Another BBC adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel, this time Murder on the Orient Express (via my local library, which had it on CD). You can call this contrived all you like (as I recall, Randall Garrett does, through one of his Lord Darcy mysteries), but its core concept does have an emotional punch, perhaps all the more so for listening to it. If nothing else, hearing the various accents made it easier to keep the many characters straight. (For a change, the American accents were good enough to not be overly distracting, though at least the principal American character (Mrs. Hubbard) was played by a British actress (Sylvia Syms).) This is well-suited to audio drama.
O’Brian, Patrick: (08) The Ionian Mission (spoilers)
SPOILERS for The Ionian Mission; here’s the non-spoiler post if you got here by mistake.
Continue reading “O’Brian, Patrick: (08) The Ionian Mission (spoilers)”
O’Brian, Patrick: (08) The Ionian Mission (audio)
The Ionian Mission, by Patrick O’Brian, appears to be (or open) a new phase in the Aubrey-Maturin series. Back from their long travels of Desolation Island, The Fortune of War, and The Surgeon’s Mate, Jack and Stephen are sent to the Mediterranean for blockade duty. This struck me as a quieter installment; most of it is a low-level tense-yet-bleh, and then the action jumps up toward the end with the titular mission.
We get quite a lot of shipboard life in this one, and slightly more Jack than Stephen, I would say. Jack has a terrible cold for part of the book, and I quite sympathize with his feeling unfit for company or pretty much anything else.
I’m going to close this with a passage (behind the cut) that had me grinning fit to split my face; it’s from roughly halfway through, but doesn’t spoil anything of note. It may lose something when not read by Patrick Tull, but I can’t resist sharing it all the same.
Continue reading “O’Brian, Patrick: (08) The Ionian Mission (audio)”
Davis, Lindsey: (04) The Iron Hand of Mars
I very nearly didn’t bother with The Iron Hand of Mars, the fourth book in Lindsey Davis’s series about Marcus Didius Falco. I started reading it when I only had a short chunk of time, and in that time Marcus was more of an ass than usual, and the stage was set for a lot of Germanic political manuvering. Grr and yawn, respectively. But the book has to go back to the library, so I gave it a shot today.
I think I’ve identified why I’m far less interested in the political volumes of this series. First, they feel like a tone-content mismatch; Falco’s a first-person private eye, and I think he fits better in local investigations, or at least things that start out as local investigations, than in semi-diplomatic problem-solving missions for the Emperor. Second, they tend to take Falco on journeys all over the Empire, usually with great woodges of history as backstory, which all has a faint but discernable whiff of “I’ve suffered for my research and now you must too.” Which is odd, because in another series the trips would be an interesting bonus; I think it goes back to trouble believing that Vespasian would tap Falco for these kinds of errands.
Particularly this errand: the political stuff of the first two books, Falco got drawn into inadvertently and then stayed on to limit the number of people who knew about it. But I have a hard time believing that Vespasian would think Falco the best person to tactfully check up on the management of a legion that hates his former legion, let alone deal with a missing legate, a local prophetess, and a rebel leader. (Yes, I know that it is suggested that there are other considerations behind Vespasian’s choice, but I don’t think he’d let that influence him into an unsuitable decision.)
Anyway, having offended Helena Justina, Falco agrees to take this ridiculous mission because he hopes he might find her in Germany visiting her younger brother (a nice boy). The plot’s not so much a mystery as a road trip; he wanders around looking for various people, stuff happens, there is insufficient Helena Justina, and Kate skims a lot.
I’m not sure there’s anything objectively wrong with this book; it’s just not to my taste.
Novik, Naomi: (02) Throne of Jade
Naomi Novik’s Throne of Jade is the second book in the Temeraire series, begun with His Majesty’s Dragon. It is not a direct sequel, but addresses the conflict raised by the end of the first book: Temeraire is from a very rare and important breed of Chinese dragons, and the Chinese Empire is gravely offended at his military service and his attachment to a lowly aviator. Temeraire and Laurence are forced to make the long journey to China, along with a diplomatic envoy who is much more concerned with ensuring Chinese neutrality (at the least) than with Temeraire and Laurence’s happiness.
Though clearly signaled by the end of the last book, the story stands alone quite well. Indeed, I think in some ways it is superior to the first book. It’s more exciting, for one: between Laurence and Temeraire having finished training, and the perils of the sea voyage, there’s significantly more action. When there isn’t physical danger, there’s Laurence’s constant worry that he and Temeraire will be separated, either by force or by Temeraire’s choice.
That leads directly to the other superior thing: China is a society drastically different because of the presence of dragons. England doesn’t have the resources to support many dragons or many different species of dragons, but China, which does, domesticated dragons a thousand years earlier: and its treatment of dragons is fascinating indeed. Those who complained that the history was insufficiently alternate should enjoy this one, whether or not they are retroactively convinced by the progress of history in England.
I thought the denouement felt a trifle hasty or thin, but on reflection I think this is largely attributable to the limits of Laurence’s point-of-view. And the world-building here, and the possibilities set up for further down the road, are most intriguing. I wouldn’t recommend skipping the first, but if you liked the first at all, definitely grab this one.
Crusie, Jennifer, and Bob Mayer: Don’t Look Down
Don’t Look Down is a collaboration between Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, with a chick-lit cover and camouflage-patterned boards underneath. Lucy Armstrong has been brought to Georgia at the last minute to finish directing a movie. J.T. Wilder is a Green Beret who’s been hired as a military advisor to one of the movie’s stars. The original crew has left the movie set in droves, strange re-writes are being handed down from on high, a sniper and a one-eyed alligator lurk (separately) in the swamp, the CIA is poking its nose in, and black helicopters make prominent appearances. As do a dysfunctional but loving family unit, pop culture references, bantering, and sex.
To me, this felt more Crusie (though not chick lit, cover aside) than Mayer—well, insofar as I can judge without having read any of Mayer’s solo works. The opening is certainly very Crusie: I don’t know if anyone else has this problem with her longer works, but the way she opens with multiple characters never fails to confuse me. It usually takes me a couple of chapters and a lot of flipping back and forth to figure out who everyone is and what their relationships are to each other. (I started reading Crusie with her category romances, where there are many fewer characters.) While Mayer wrote the male POV sections and Crusie the female, the tone is reasonably consistent and another reason why it doesn’t feel terribly different from Crusie’s other works.
Oddly, even the increased action/suspense content seems more an extension of, rather than a departure from, Crusie’s other works. Lots of her books have had murderers or crazy people or other dark elements—which I often found jarring and poorly-integrated. If you’re going to do that kind of thing, go all the way; and here the darker parts are fully integrated into plot, character, and theme, and so there was no point at which I found myself saying, “there was really no need for a murder (alligator, shooting, explosion) in this book.” Which is a good thing.
This was a fun backyard read up until the very end, which required a re-read, a nap, and then another re-read to make sense to me. Or perhaps I’m still misreading it, because it seems like (spoiler) is getting off awfully damn easy. Perhaps another nap is called for.
Lucy’s soundtrack is provided by Kirsty MacColl. The visual motifs are Wonder Woman (Kingdom Come is referenced, which I haven’t read) and High Noon (which I have seen).
If you like Crusie and aren’t allergic to action scenes, this is worth checking out.
Davis, Lindsey: (03) Venus in Copper
I think the plot of Lindsey Davis’s Venus in Copper is genuinely tighter than that of Shadows in Bronze; it’s not just that I was sleepy and uncritical today, since usually when I’m sleepy I have less patience for slow books—they don’t do as good a job at keeping me awake. This book picks up immediately after Shadows, but its plot mostly stands alone. Falco is hired by two women; they and their husbands share a household with a third man, who’s just become betrothed to a woman who’s buried three husbands and profited each time she did so. They want him to find out her price for leaving, but her betrothed dies of poison—before the wedding.
Falco sticks with the case even after his clients want him to go away, feeling an obligation. Meanwhile, he’s got a larceny charge hanging over his head, a new apartment to furnish, a great big turbot to cook . . . oh, and there’s Helena Justina, of course.
The plot is not far from being over the top, but at least it’s not insubstantial. I deeply disapprove of what happens with the woman Falco’s hired to investigate, but other than that, I enjoyed it. There’s a lot of Helena Justina—she gets to question a witness for Falco, and is competent as would be expected—and the scene where Falco cooks the turbot is pretty funny.
Davis, Lindsey: (02) Shadows in Bronze
Lindsey Davis’s Shadows in Bronze is a direct sequel to Silver Pigs. It picks up less than two weeks after the first book closes: Falco is trying to tidy up after the plot against the Emperor Vespasian, but is surprised to find additional loose ends. Vespasian dispatches him to deal with them, and in his travels Falco re-encounters Helena Justina, his love and partner from the first book, from whom he is currently separated by, well, lots of things.
I’d heard Davis’s plots criticized for being obvious, and that’s pretty fair here. What bothered me more was that the plot also felt flimsy; in particular, the section spent chasing down a particular Senator seemed much too long and insubstantial. The character development is as enjoyable as before, but I found myself paying less attention to the other levels of the book. I hope that the next book will hold my attention more thoroughly.
This book, by the way, definitively establishes that the retrospective narration is set at several years’ remove (which seemed quite likely after the first): Falco mentions how Vesuvius’s eruption affected people and places he encountered in A.D. 71. (The author, on her website, states that she hasn’t decided yet how to handle the eruption within the books.)
Pratchett, Terry: (13) Small Gods (radio play)
Small Gods is one of my favorite books in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. It’s a humanist examination of religion (I don’t think that’s necessarily a contradiction in terms), set in a theocracy where the Great God Om woke up one day to find himself a tortoise with only one believer, an innocent novice named Brutha. (He’d intended to be a bull.) It’s been recorded as an unabridged audiobook, but I didn’t like the way the narrator, Nigel Planer, voiced Brutha; it was a bit too “Duh” for my tastes. I was therefore very pleased to find a recent radio adaptation with an excellent Brutha (voiced by Carl Prekopp).
The radio adaptation is streamlined pretty heavily, removing at least three subplots that I can think of off the top of my head (the History Monks, the lion, and Urn’s last device). I didn’t object to that. However, in spots I did feel that it suffered in comparison to the book, by ever-so-slightly rushing the events that were kept. Probably this wouldn’t bother someone who doesn’t know the book as well as I do, and the excellent voice actors mostly made up for it. I recommend this adaptation, though I recommend the book more.
[2006] Changed host
If you’re seeing this post, that means that the DNS changes have propogated and you’re now viewing steelypips.org at its new host. Things ought to work exactly the same as at the old host, so if they don’t, drop a comment or an e-mail to let me know what the problem is.
Sorry for all the downtime. There are several backdated entries originally posted on my LiveJournal below this post.
A brief note on the problems and the switch is below the cut.