Author: katenepveu

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James, Eloisa: (01) Much Ado About You

Eloisa James’ Much Ado About You was mentioned favorably by Rachel Brown recently, and I picked it up as a lunchtime book while I was getting the new Diana Gabaldon (because I am not hauling a 980 page book back and forth to work). As light lunchtime reading, I have no complaints.

This is the first in a Regency romance series about four sisters; those sibling relationships are the distinguishing characteristic of the book. The romance moves a touch faster than I’d like, but has its good points; the overall plot also had a few elements that didn’t go as I’d expected, which is particularly a plus in the romance genre. A number of the secondary characters are also very interesting and I look forward to seeing more of them, though I suspect that a couple of them are going to be taken in a direction that strikes me as awfully tricky (I’ll still read the story even if I’m right; James seems a lot less frothy than Regency authors can be—and while frothy is all well and good for certain moods, it’s not what would be called for in that case). I’ll be checking out James’ backlist from the library.

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[2005] Site relaunch & implementation notes

Welcome to the relauched Outside of a Dog, now powered by Movable Type 3.2. The left sidebar now features a search function; automagically generated indexes by genre, author, and series, which I hope will make it easier for you to find your way around (I know it will make my life easier); and, just for fun, a link to a random entry. The comment system has also changed, but it shouldn’t affect you unless you’re a spammer.

All posts and comments have been imported (some of the multi-book posts are somewhat awkwardly split up to make the indexes work, but they’re here), and all old links work. Thanks to Michael Bruce for writing the script to import comments from Blogkomm.

[Implementation details have been moved to the about page.]

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Pratchett, Terry: (34) Thud!

Terry Pratchett’s newest Discworld book is called Thud!; it’s named after a chess-like game where the sides are trolls and dwarfs. It’s the anniversary of the Battle of Koom Valley, at which the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls—no-one really knows. Inter-species tensions have been exacerbated by the arrival in Ankh-Morpork of some seriously conservative dwarfs who preach the extermination of trolls, and Commander Vimes and the rest of the City Watch have their hands more than full trying to keep the city from exploding. And that’s before one of the conservative dwarfs is murdered and a troll club is found nearby . . .

But every night at six o’clock, without fail, Vimes reads Where’s My Cow? to his fourteen-month-old son.

(Where’s My Cow? has actually been published separately as a picture book; I haven’t seen it myself yet.)

This is a “things from the Dungeon Dimensions”-type plot, with an invisible quasidemonic entity mucking about looking for a way to influence events. These are normally not my favorite Discworld plots, but this one is worth it for the climactic scene. The rest of the story makes good use of new and old secondary characters, and of expanding prior worldbuilding bits into interesting dwarf and troll cultures. It also introduces a new element, which from a lesser author would strike me as a very bad idea; because this is Pratchett, however, I’m sure he knows where it came from and what effects it’s going to have, which I’m looking forward to learning.

This book also has some particularly good footnotes, such as:

Vimes had never got on with any game much more complex than darts. Chess in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks around, the whole board could’ve been a republic in a dozen moves.

And:

” . . . I’ve never played games since I grew up. I used to be good at tiddley-rats* when I was a nipper, though.”

* A famous Ankh-Morpork gutter sport, second only to dead-rat conkers. Turd races in the gutter appear to have died out, despite an attempt to take them upmarket with the name Poosticks.

I have a couple of minor quibbles: the Brick POV sections seem superfluous, but they’re short and, as Chad points out, consistent with the genre; and the Da Vinci Code references already feel dated (though I suppose in a while they won’t stand out as references at all). Other than those small points, however, a solid and very satisfying book.

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Pierce, Tamora: (209) The Will of the Empress

Tamora Pierce’s The Will of the Empress is set a few years after the Circle Opens quartet; it is a standalone novel, originally titled The Circle Reforged, which should give those familiar with the world an idea of its subject matter.

Briefly, four young craft-mages were brought together at roughly ten years of age to be fostered and trained; they created magical ties between their minds as well as family ones. At about fourteen years of age, three of the four left to travel extensively with their teachers; the fourth, Sandry, stayed home to care for her great-uncle, the ruler of the area they live, who’d recently had a heart attack. As The Will of the Empress opens, the other three are returning, to find that they’re no longer as close as they were and that they are reluctant to re-open their mental ties.

(Actually, they come back over a year and a half, which makes the beginning oddly choppy. I think there are internal chronology reasons for it, but it feels somewhat like killing time until they all hit eighteen.)

Sandry is a noblewoman and has been receiving income from her estates in Namorn ever since she was orphaned. The Empress has long been pressuring Duke Vedris, Sandry’s great-uncle, to have Sandry visit Namorn; Sandry found out about the pressure and determined to go to Namorn to put a stop to it. At Duke Vedris’s request, the other three mages (Briar, Daja, and Tris) agree to accompany Sandry as additional protection. Since the Empress is determined to keep Sandry in the country by any means necessary, this turns out to be a very good thing.

One of those “any means necessary” is a forced marriage; in Namorn, it is still permitted to kidnap a woman and hold her until she escapes, is rescued, or signs a marriage contract giving up her rights. Pierce stated, at the last Boskone, that her publisher required her to soften this practice from its historical analogue by removing mentions of violence, particularly sexual violence. There are small worldbuilding tweaks to make this more plausible on the first look: physical abuse within marriage can apparently be protested to the local lord, and (following the Empress’s lead, who needed heirs but not a spouse who would try and grab power) extramartial childbearing seems socially permitted. However, the attitude towards women shown by kidnappers is such that it’s hard to imagine why they wouldn’t resort to violence, so to me, the lack of violence ended up feeling like the elephant in the corner. This isn’t Pierce’s fault, but it is unfortunate.

I had one other problem with the book, which may just be oversensitivity: Daja discovers that she is a lesbian. The discovery and relationship are handled well, but the combination of butch + smith mage + lesbian bugs me, particularly the “smith mage” part. Probably oversensitive, like I said. (For those familiar with prior books, Rosethorn is mentioned as bisexual, and Lark and Rosethorn are lovers, which is news but not surprising.)

Otherwise, this is just what I want in a Circle-verse book: time with the characters I’m fond of, craft magic, common sense, and a dollop of social commentary. I’m a little sad that the next book will be “how Briar acquired PTSD,” but only because I really wanted “Tris goes to Lightsbridge,” which has been pushed back; but either way, it will still be a buy-on-sight book.

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Arakawa, Hiromu: Fullmetal Alchemist, vol. 1

As those who watch my LiveJournal know, I’ve fallen in love with the anime of Fullmetal Alchemist (see these “anime” LJ memories). The story started out as a manga by Hiromu Arakawa, and while I wasn’t planning on reading the manga until after I’d finished watching the anime, the library had volume 1 and it seemed like a good idea to encourage their acquisition of the series.

The anime of Fullmetal Alchemist is complete at 51 episodes, and is being aired in the Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” programming block and released on DVD; there’s also a movie that was recently released in Japan. The manga is still ongoing, and accordingly the stories diverge substantially (apparently. I’m only up to episode 16 of the anime, and so if you spoil me for future developments, I will kill you with my brain). When I asked a while ago which to try first, people were unanimously in favor of the anime, and they were right: the anime hooked me very fast, and upon comparing the changes that it made from the manga, I don’t think the manga would have had the same effect.

The premise, briefly, for those unfamiliar: it’s the early 1900s in a world somewhat analogous to our own, except with alchemy practiced as a science. Edward and Alphonse Elric are gifted young alchemists; at ages eleven and ten, they try to resurrect their dead mother through (forbidden) alchemy. They fail, spectacularly, at the cost of Ed’s arm and leg, and Al’s body (his soul is affixed to a suit of armor). After Ed is fitted with automail replacements for his limbs, Ed becomes a State Alchemist and they go on a quest to restore their bodies—which is still forbidden human transmutation, and dangerous and uncertain to boot. But they’re determined to try.

It’s a great concept, and the show caught me from the very beginning of the first episode, a flashback to the resurrection attempt. More specifically, it shows the brothers finishing their preparations and beginning the transmutation; their realization that it’s going wrong; Al’s empty clothes and Ed’s missing limbs; and then the thing that their attempt produced (the second picture on this page)—which is a very attention-grabbing thing to go to black on. The manga also opens with this, but much more briefly: one page, as Ed realizes that Al’s body is gone, showing only Ed. I suspect the story would have grabbed me anyway, because it is such a good premise, but the manga version strikes me as less immediately engaging.

The four chapters in volume 1 correspond to episodes 1, 2, 9, and 5 of the anime. The first two chapters/episodes tell the story of the town of Lior, where Ed and Al have gone in their search for the Philosopher’s Stone, following a rumor of resurrections by a religious prophet. They meet the prophet and a girl, Rose, who’s been promised that her lover will be miraculously returned to life; they expose the prophet, try to convince Rose to not make the same mistakes they did, and leave the town to pursue their quest. These sections also introduce mysterious characters called Lust and Gluttony (and, in the anime, Envy), who were behind the false prophet.

The broad outlines of these portions are the same between the anime and the manga, but the anime adds some events and changes the sequence of others; the net effect of the anime’s changes is to make Rose more sympathetic (she reappears in the anime, at least), and to add to the viewer’s list of “creepy alchemy uses.”

In the anime, Al tells Rose their life story as part of explaining why resurrecting the dead shouldn’t be attempted, and thus episodes 3 through 9 are all flashbacks; Lior takes place between episodes 9 and 10. In the manga, the events of episodes 9 and 5 take place not in flashback, but after Lior. Chapter 3/Episode 9 is their trip to a coal mining town called Youswell. In the anime, Ed’s sent there to inspect the mine, as his first mission; I think in the manga they’re just passing through. They best a corrupt military official by judicious use of alchemy and trickery, and Ed is hailed as an alchemist of the people.

I found this somewhat of a minor episode in the anime, and in my opinion it’s even more so in the manga, for three reasons. In order of increasing importance: First, Ed is slightly less sympathetic in minor aspects. Second, it lacks an alchemist who works for the corrupt military officer, which hints at a distrust of how the military uses alchemists. Third, Ed’s not starting out his career as a State Alchemist, meaning that it’s less of a challenge for him, and not an opportunity to establish his reputation and the path he’s going to follow.

Chapter 4/Episode 5 takes place on a train that’s taken over by a group of extremists. Again, in the anime, this is a flashback; the eleven- and ten-year-old brothers are on their way to become State Alchemists after their recovery. In the manga, they appear to be heading back from Youswell. Ed and Al subdue the extremists and turn them over to Colonel Roy Mustang, Ed’s nominal supervisor and the Flame Alchemist.

I also found this episode fairly light when I first watched it, and was mostly interested in Mustang’s manipulativeness—something completely absent here. The anime also gives the extremists’ leader a grudge against the military; while I didn’t quite follow his reasoning, it laid foundations for the worldbuilding in much the same way as the alchemist in Youswell. And once again, by having Ed be a State Alchemist of some years’ experience, it removes a layer of peril that the younger anime versions faced.

Overall, Fullmetal Alchemist is a great story, and if you’ve any hint of tolerance for anime or manga, I recommend checking it out. I do agree with everyone who said to try the anime first: it’s more immediately involving and better structured, compared to the first volume of the manga. I’ll probably read the rest of the manga later; it is interesting to compare ways of telling a story, and I believe the manga may appear in a better light once the plots start diverging. It’s not that the manga is bad, certainly, just that the anime is a better introduction.

A few other notes: The translation seemed pretty good to me; there were only a couple spots where the English seemed to clunk. Unlike Saiyuki, the sound effects here are translated, which took me a little getting used to; subconsciously “whoosh” and “bam” and so forth remind me of brightly-colored superhero comics, which makes me take it a little less seriously (the humorously-exaggerated emotional reactions and fight scenes, while within genre conventions as I understand them for both anime and manga, have a similar effect).

The art here strikes me as clean and with slightly more delicate, less detailed lines than Saiyuki. The panel layout is mostly straightforward and linear. I’ve been doing detailed art commentary posts on Saiyuki, but I only found a couple of additional things to say about this art; the LJ post is here if you’re interested.

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Peters, Ellis: (13) The Rose Rent

The Rose Rent is the thirteenth of Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael novels, a quiet non-civil war story about a widow who’s gifted the house of her marriage to the abbey, in return for one rose a year from a bush on the property. A few days before the rent is due, a dead body is found near the hacked-at bush; and shortly thereafter, the widow herself disappears.

The motives here are a little thin, but it’s vaguely amusing to have a mystery turn around the legal issue of a revocable gift. A leisurely and harmless way to pass a lunch time, though it would make me happy if there would be a Cadfael novel that didn’t end with a romantic pairing-off, because really, how many True Loves in potentia can there be out there, just waiting for a murder and Cadfael to bring them together?

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Duane, Diane: (108) Wizards at War

Diane Duane’s Wizards at War is the eighth and most recent Young Wizards book. Wizardry itself is in peril now, with the rest of the universe to follow in quite short order; and since the less powerful—that is, older and more experienced—wizards lose wizardry first, our teenaged protagonists find themselves with a universe to save.

Since I complained about this with regard to the prior book, let me say up front that there is finally a payoff with all the stuff with Ponch, Kit’s dog. This is a good thing. We also see quite a few characters from prior books. This makes sense given the setup, and yet it still felt like it fell just on the “self-indulgent” side of the line of bringing series characters back. I had a similar reaction to the ending: almost everything fit (there’s one thing that’s still open-ended that I must, perforce, reserve judgment on [*]), and yet it felt just a little bit too happy.

[*] Somewhat annoyingly, really. I can see leaving the main part of it unresolved, but we couldn’t at least get the meaning of a single sentence in the Speech?

As far as the story itself, I begin to wonder if the moral nature of Duane’s universe isn’t limiting the types of stories that can be told in it. This was a good story, but for all that it dealt with something fundamentally new (as the characters told us), it didn’t feel very new. Overall, this was mostly absorbing while I was reading, but the little things that poked up through my narrative rush bothered me all the more once I put it down. A mid-tier book at best.

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Clarke, Susanna: (01) Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

I am behind on my reading, and only picked up Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell last month on vacation. In the year since it’s been published, it’s been widely praised, won a bunch of awards, and sold a bunch of copies, all deservedly so. My compliments at this point are somewhat superfluous, but, well, that’s never stopped me before.

JS&MN‘s subject is nothing less than the restoration of English magic, and despite its bulk and oft-leisurely pace, I would not call it an unfocused book, as its characters and incidents are all relevant to its subject. Its narrative style also works thematically: an important part of the book is the way that language is (or isn’t) able to describe or illuminate reality, especially where magic and the numinous are concerned. An omniscient narrator is a good match to this theme, and allows the book to have a slightly historical perspective and tone, which I also find suits it well. Plus, then you can have those infamous footnotes, which are sometimes amusing (see below, because it’s quite long), sometimes impressive (Clarke has created an entire mythology that sounds entirely authentic but which, apparently, is original), and sometimes even an indirect method of conveying story information.

I found the language and the world a most agreeable place to be immersed in, and the characters interesting company to keep. JS&MN strikes me as, well, a kind story, for lack of any better term. There are bleak moments, but it’s not a bleak book; and a couple of characters had sympathetic moments well past the time I would have thought that possible. This is not to say that it’s cloying or spoon-fed or formulaic; magic is genuinely magical and mysterious, conclusions are in-character and unforced, and ends are left loose where appropriate.

I very much enjoyed this book, and stayed up much too late on the last night of my vacation to finish it. I also have the unabridged audiobook, which has been receiving good reviews, with the caveat that the lengthy footnotes make it unsuited to be the first way one experiences the story. I look forward to immersing myself back in the book at some point the future.

A note on short stories: Clarke has a story in each of the three Starlight anthologies. The first, “The Ladies of Grace Adieu,” is explicitly in this world, as it features Jonathan Strange; it’s the story referenced in chapter 43, footnote 2. I think it gives rather an unfavorable view of Strange, so if one reads it first, keep in mind that it’s not the entire picture. The second, “Mrs Mabb,” might or might not be in the same world; I saw nothing explicit either way. The third, “Tom Brightwind, or How the Fairy Bridge was Built at Thoresby,” is almost certainly not in the same world to my reading, though it has much the same flavor.

And in conclusion, a long quote that amused me, to give a flavor of the prose and humor.

In the early summer of 1813 Strange again performed a sort of magic the like of which had not been done since the days of the Raven King: he moved a river. It happened like this. The war that summer was going well and everything Lord Wellington did was crowned with success. However it so happened that one particular morning in June the French found themselves in a more advantageous position than had been the case for some time. His lordship and the other generals immediately gathered together to discuss what could be done to correct this highly undesirable situation. Strange was summoned to join them in Lord Wellington’s tent. He found them gathered round a table upon which was spread a large map.

His lordship was in really excellent spirits that summer and he greeted Strange almost affectionately. “Ah, Merlin! There you are! Here is our problem! We are on this side of the river and the French are on the other side, and it would suit me much better if the positions were reversed.”

 . . .

 . . . Strange went back to Lord Wellington and said it would take too long for every man in the army to sprout wings, but it would take no time at all to move the river and would that do? “At the moment,” said Strange, “the river flows south here and then twists northward here. If upon the other hand it flowed north instead of south and twisted southwards here, then, you see, we would be on the north bank and the French on the south.”

“Oh!” said his lordship. “Very well.”

The new position of the river so baffled the French that several French companies, when ordered to march north, went in entirely the wrong direction, so convinced were they that the direction away from the river must be north. These particular companies were never seen again and so it was widely supposed that they had been killed by Spanish guerrilleros.

 . . .

Meanwhile the Spanish Regency Council in Cadiz became rather alarmed at this development and began to wonder whether, when they finally regained their country from the French, they would recognize it. They complained to the Foreign Secretary (which many people thought ungrateful). The Foreign Secretary persuaded Strange to write the Regency Council a letter promising that after the war he would replace the river in its original position and also ” . . . any thing else which Lord Wellington requires to be moved during the prosecution of the war.” Among the many things which Strange moved were: a wood of olive trees and pines in Navarra;6 the city of Pamplona;7 and two churches in the town of St Jean de Luz in France.8

6 Colonel Vickery had reconnoitred the wood and discovered it to be full of French soldiers waiting to shoot at the British Army. His officers were just discussing what to do about it when Lord Wellington rode up. “We could go round it, I suppose,” said Wellington, “but that will take some time and I am in a hurry. Where is the magician?”

Someone went and fetched Strange.

“Mr Strange!” said Lord Wellington. “I can scarcely belive that it will be much trouble to you to move these trees! A great deal less, I am sure, than to make four thousand men walk seven miles out of their way. Move the wood, if you please.”

So Strange did as he was asked and moved the wood to the opposite side of the valley. The French soldiers were left cowering on a barren hillside and very quickly surrendered to the British.

7 Owing to a mistake in Wellington’s maps of Spain the city of Pamplona was not exactly where the British had supposed it to be. Wellington was deeply disappointed when, after the Army had marched twenty miles in one day, they did not reach Pamplona which was discvered to be ten miles further north. After swift discussion of the problem it was found to be more convenient to have Mr Strange move the city, rather than change all the maps.

8 The churches in St Jean de Luz were something of an embarrassment. There was no reason whatsoever to move them. The fact of the matter was that one Sunday morning Strange was drinking brandy for breakfast at a hotel in St Jean de Luz with three Captains and two lieutenants of the 16th Light Dragoons. He was explaining to these gentlemen the theory behind the magical transportation of various objects. It was an entirely futile undertaking: they would not have understood him very well had they been sober and neither they nor Strange had been entirely sober for two days. By way of an illustration Strange swapped the positions of the two churches with the congregations still inside them. He fully intended to change them round again before the people came out, but shortly afterwards he was called away to a game of billiards and never thought of it again. Indeed despite Strange’s many assurances he never found the time or inclination to replace river, wood, city, or indeed any thing at all in its original position.

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Powers, Tim: Last Call

The weekend before vacation, I was very cranky and wanted to read something that I knew wouldn’t annoy me. Since Tim Powers’ Last Call is one of my favorite books and part of my fantasy conversion kit, but I hadn’t read it for ages, it seemed like a useful as well as a reliable choice.

This is such a good book. It has great characters; rich, detailed, textured worldbuilding; and a plot that spins out of both of these in a logical, fitting, and yet surprising fashion. More, I think it was a good choice for the conversion kit, since it sets out its central problem pretty early. By the end of the Prologue, we know that Georges Leon is the mythic King of the American West and was conducting a ritual to take over the body of his younger son (there are fantasy novels that would make you wait for the purpose of that ritual until two-thirds of the way through). The ritual failed, and he now expects his son to become his rival. By the end of Part I we know the core of the plot, the peril our protagonist (his son) is in. I think in that sense, it’s a good choice for people new to the genre: though the subject matter may be unfamiliar, the direction of the plot is clear.

A good deal of the subject matter might be familiar, as well, since the one-line description of Last Call is “a secret history of the Fisher King in Las Vegas with Poker.” When the book came out in 1992, the Fisher King part of that description was likely the most familiar mythological reference, but the recent popularity of poker might be giving it some competition. There’s almost certainly some aspect of the book that will resonate, with references to everything from T.S. Eliot, chaos theory, and Vietnamese myth—but never in a cryptic or unexplained way. It’s the kind of story where everything—the direction a car turns, the way the moon looks, and particularly the fall of the cards—is significant, and I really enjoy the texture this gives the book.

Last Call is an absorbing, complex and entertaining book whose strong ideas are more than matched by its strong characters. I’m very glad to re-read it and find it’s still one of my favorites.

[Expiration Date is Tim Powers doing ghosts, telephones, and Thomas Edison; Earthquake Weather brings together characters from both Expiration Date and Last Call, plus completely new characters. Unfortunately I don’t love either of them, but they’re there if you want them.]

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Paretsky, Sara: Killing Orders (radio play)

One more BBC play for now, Sara Paretsky’s Killing Orders. I downloaded this largely because Kathleen Turner was portraying V.I. Warshawski, and there are much worse ways to kill a half-hour drive than listening to Kathleen Turner. (Also, it was a nice change to listen to actual American voices; both Whose Body? and Death on the Nile had British actors with bad American accents.)

The adaptation and the story aren’t quite up to their star. The adaptation leaves out some important details—such as, oh, precisely what happens to the main bad guy. I also found the narration, which was more like an internal monologue than a voiceover, to be occasionally distracting. Does the text have so very many descriptions of her clothes, and even if it does, do we have to faithfully preserve every single one of them? (It also includes conversations with her dead mother, and it’s not clear whether they’re supposed to be actual or imaginary.)

The story itself was written in 1985 and is the third V.I. Warshawski novel. It starts with V.I.’s detested aunt calling her for help, having been accused of forging stock certificates. This turns out to be part of a fairly complicated conspiracy involving both the Mafia and the Catholic Church, which I found slightly over-the-top. (V.I. and the people around her also take some serious damage during the book; I don’t know if that’s typical of the series.) It’s telling that I haven’t bothered to see if the library or a local bookstore has a copy of the text that I could browse to learn the details that the adaptation left out.

Not a terrible way to pass the commute, but I won’t be seeking out further V.I. Warshawski adaptations.

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