Author: katenepveu

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Christie, Agatha: They Do It with Mirrors (radio play)

In Agatha Christie’s They Do It with Mirrors, Miss Marple is asked to go check on an old friend Carrie-Louise, whose sister fears she is in danger. Miss Marple goes to stay at Carrie-Louise’s home, which is on the grounds of a rehabilitation center for delinquent boys that’s run by her husband. Shortly after her arrival, a troubled young man shoots at Carrie-Louise’s husband; Carrie-Louise’s step-son is killed; and poison is found in Carrie-Louise’s medication.

I listened to this as a BBC radio play, a particularly admirable adaptation in that the fine shadings of the dramatization led me right to the solution. I don’t think the printed page would have had the same effect. For that, I’ll forgive it the exceptionally bad American accent of Carrie-Lousie’s grandson-in-law.

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Brust, Steven: (110) Dzur

Fans of Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series: do not read any review of Dzur (out in August) other than this one. There are two surprises in the Prologue, one small and one big, and while it’s hard to call them spoilers since they’re in the Prologue, it’s so much fun to experience them as surprises. (The jacket copy is safe.)

Fortunately, the basic plot can be sketched without revealing these surprises. After the series-changing events of Issola, Vlad has gone for a meal at Valabar’s in Adrilankha. There, he finds that his estranged wife Cawti is having problems: they were both in the Organization (think Mafia); he’d left her the Organization’s interests in South Adrilankha when he left town several books back; and now the Left Hand of the Jhereg, a sorcerous organization, is moving in. (As the Organization is also known as the Right Hand, this allows the utterly deadpan statement, “It’s unfortunate, how little the Right Hand knows what the Left Hand is doing.”) For various reasons, Vlad agrees to help Cawti, despite the personal danger to himself (he didn’t leave town for a vacation, several books back).

Actually, if you need that backstory, you shouldn’t be reading this book. Start with Jhereg and go forward in publication order.

If you don’t need that backstory, just go buy the book when it comes out in August. It has all the stuff you read a Vlad novel for: old friends; enjoyable new characters; loving descriptions of food (the meal at Valabar’s is spread out over the remaining chapters as the opening section); snark; and using one’s wits to get out of desparate situations. And it’s really good to see how Vlad is growing and changing; this book is a very interesting contrast to Dragon, the book before Issola and also named after a very war-inclined House. (It’s killing me that I can’t say more about it than that. But, interesting contrast; watch for it.)

At this point in the series, there are a number of long-term plot issues waiting to be resolved. I suspect that some people will want more movement on these than they’re going to get; but I think enough happens in this book to be a book, and I’m willing to trust Brust on the pacing of the series overall. And I very much enjoyed and appreciated what happens here—all I really want is for August to hurry up and get here so I can discuss it!

Many thanks to Patrick Nielsen Hayden for the Advance Uncorrected Proof.

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White, James: (07-12) Code Blue—Emergency through Double Contact

I was home sick Thursday, without sufficient brain power to read anything new or difficult, but wanting something I could dive into to take my mind off being sick. I started with the seventh and eighth of James White’s Sector General novels, Code Blue—Emergency and The Genocidal Healer (in the omnibus General Practice), and ended up plowing my way through all the rest of them: The Galactic Gourmet, Final Diagnosis, Mind Changer, and Double Contact.

They are, as you can see, very fast re-reads for me.

One thing I noticed on this re-read is the voice. Though the trappings of tight-third POV are there, such as a non-Earth-human noticing that an Earth-human’s face “deepened in color” instead of “reddened with anger,” the tone of the narration seems basically constant to me. This isn’t a criticism, just something that contributes to the speed of my re-reading.

I’m inclined to call Code Blue—Emergency and The Genocidal Healer the series’ high point. Previously, the principal POV character was Peter Conway, an Earth-human doctor; and while I like Conway fine, the two POV characters here are much more interesting (as I’ve discussed previously). After these two books, the series starts getting a trifle repetitive. The Galactic Gourmet is fun, told from the POV of a famous chef who decides to make Sector General’s hospital food good; but its ending section feels a bit overlong. The last three all revisit or repeat prior books; unfortunately, it would be spoilery to say how except for the middle one, Mind Changer, which is O’Mara reflecting on his career as Chief Psychologist of Sector General.

Even with the repetition of exposition as well as plot (and the uncomfortable sexist bits), they’re still great comfort reads, obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have blown through six of them in a day. I didn’t even think about the curing-the-sick aspect when I picked them up; it’s how the characters make the universe better through determination, intelligence, and empathy.

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Christie, Agatha: Five Little Pigs (radio play)

Agatha Christie’s Five Little Pigs presents Hercule Poirot with a particular challenge: find out the truth of a sixteen-year-old murder. Amyas Crale was poisoned and his wife convicted; shortly before she died in prison, she wrote their daughter a letter swearing that she was innocent. The daughter is now of age and wants her mother cleared. The title refers to the five surviving witnesses interviewed by Poirot.

This was a pretty good radio play. I expected to doubt that the witnesses remembered enough to be useful, but as presented, it makes sense that they remember the important things—they’re tied into the existing conceptions of the murder. The solution is not terribly difficult, but turns on a satisfying mix of psychological deduction and logical re-examination of the facts. I’d prefer a different title, but one can’t have everything.

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Novik, Naomi: (03) Black Powder War

Objectively speaking, the plot of Black Powder War, by Naomi Novik, is probably just as good as its predecessor, Throne of Jade; it just happens to spend more time on something that doesn’t interest me as much. It’s also another journey novel, but without the deep threat to Laurence and Temeraire’s relationship to tie it together emotionally [*]. As a result, though it’s still quite enjoyable, it’s somewhat less fulfilling on its own, feeling more like a transitional piece.

[*] Regarding which I have a LJ post; warning, spoilers for the first two books.

(In case that didn’t make it clear, the three books that have been published close together are not a trilogy, but the first three books in a longer series. See this LJ post by the author for a bit more information.)

Right. So, Throne of Jade was about going to China; Black Powder War is about coming back. And it’s still the Napoleonic Wars (in a slightly alternate version), and the closer they get to Europe, the more those Wars come to the forefront (rather than being background context as in Throne of Jade). Those who wanted to hurry the journey in Throne may well have a similar reaction here: exciting things happen along the way, that are significant for the characters or for world-building, but the journey is tolerably long. When we hit the land war in Asia Europe, I had to really force myself to pay attention—this is not the book’s fault, when I hit battle scenes it’s my default reaction to flip through trying to figure out who won. (It took going to audiobooks to get me to concentrate on to the battles in Patrick O’Brian’s books.) The battle scenes are quite clear and comprehensible, once I focused, but it’s 1806, and as the historically-minded know, that’s not a great time to be an opponent of Napoleon. Even less so, I must say, with the new elements introduced here . . .

There are bright spots, of course. Just as one example, I absolutely adore a new character who’s introduced near the end. And I’m fascinated by where things might go in the future (I recommend, by the way, not reading the sample chapter of the fourth book at the end, as the book won’t be out for some time). But this is definitely a middle book, with all the perils attendant thereon.

(In a LiveJournal post, cofax says interesting and very SPOILERY things about the three books’ pacing; I don’t go quite as far, but the remarks are worth reading if you’ve read all three books.)

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Gilman, Laura Anne: (02) Curse the Dark

Laura Anne Gilman’s Curse the Dark is the less-strong sequel to Staying Dead. There’s either too much or too little information in the space available, and while I can’t quite tell which, the overall effect is unfortunate.

Curse the Dark is made up of three different strands. First, a parchment’s gone missing from an Italian monastery: everyone who’s read it has disappeared, so it’s obviously not the kind of thing that should be unaccounted for. Wren and Sergei are hired to retrieve it by the Silence, Sergei’s ex-employer, a secretive organization of do-gooders. Second, there’s Wren and Sergei’s relationship, which got kicked past “partnership” mode in the last book, but has since stalled out. Third, there’s politics: intrigue is happening within and/or between the Silence; the Council, which nominally rules the Talented world; the lonejacks, human Talents who don’t acknowledge the Council; the fatae, nonhumans; and possibly some other groups I’m forgetting.

It’s only a third of the book, Wren and Sergei’s relationship, that I think fully works. Retrieving the parchment is mostly okay, though it seems somewhat rushed at the end. Also, perhaps I’m just thick, but I can’t quite tell to what extent it’s related to the final part of the book, the politics.

It’s the political intrigue that was the biggest problem for me. Either there wasn’t room to explain what-all was going on, or that information is being kept for a later book (the epilogue has me leaning in this direction), or both—but when a major player unexpectedly walks into a meeting of some of these groups, stays for two hours and seven minutes, and we’re never told what the player said, well, something’s seriously off-balance. Just as a for-instance. And this reader gets annoyed.

I’ll read the third one (Bring It On, due in July), because I like Wren and Sergei a lot, but I really hope it’s structured more like a complete book than this one was.

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Christie, Agatha: After the Funeral (radio play)

When I started listening to Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral, a Hercule Poirot story, I thought perhaps the BBC was experimenting with in medias res. Well, I was starting in the middle, but because the files had been mislabeled, not because of a clever dramatic technique. Once I realized that, things went a lot more smoothly.

As the title suggests, the opening of this book is after a funeral: Richard Abernethie appears to have died a normal death, but at the reading of the will, his sister Cora asks, “but he was murdered, wasn’t he?” Everyone shrugs it off, but when she turns up quite unmistakably murdered, Hercule Poirot is asked to investigate.

Listened to in the right order, this was not bad. I could see the shape of the solution before it was revealed, though the solution itself is a bit implausible. I think the portrayal was fair within the confines of the presentation, however, which has not always been the case with these adaptations.

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Jerome, Jerome K.: Three Men in a Boat (audio)

I’d read Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (text at Project Gutenberg) some time ago; I have a hazy memory of a lazy weekend morning at one of Chad’s apartments, possibly the one in New Haven. If anything, my memory of where I read it was sharper than of what I read; before getting the audiobook out of the library, I couldn’t tell you a thing about it except that it was about a boat trip with three young men and a dog (who I didn’t fully realize was a dog until chapter 2).

Martin Jarvis does a very nice job of reading this, but I can’t recommend it as a keep-awake audiobook: Three Men in a Boat isn’t so much a narrative as an excuse for anecdote. A sentence will be spoken, or a place will be seen, and then one of the characters (most likely the narrator) will be reminded of something they did once, or something that happened to a friend, or a historical event that happened there . . . This is all very amusing in a Britishly deadpan way, but not what you’d call gripping:

As an example of how utterly oblivious a pair of towers can be to their work, George told us, later on in the evening, when we were discussing the subject after supper, of a very curious instance.

He and three other men, so he said, were sculling a very heavily laden boat up from Maidenhead one evening, and a little above Cookham lock they noticed a fellow and a girl, walking along the towpath, both deep in an apparently interesting and absorbing conversation. They were carrying a boat-hook between them, and, attached to the boat-hook was a tow-line, which trailed behind them, its end in the water. No boat was near, no boat was in sight. There must have been a boat attached to that tow-line at some time or other, that was certain; but what had become of it, what ghastly fate had overtaken it, and those who had been left in it, was buried in mystery. Whatever the accident may have been, however, it had in no way disturbed the young lady and gentleman, who were towing. They had the boat-hook and they had the line, and that seemed to be all that they thought necessary to their work.

George was about to call out and wake them up, but, at that moment, a bright idea flashed across him, and he didn’t. He got the hitcher instead, and reached over, and drew in the end of the tow-line; and they made a loop in it, and put it over their mast, and then they tidied up the sculls, and went and sat down in the stern, and lit their pipes.

And that young man and young woman towed those four hulking chaps and a heavy boat up to Marlow.

George said he never saw so much thoughtful sadness concentrated into one glance before, as when, at the lock, that young couple grasped the idea that, for the last two miles, they had been towing the wrong boat. George fancied that, if it had not been for the restraining influence of the sweet woman at his side, the young man might have given way to violent language.

The maiden was the first to recover from her surprise, and, when she did, she clasped her hands, and said, wildly:

“Oh, Henry, then WHERE is auntie?”

“Did they ever recover the old lady?” asked Harris.

George replied he did not know.

(There is an unexpectedly serious interlude toward the end, which shift of tone Jarvis handles very well.)

What I’d really like to know, having listened to this, is how the towpath worked. I can’t quite imagine how you’d make progress by tying a boat to a long rope and walking on a riverside path, but that seemed to be what was being described.

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O’Brian, Patrick: Golden Ocean, The

Patrick O’Brian’s The Golden Ocean is an earlier work than his Aubrey-Maturin series, both in terms of when it was written and when it’s set. It tells the tale of Commodore Anson’s circumnavigation of the globe in the 1740s, from the perspective of Peter Palafox, an Irish midshipman on his first sea voyage.

Of course the inevitable comparison is to the Aubrey-Maturin books—indeed, I doubt this book would have an American publication without them. For reasons of personal taste, I cannot agree with the back cover copy of the library’s trade paperback edition, which asserts The Golden Ocean to be “as captivating” as the later series. I like the Aubrey-Maturin books for their balance of amazing goings-on at sea and character development. The Golden Ocean has plenty of amazing goings-on—so many that it doesn’t have room for the depth of character development. More, the foregrounded character is very young, and while it’s nice to see him grow up, there’s nothing particularly distinguishing about the way he does it.

In the details of life on board, the humor, and the admirable leadership, this is quite recognizable as a precursor to the Aubrey-Maturin series. It’s also a perfectly enjoyable read in its own right. But it’s Aubrey-Maturin Lite rather than the real thing.

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Christie, Agatha: Murder at the Vicarage (radio play, text)

Agatha Christie radio plays are well-suited for car trips to Massachusetts; I listened to Murder on the Orient Express on the way there, and to Murder at the Vicarage on the way back. This was the first Miss Marple novel: a shooting death next door provides her with an opportunity to test her puzzle-solving intuitions on a big mystery.

The tale is moderately complicated, and perhaps it was a mistake to leave it, the unfamiliar one of the two plays, for the return trip when I was more tired. At any rate, I had to check the text out of the library before I fully understood the chain of reasoning in one area. (Having done so, mind, I’m not particularly impressed with the construction of the mystery; but that’s easy enough to say in retrospect, because I certainly didn’t spot it at the time.) In the middle ranks of the adaptations so far, I’d say.

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