Author: katenepveu

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Wright, Helen S.: Matter of Oaths, A

I put Helen S. Wright’s A Matter of Oaths on my look-for list thanks to this LJ recommendation, and found it recently in our local speciality shop. I didn’t like it as well as the recommender, but found it interesting regardless.

Over five thousand years in the future, a war between two immortal emperors is partly limited by a web of oaths between the emperors, the Guild that controls FTL travel, and the members of the Guild. As part of this structure, Oath-breakers are identity-wiped. Except that one officer’s identity-wipe seems to be unraveling, much to the interest of the canny old commander of his new ship and other less savory individuals.

While this is indeed nicely SFnal, I found myself inordinately distracted by the plot’s dependence on two whopping huge coincidences. I think that one of these was not actually necessary to the plot, as opposed to the angst quotient; but the other is necessary, and unfortunately I can’t see any way to categorize it other than “whopping huge coincidence.” This was large enough and close enough to the end that even the nifty last-page reveal couldn’t keep me from feeling dissatisfied.

The other thing I noted about this book is its fanfic-compatible feel: I immediately imagined exploring certain aspects of the book through fanfic—other people’s, that is, as I have no creative talent whatsoever. I don’t think this would affect the reading experience of non-fanfic readers, but it may be an additional point of interest to certain of my audience.

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Barnes, Jonathan: Somnambulist, The

I received a manuscript copy of Jonathan Barnes’ The Somnambulist, which will be published on February 5, through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program. I was engaged and entertained at the beginning, but ultimately frustrated at the unfulfilled potential. It’s a book that will have its friends, but I’m not one of them.

The Somnambulist opens audaciously:

Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and willfully bizarre. Needless to say, I doubt you’ll believe a word of it.

Yet I cannot be held wholly accountable for its failings. I have good reason for presenting you with so sensational and unlikely an account.

It is all true. Every word of what follows actually happened and I am merely the journalist, the humble Boswell, who has set it down. You’ll have realised by now that I am new to this business of storytelling, that I lack the skill of an expert, that I am without any ability to enthral the reader, to beguile with narrative tricks or charm with sleight of hand.

But I can promise you three things: to relate events in their neatest and most appropriate order; to omit nothing I consider significant; and to be as frank and free with you as I am able.

I must ask you in return to show some little understanding for a man come late in life to tale-telling, an artless dilettante who, on dipping his toes into the shallows of story, hopes only that he will not needlessly embarrass himself.

One final thing, one final warning: in the spirit of fair play, I ought to admit that I shall have reason to tell you more than one direct lie.

What, then, should you believe? How will you distinguish truth from fiction?

Naturally, I leave that to your discretion.

It then relates the bizarre death in 1901 London of an insignificant walk-on, which will eventually be investigated by Edward Moon, one of the book’s central characters. He is a stage magician, a possible mind-reader (the book raises this possibility dramatically and then does next to nothing with it), and a private detective of the Sherlock Holmes type. His companion is the Somnambulist, who is freakishly tall and completely hairless; communicates only through a chalkboard; and, during their show, is pierced through with six swords without spilling a drop of blood or showing any discomfort. (And, of course, he walks in his sleep, but the story does nothing with this either.)

Neither of them is the first-person narrator, who conceals his identity for 80% of the book. And though I was already losing patience, the narrator’s self-revelation was the point when the book fell apart for me. Put simply, a secret concealed that long had better have a damn good payoff, but this one was just stupid.

More, it was stupid in a way consistent with my other problems with the book, which I did indeed find “convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, [and] frequently ridiculous.” It’s full of fantastic things, but none of them are ever explained, put in any kind of context, or set against a rounded character or underlying theme. The net effect is of artifice piled on artifice, of weird things tossed in just because the author thought they were cool [*], with nothing substantial beneath. I liked some of the weird things. I would have been happy if some of the weird things remained unexplained. But as the book went on and the weird things accumulated, I began to lose patience. And then all the weird things, including those central to the plot, were left unexplained, and I felt that the book hadn’t kept its bargain with me as a reader.

[*] I attribute a couple of jolting throwaway phrases to the author being cute, specifically “bored now” before violence, and “Mister ____, he dead” (which is not quite anachronistic, but nevertheless improbable as an intentional reference by the character). There are probably others that would bother those more attuned to prose than I.

The publisher’s blurb compares this to Susanna Clarke and Neil Gaiman, presumably hoping to invoke Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Neverwhere, respectively. As far as I’m concerned, the blurb would have done better to leave these authors out, as The Somnambulist suffers in comparison. Neverwhere is a light but satisfying coming-of-age adventure tale, while hardly any of The Somnambulist‘s characters are likeable or develop a satisfying arc. (Also, it contains a laughably bad depiction of a particular archetype that Neverwhere does well.) JS&MN is an ambitious look at the restoration of English magic, tackling class, race, gender, and their intersections, and ending with vast changes on the horizon. The Somnambulist has a much narrower scope. It contains not one female character who is more than a pawn or a victim, and its most central treatment of race is a short joke that undercuts a racial stereotype—by removing from the page characters from the race in question. And more fundamentally, although the book creates an unpleasant London, it doesn’t offer any hope for change. (The last pages attempt an uplifting note, but make no sense to me on logical or thematic grounds, and besides are on a different subject.) In short, don’t go into this book expecting either Gaiman or Clarke.

If you read this book, it should be because you are willing to be carried along by an inventive narrative, or perhaps because you have an unshakable love for unreliable narrators. If those wouldn’t be sufficient for you, I can’t recommend it.

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Shimizu, Aki: Qwan vols. 1-4

Qwan, by Aki Shimizu, is a fun and energetic manga that makes good use of Chinese history and mythology. Set in the later Han dynasty, it follows the mysterious child of the title, who has no memory and eats only demons. In the first volume, he falls in with a petty swindler; confronts a girl with control over insect demons and an unpleasant father; and is taken in by a prostitute who seems to know his forgotten nature and sends him after a sacred scroll, the Essential Arts of Peace—which also seems to be the focus of plots against the declining emperor . . .

As I said, I like the energy of the art. I also enjoy the way the story keeps unfolding Qwan’s backstory and the accompanying mythology, sometimes in some very weird (but fun) ways. Through four volumes, the pacing has been good, even with a fair number of fight scenes.

This is still ongoing in Japan, and will probably be the kind of series that I’ll catch up on several volumes at a time, as bookstore sales come around.

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Pullman, Philip: (02) The Subtle Knife

I was getting ready to re-read Philip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife when I saw Claire Light’s negative and spoiler-filled comments. They seemed the kind of things that I might also object to, and I barely remembered the book, so I went into the re-read warily.

I regret to say that I mostly agree with her: this is a much weaker book than either The Golden Compass or the book in my memory. First, I was immediately distracted by the way the omniscient narration veered from character to character. The head-hopping within scenes was notably bad, but for me the shifting among separated characters also weakened the book: I like Lee Scoresby and Serafina Pekkala, but I didn’t find their strands of the story very compelling (again like Light, I am puzzled by Scoresby’s sudden abject devotion to Lyra), and the prose style seemed less suited to the adults than to Lyra.

The other major change is the introduction of Will, of course. I have a lot of sympathy for Will, but I found myself unhappy with the balance the book struck between him and Lyra. For all that my first reaction was “hey, cool line,” when Lyra immediately trusts Will because he is a murderer, now that I stop and think, it doesn’t actually make much sense, even for her. And as a result, Lyra eventually effaces herself in an out-of-character way that makes me twitch, especially when combined with her growing feelings for Will (which either are not reciprocated, or are not discussed in the same way) and with the portrayal of the witches; they collectively hint at a system of gender relations that I dislike.

This book also explicitly introduces the idea of a war in heaven. I remember that when I first read it, I couldn’t tell which side I was supposed to root for, and even now that I know which side the story takes, I still can’t see it: so if I’m supposed to be taking a side by this point, the book has failed. (I can’t remember if the third book is actually convincing in this regard, and I’m not going to re-read and see.) Bad things are again done by all sides, with nothing obvious for me to choose among them. They further lack the ferocious impact of the end of The Golden Compass, I think because they stem from the subplots that didn’t engage me as much.

But on the bright side, having been disappointed by this book, there’s no way I’m going to waste my time with a re-read of The Amber Spyglass.

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Gaiman, Neil: Stardust (audio)

I listened to Neil Gaiman reading his novel Stardust a few months after seeing the movie.

I’ve previously reviewed this, so I’ll just say here a few things I noticed about listening. First and unsurprisingly, it is much better than the movie, to the point where the movie looks considerably worse to me in retrospect: kinder, more sensible, less predictable, sadder, and less sexist. Second, it’s nice to be reminded that Tristran is pleasingly clever after not too long on the road to sharpen him up; the movie takes the arc of his development as its backbone and lengthens it accordingly, making it less interesting. And a spoilery comment: I dislike the decision Yvaine makes in the market on insufficient information (ROT13: gb pbzzvg fhvpvqr, rssrpgviryl), because it felt out-of-character.

(Oh, and I completely failed to notice that the character’s name is Tristran-with-a-second-r, rather than Tristan, on the page.)

As for this as an audiobook, Gaiman is a enjoyable reader, though female voices are not his strength. And I think this is my first audiobook with a sex scene, even a short and non-explicit one, and I found it almost too embarassing to listen to. I’ll definitely be sticking to paper for more romance-oriented books.

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Cooper, Susan: (01) Over Sea, Under Stone

Over the holidays, I re-read Susan Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone, the first book in The Dark Is Rising series. Widely held to be the weakest of the books, I enjoyed it more than I remembered, though I doubt I’d re-read it if it were a standalone.

Sarah Monette has a number of perceptive spoilery comments about this book, one of which is that this is a sunny book compared to the others. If so, then I might want to wait for spring to read the rest, because I found a couple of sequences in this book surprisingly tense.

Relatedly, this book does introduce what I recall as a regrettable tendency in the series, the use of plot tokens. The Drew children and the reader are forced to take the importance of this book’s quest object, the grail, at another character’s word; by itself it doesn’t seem particularly vital (it’s not, for those unfamiliar with the books, the Holy Grail, but a later creation).

As I re-read the series, I’ll be interested to see whether I feel this book was necessary. The Drews don’t appear at all in the second book, and I don’t remember the third well enough to say what uses it puts the characterization and backstory established here (Speaking of characterization: boy, Simon got on my nerves. And Jane comes off as a sop (or, as Monette more accurately and charitably puts it, as “the collective child’s conscience”).) I believe it’s sufficiently different enough from the rest of the series that it makes sense to skip it at first, but whether I would recommend that non-completists come back to it is another matter.

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Chase, Loretta: (103) Lord Perfect

The third book in Loretta Chase’s Carsington Brothers series, Lord Perfect, is just not as interesting as the first two. In some ways this isn’t a surprise, because keeping the series at that high a level would be remarkably difficult, but it’s still a bit of a disappointment.

Benedict Carsington is the oldest and a respected politician with a strong social conscience. Not a breath of scandal has ever attached to his name, and all his actions are conducted according to a rigid set of rules that he uses to impose order on a chaotic world. One of his many responsibilities is the education of his thirteen-year-old nephew by marriage, Peregrine.

Bathsheba Wingate comes from a disreputable branch of an aristocratic family and became infamous when her husband’s family disowned him upon their marriage. Now widowed, she supports her twelve-year-old daughter Olivia by giving drawing lessons. Olivia, having inherited some of the talents and inclinations of her maternal ancestors, targets Peregrine as a potential drawing student . . . and then tries to whack him in the head when he condescends to her.

Sparks, predictably, fly, resulting in the kids going on a (platonic) Quest together and the adults chasing after. And there are the two principal problems of the book. First, Olivia and Peregrine steal the book shamelessly. Second, the stakes boil down to whether the adults will find the kids before something bad happens to them—not that I believed they were ever in real danger, because these are not those kind of books—and whether scandal can be avoided or dealt with—which I don’t care very much about, certainly not compared to the canal problem or Egyptology adventures of the first two books.

Bathsheba and Benedict are perfectly nice people, and I would be surprised if Chase could write a book that didn’t have a good deal of charm; but I concur with those who said this book was kind of boring.

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McKinley, Robin: Sunshine

What a very odd book Robin McKinley’s Sunshine is.

It opens thusly:

It was a dumb thing to do but it wasn’t that dumb. There hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake in years. And it was so exquisitely far from the rest of my life.

There follows discussion of the narrator’s baking and mother and siblings and lover and a tiny bit of worldbuilding backstory, nine hardcover pages of it, until:

I never heard them coming. Of course you don’t, when they’re vampires.

(Which, incidentally, is the first time the word “vampire” is mentioned in the book. You can read this entire section online, and indeed I recommend you do if this review ends up sounding at all interesting.)

The whole book is basically like this: lots of near-breathless, discursive first-person narration, containing, here and there, an interesting deconstruction of cliched vampire stories. While reading, I was conscious that there were considerable periods of waiting for something to happen . . . and yet I kept reading. I can’t explain that.

Some things I can say: the ending is much less abstract than some of McKinley’s endings. Some of the characters are less developed than they should be. The plot that begins with the vampires’ appearance is completed, but a lot of loose ends remain. And McKinley is often thought of as a YA author, but this probably does not get shelved in YA because it contains brief but matter-of-factly explicit references to sex. (I don’t think I’d have a problem with anyone over, oh, double-digits in years reading it, but then I read Presumed Innocent and Hyperion when I was twelve and didn’t die. Plus the view taken of sex here is much healthier.) And it is definitely different from the Culture series, which is what I was going for.

But ultimately, this is a very odd book, and probably the only way to tell if you’d like it is to read a sample.

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Banks, Iain M.: (01-02) Consider Phlebas; The Player of Games

I decided to start re-reading Iain M. Banks’ Culture series because the newest book is due out in February and it’s been a while since I read any of them. I read Consider Phlebas the weekend before Christmas and The Player of Games shortly after.

I would like to write something analytic and detailed about these books, but can’t find a lot to say. Maybe it’s because I was reading them in holiday mode, or maybe it’s because they’re familiar (even though I didn’t remember Consider Phlebas very well). Regardless, this is going to be more cursory than I’d hoped.

Consider Phlebas is set during a war between the Idirans, a religious empire, and the Culture, a post-scarcity and deliberately egalitarian society. It’s mostly told from the point-of-view of Bora Horza Gobuchul, a humanoid working for the Idirans because he opposes the Culture’s ideals and structure. This setup leads to there being two schools of thought about the book’s effectiveness as a starting point to the series. One says that its whole point is seeing the Culture through the eyes of one of its enemies and deciding that he’s wrong [*], and therefore it would lose its effectiveness if the reader had already met the Culture. The other says that, whatever the benefits might be, they’re outweighed by the book being the weakest of the series.

[*] If you do. I know a few people who don’t, though probably not to the extent of wanting to join the war on the Idiran side.

After this re-read, I’m going to join the second camp. The book does demonstrate the inventiveness and energy of the series, but its episodic structure makes it feel unfocused and longer than necessary. Also, one of the episodes is needlessly gross (and probably makes very little sense, but I made a point of skimming past it quickly so couldn’t say for sure).

A minor note: this book is the only book I know with its Epilogue after the Appendices. They’re all part of the story. (The funky narrative structure is also characteristic of the series.)

The next book, The Player of Games, is considerably tighter and more successful. Also, it has a really cool premise: an entire Empire is held together and structured around a mind-bogglingly complicated game, the winner of which becomes Emperor. The Culture has recently contacted the Empire, but purports to be unsure how to deal with it since interstellar empires are unprecedented in its experience, and so sends one of its best players to play the game.

This book has its anvilicious moments, but works better for me because I got a clearer view of the central character and a more focused story. Also, I enjoy the continued illumination of the Culture through contrasts with other societies.

I took a break after these two books, though, thinking that the next, Use of Weapons, might feel too similar: all three are tightly focused on a single man and share themes of people as weapons or tools. Instead, I detoured off into fantasy.

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Enoch, Suzanne: (03.5-04) Twice the Temptation; A Touch of Minx

Suzanne Enoch’s contemporary caper/romance series had a stealth entry with Twice the Temptation, which is basically her Remember When: two novellas linked by diamonds, one in each of the author’s principal genres. The first, “A Diamond or Forever,” is a Regency romance featuring Rick Addison’s ancestors which gave the book its cover (hence the stealth nature). I enjoyed this perfectly well, but didn’t find it notable enough to motivate me to read Enoch’s other Regencies. The other novella, “Diamonds Are Not A Girl’s Best Friend,” is the contemporary tale featuring Rick and Samantha Jellicoe. Perhaps because I was a bit under the weather when I read it a while ago, it made me cranky: I didn’t approve of the way the ongoing power and trust struggles played out.

The fourth novel in the series, A Touch of Minx, is a lot better (even if its title has nothing to do with anything). Samantha is juggling two retrieval jobs, a set of valuable stolen museum goods and an anatomical classroom model (as a favor to an honorary niece), which amused me inordinately. Plus, in her personal life, Rick is getting impatient with her ongoing commitment issues.

I liked the actual plot in this one, and the continuing development of secondary characters. I still skip the sex scenes (not only are they repetitive, but I am jarred by Enoch’s word choices), but otherwise this was good winter-afternoon reading.

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