sedia, Ekaterina: Secret History of Moscow, The
Ekaterina Sedia’s The Secret History of Moscow is almost certainly a good book. Unfortunately I can’t be more definite because I am allergic to its prose and therefore didn’t actually like it.
It’s Moscow in the 1990s, and all over the city, people are turning into birds and flying away. Galina’s sister is one of the missing, and as Galina searches for her, she meets Yakov, a police officer, and Fyodor, an alcoholic street artist. The book cycles between their points of view as they find themselves in an underground Moscow populated by desparate humans and exiled myths.
This should be right up my alley, since I like urban fantasy and works with a strong sense of place. (Also, the author was sensible at and after a vexing con panel last year.) But the first time I tried to read it, I didn’t even finish chapter two: I and the prose seemed to be such a bad match that I could hardly grasp what was going on.
I put it aside for Ragamuffin and then tried it again this Friday. Unfortunately, I should perhaps have considered that a day in which I spent the entire morning dog-walk thinking, “I’m ready for winter to be over, already,” was perhaps not the optimal time to read a book set in Moscow. At any rate, this time I did manage to extract meaning from the prose, but my allergy to it remained.
For instance, as Galina, Yakov, and Fyodor explore the underground Moscow, they meet a number of characters and hear their stories. Because I couldn’t sink into the prose, I experienced these stories not as a rich exploration of myth à la The Orphan’s Tales, but as vexing interruptions of the quest for Galina’s missing sister. In addition, I didn’t like two of the three point-of-view characters and can’t tell if I was supposed to; and I found the story’s final resolution deeply troubling.
I can see that this book has virtues: its exploration of Russia’s past and present, its concern for those forgotten and displaced, perhaps even its undercutting of its own quest format. And the prose is much-praised by people who aren’t me. But for whatever reason—the weather, the cold that I wasn’t quite over—this is just not a book for me.
Buckell, Tobias S.: (02) Ragamuffin
Tobias S. Buckell’s Ragamuffin was not on my original list of Hugo-nominee possibilities, being pretty much absent from the year-end lists, but Chad reminded me of it, and when I bounced hard off the next thing on my list (more on that later), I gave it a try. I enjoyed it a good deal, and am glad to see that it’s just been nominated for a Nebula.
This is set after Buckell’s first novel, Crystal Rain, which I haven’t read, but which was steampunk set on New Anegada, a cut-off colony established by Caribbean settlers. Ragamuffin is space opera largely set out among the worlds that New Anegada had been cut off from. About four hundred years ago, humanity hit space to find it controlled by the Benevolent Satrapy (which would be a great band name), an alien government that strictly limits technological progress of the species under its dominion—up to and including collapsing wormholes to troublesome planets. As the book opens, a character named Nashara is trying to leave a planet where humans are kept on a reservation or as pets; her departure is a matter of some urgency, as she’s killed a high-ranking alien in exchange for a ticket off the planet and a continuation of her mission against the Satrapy.
The first half of the book follows Nashara as she works her way toward the Ragamuffins of the title, the ships left behind when New Anegada was cut off. According to Wikipedia, Raggamuffin (double-g) is both a kind of reggae and an appropriated self-designation by Jamaicans, making it appropriate to the Caribbean roots of the characters and to humanity’s status in this universe. This Caribbean influence is one of the things I like best about the book: first, it’s something different, which as I’ve said before goes a lot way with me these days; and second, it adds another layer of resonance to the classic SF stories of the struggle for self-determination in the face of a larger and more powerful force and of the search for a home.
In addition to this extra resonance, I like the way that the book complicates these stories along the way. Characters display a realistic range of responses to being part of a species not at the top of the food chain; various things turn out to be more ambiguous or complicated than they first appear; and costs are not ignored. For some reason I had the impression this was a light and fluffy book, rather than the gritty and moderately dark one it turns out to be.
Also, of course, I like all the fast-paced action and adventure. The scene on the cover makes me want to win the lottery so I can go to the Wachowski brothers and say to them, “here’s a truckload of money. You can have it if you go apologize to Jada Pinkett Smith for what you did to her character in the Matrix trilogy, promise not to add a Great White Male Savior, and then film this.” The book moves quite briskly, only stumbling briefly when it switches gears halfway through to New Anegada and the characters from Crystal Rain. Despite this jarring moment, though, I do think that separate parts was preferable to interleaving the sections: at the close of part one, it’s clear how those characters will be meeting up with the New Anegada characters, which might not have been the case if the sections were interleaved. Also, part two is short in comparison, which would have increased the awkwardness of switching back and forth. (Part three is where the characters meet up.)
My only other quibble with the book is the prose, which I found a bit terse or choppy, enough so that I never fell all the way through the page. On the other hand, I’m not usually sensitive to prose, and it might just have been the cold I was coming down with. At any rate, it didn’t keep me from really enjoying the book, which can be summed up as a thoughtful look at social issues, particularly race, in the form of good solid SF fun.
O’Brian, Patrick: (16) The Wine-Dark Sea (spoilers)
SPOILERS for The Wine-Dark Sea; here’s the non-spoiler post if you got here by mistake.
Continue reading “O’Brian, Patrick: (16) The Wine-Dark Sea (spoilers)”
O’Brian, Patrick: (16) The Wine-Dark Sea (audio)
To my relief, Patrick O’Brian returns to form in The Wine-Dark Sea, which picks up almost immediately after the disappointing The Truelove. Lots of stuff happens, as part of a coherent story; that stuff arising from human action flows from much more natural characterizations; and a long-pending plan is finally carried out. My only quibble is that the last sequence doesn’t fit as smoothly with the plot of the main book, but it does round off a longer arc, so I can see why it’s there.
I find I have fewer and fewer non-spoiler comments to make about these as the series progresses, just because I’m not sure where to draw the line. But this was a good installment in the series, and I think will hold up even after the relief of non-shark-jumping fades.
Valente, Catherynne M.: Orphan’s Tales, The: In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice
The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden and The Orphan’s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice, by Catherynne M. Valente, are a complete sequence of astonishingly immersive and transformative fairy tales, nested within and wound into each other to create a complete mythology and an overall narrative. I read them now because the second volume is eligible for a Hugo nomination, and unless I read an improbable number of mind-blowing books between now and the end of the month, it’s going on my ballot.
In the gardens of a Sultan lives a girl who has been shunned since infanthood because her eyes are surrounded by a dark birthmark. One day, one of the Sultan’s sons seeks her out and asks her about the mark. She tells him,
“On an evening when I was a very small child an old woman came to the great silver gate, and twisting her hands among the rose-roots told me this: I was not born with this mark. A spirit came into my cradle on the seventh day of the seventh month of my life, and while my mother slept in her snow-white bed, the spirit touched my face, and left there many tales and spells, like the tattoos of sailors. The verses and songs were so great in number and so closely written that they appeared as one long, unbroken streak of indigo on my eyelids. But they are the words of the river and the marsh, the lake and the delta. They comprise a great magic, and when the tales are all read out, and heard end to shining end, to the last syllable, the spirit will return and judge me. After she vanished into the blue-faced night, I spent each day hidden in a thicket of jasmine and oleander, trying to read what I could in my bronze mirror. But it is difficult, I must read them backwards, and I can only read one eye at a time.” She stopped, and the last was no louder than a spider weaving its opaline threads.
“And there is no one to listen.”
Fascinated, the boy asks her to tell him one of the tales . . . and we’re off. A restless prince kills a goose and is caught by a witch, who promises to make him understand what he has done by telling him of her life, which includes the story her grandmother told her, and the story her grandmother was told, and . . .
The series is structured as four books, collected into two volumes for publication purposes. Sometime during the first book, I surfaced and found myself thinking in terms of falling down rabbit holes or dazzling kaleidoscopes—and then immediately rejected them, because to my surprise, I was having no trouble remembering who was speaking, what their relationship was to the broader tale, and what cross-connections were being created. Other people have experienced the text differently, of course, from making no effort to keep track of the interrelationships to purposefully cataloguing them all, or at least wanting to [*].
[*] A substantial effort toward this end has been made over at the Feminist SF Wiki, all of which is deeply spoilery.
My favorite reading experience of the four books was the first, precisely because of the interrelationships: I reveled in the feeling that a web was being created in my mind, with every new tale lighting up a new point or illuminating a connection between existing points. The other three books felt more linear, for though they also link back to past tales, the density of these links is less because so much of the groundwork was laid in the first book. On the other hand, if one finds the first book strenuous, I’d recommend at least trying the other book in the volume to see if it is easier going.
What of the content of these books? Well, they’re fairy tales, of something like the kind found in the Datlow-Windling anthologies of fairy tales for adults; but by virtue of their number, they are far more diverse and complex. The work shuffles a whole deck of fairy-tale roles and deals them out over and over again: witch, princess, woman in a tower, mother, monster, wizard, brother, king . . . each time taking a look at the possible person and reality behind the role. Other themes that I particularly noticed were bodies, their variants, transformations, and mutability; ways of relating to power; and the birth and death of cities, of which I was especially struck by the one at the start of the third book. (The first volume received a Tiptree Award, which was well-deserved, as the tales are particularly interested in and relevant to ideas of gender.)
The cumulative effect of these many tales is the creation of a complete underlying mythology and a wide portrait of a world. More, it’s one drawn from many different cultures, without the wholesale importation of any. Occasionally the resulting juxapositions were slightly jarring, but I prefer the diversity of sources and of characters to the alternatives. Lately I’ve been craving, above almost all else, something different in my fantasy reading; and this is very far from being Extruded Fantasy Product and fit the bill admirably.
These weren’t perfect reads. Once or twice I felt the themes were more obvious than necessary, and I’m not satisfied with the final revelation. But they were richly imaginative reads, with more narrative momentum than I expected given the format and plenty of lingering wonders and marvels. Strongly recommended.