Author: katenepveu

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White, James: (07-08) General Practice (omnibus of Code Blue—Emergency and The Genocidal Healer)

James White’s General Practice is a Sector General omnibus that collects the previous out-of-print Code Blue—Emergency and The Genocidal Healer. (Tor has now published the entire Sector General series: all the books after this omnibus were originally published by Tor, and all the books before are in the two prior collections, Beginning Operations and Alien Emergencies. They do good work.) To round off the one-word summaries, this is “benevolent”—no surprise, since that applies just as well to all the rest of the Sector General stories.

These are the first books to be told from the viewpoint of non-Earth-human characters. Indeed, they’re also the first books to not focus primarily or exclusively on Conway, who was made a Diagnostician at the end of the prior book. Code Blue—Emergency also features our first female protagonist, Cha Thrat, who goes to Sector General in part to escape institutional sexism on her home planet—only to run into Sector General’s unique institutional sexism regarding Educator tapes, an irony that appears to be lost on both the author and the male characters. (Not the least because it’s demonstrably wrong, though no-one seems to notice.)

The book does a better job than I expected of managing Cha Thrat’s point-of-view, avoiding blatant infodumping in her personal thoughts and letting her personality and cultural background unfold slowly. Like prior novels, it is structured in a somewhat episodic fashion; the overall arc is Cha Thrat exploring Sector General and finding her place. Satisfyingly done.

The Genocidal Healer is talky, philosophical, angsty, and possibly my favorite Sector General book. (I’d read it before, actually just before I started this log.) This is the story of Lioren, a Tarlan Surgeon-Captain who makes a terrible mistake out of ambition, pride, impatience, and arrogance, and opens the book demanding the death penalty for nearly wiping out an entire species. Instead, he’s sentenced to Sector General.

I think this is the first book where we’ve seen a serious mistake made—we’ve come close before, but out of well-intentioned inabilities to make Conway-sized deductive leaps. And much more than any prior book, this is about the internal journey of a character: Lioren is suffering under a crushing weight of guilt, and coming to terms with his actions takes a considerable amount of self-reflection and emotional growth. In another first for Sector General, this is also a very spiritual book (presented in a way that I, thoroughly secular creature though I am, did not find offensive). And there’s also a good medical puzzle to keep the suspense up.

Anyone who likes fabulous flights of imagination, thoroughly grounded in a respect for humanity in the broadest sense of the word, should really read the Sector General series. They are comfort books par excellence and I am greatly pleased to have finally read all of them.

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Wrede, Patricia C., and Caroline Stevermer: (01) Sorcery and Cecelia, or, the Enchanted Chocolate Pot

After The Gnome’s Engine came Sorcery and Cecelia, or, the Enchanted Chocolate Pot, by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. This book was legendarily hard to find for quite a few years, and happily has now been reprinted in hardcover, with a sequel to come (details at a joint author webpage).

[ Interestingly, it’s been reprinted as a YA, right down to the listing of other books by the authors, which pointedly omits anything that wasn’t marketed as YA. Also, it’s got a new copyright date (2003), with a notice that it was originally printed in 1988 without the subtitle. I don’t see any differences in the text, so I’m a little baffled about giving it a new copyright date, but intellectual property law isn’t my field. ]

I’ve described this book before as “Freedom and Necessity without the Hegel.” I think that’s accurate if a touch flip, but I would be falling down on my book logging responsibilities if I left it at that.

First, this is an epistolary novel. Kate Talgarth has gone to London for the Season, and she corresponds with her cousin Cecelia Rushton, who is stuck at home in Essex. Second, it’s set in England in the 1800s, though about thirty years earlier than F&N; it’s also explicitly an alternate England, as the first letter makes clear; among Cecelia’s talk of parties and calling on the vicarage is this news:

Sir Hilary Bedrick has just been named to the Royal College of Wizards; the whole village is buzzing with the news. I suspect he was chosen because of that enormous library of musty old spellbooks at Bedrick Hall. He left yesterday for London, where he will be installed, but all of us expect great things when he returns. Except, of course, Aunt Elizabeth, who looks at me sideways and says darkly that magic is for heathens and cannibals, not for decent folk.

Yes indeed, we are in a Regency romance novel with magic (the same universe as Wrede’s Mairelon books). Kate goes to Sir Hilary’s investiture, goes through a little side door, and finds herself confronted with a perfectly horrible woman named Miranda, who thinks that Kate is actually someone named Thomas in disguise and tries to make her drink suspicious hot chocolate. Meanwhile, Cecy meets a new girl with an evil Stepmama who is, you guessed it, Miranda; and just what is Miranda’s relationship with Sir Hilary, anyway?

The plot of this is lovely and frothy, but it’s the narrators that really make it work. If The Gnome’s Engine was “genteel,” this is, quite simply, “charming.” For instance, Thomas seeks Kate out to thank her for springing Miranda’s trap. They naturally have further encounters, such as Thomas’s saving both her and, later, her cousin Oliver from being turned into trees:

“That’s part of the second reason I came here. You will agree you owe me some slight favor for rescuing you and your cod’s head of a cousin? I wish to make you an offer.”

I nodded as intelligently as I could and said, “Very well, I am very grateful to you for recovering dear, stupid Oliver. What sort of an offer?”

Thomas regarded me with an air of disbelief. “An offer of marriage, my dear half-wit. What other sort of offer did you expect?”

Cecy, I do think it is unfair. People in novels are fainting all the time, and I never can, no matter how badly I need to. Instead, I stared at him for what seemed like years, with the stupidest expression on my face, I’m sure, because I felt stupid. For I couldn’t imagine why he should say such an extraordinary thing. Finally I realized he was waiting for me to say something.

I said, “I can’t imagine why you should say such an extraordinary thing.”

Her cousin Cecelia is also excellent company, much inclined to saying things like “We simply must do something!” and then, well, doing it.

[ Aside: There is a conspicuous absence of parents in this, which I suppose is a point in favor of YA classification. Cecelia’s mother is dead, and she mentions her a few times; her father is immersed in his studies. Kate mentions her father just once, who appears to be dead; she doesn’t mention her mother at all that I can see. If I have the family tree right, Cecelia’s father had three sisters: Kate’s mother, Aunt Charlotte, and Aunt Elizabeth. What happened to Kate’s parents? ]

The only flaw in Sorcery and Cecelia is that I can’t re-read it too often. It’s quite short, and I’ve found if I try to read it too soon after the last time, everything’s too familiar and I can’t get into it. (Okay, another possible flaw: I’m not really clear how the Horrible Hollydean was involved.) It’s guaranteed to make me smile, which is why I’ve made the attempt. It’s amusing without being saccharine, light without being insubstantial, romantic without being sappy, and just plain fun. Highly recommended.

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Edgerton, Teresa: (02) The Gnome’s Engine

Being June 22, yes, I’ve read the new Harry Potter (spoiler-filled first thoughts on my LiveJournal). However, I thought I would clear the decks, so to speak, on the book log, by catching up on the backlog before starting the slow and detailed re-read that will inevitably spawn enormous posts here and on the LJ.

[split for import into MT; hit “next” at the bottom of this post]

First up is Teresa Edgerton’s The Gnome’s Engine, which is the sequel to Goblin Moon. At the end of that book, our protagonists were heading for the New World to flee their several enemies. This book opens a year later; our protagonists have spent the year getting established and getting the idea for the titular machine, but otherwise not much has changed: villains still searching, True Loves still separated by circumstance, etc.

This is kind of an odd book. The plot takes a while to get going, there are some plot threads whose relationship to the overall plot is rather ambiguous, and the end-of-book confrontation is distinctly anti-climactic. The best word I can think to describe it is “genteel”; it meanders along, with bad things presented in a non-bleak tone, and at the end everyone picks up their toys and cordially goes home. I think I liked it, but again, it was odd.

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Dyer, S.N.: “Resolve and Resistance”

I also recently read another short story that deserves mention here: “Resolve and Resistance,” by S.N. Dyer (collected in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Ninth Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. This came to my attention in a comment thread elsewhere on this book log. It’s an alternative-universe sequel to Pride and Prejudice, in which Napoleon has won and Lord Nelson is a crippled beggar in Hyde Park. A Norfolkman recognizes Nelson and whispers to him, “Darcy. Pemberley,” giving him a purpose and a destination.

Nelson is crushed to arrive at Pemberley and discover that Mr. Darcy was killed by the French and that the Bennett sisters appear to be collaborators. Of course, the “Darcy” referred to was actually Elizabeth; the Bennett sisters are running the resistance in their area, and have a plan to invade London.

I really enjoyed this, though it’s somewhat different than described in the aforementioned comments thread (most notably, no Caroline Bingley)—up to the very end. I found the last section absolutely infuriating. The shortest way to explain why is its opening line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of the gratitude of her nation must be in want of a husband.” Which it takes seriously!

A hint for aspiring writers: contrary to what many appear to believe, it is not actually necessary to end your story by marrying everyone off, particularly when doing so will require you to completely ignore your characters’ personalities as they have been established to date.

If you just stop reading at the end of the invasion, you’ll be fine. Pretend the rest doesn’t exist.

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Macdonald, James D., and Debra Doyle: (02) “Selling the Devil”

“I’d come to New York on business, switching out fabric samples from the Shroud of Turin so that the scientists who were doing the tests would declare it a fake and give it a rest.”

Ah, another Peter Crossman story, namely “Selling the Devil”, by Debra Doyle and James Macdonald, in On Crusade: More Tales of the Knights Templar. This is actually the middle Crossman short story, but acquiring this anthology was surprisingly difficult. All the local bookstores and several online retailers claimed they didn’t have copies, and when I finally ordered it online from Barnes & Noble, I got the right exterior, but an interior of Evelyn Waugh’s Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (of all things). B&N lost my replacement copy, and I only got the second last week.

As the title suggests, this story revolves around a claimed attempt to raise a demon before a paying audience. On the surface, it looks like simple get-rich-quick fakery—but why the new, ornate, chalice, and old, plain, sword? Crossman’s instincts tell him something more sinister is going on, and when he finds the bodies, well, he realizes that he’s right.

Start with The Apocalypse Door if you haven’t read a Peter Crossman story before, but if you encounter a copy of this anthology, definitely worth reading.

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Pratchett, Terry: (30) The Wee Free Men

I know I said I was going to read the sequel to Goblin Moon next, but when I said that, I didn’t know that there was a new Terry Pratchett novel out, namely The Wee Free Men—and I drop everything for a new Pratchett book.

I hadn’t realized this had already been published, and came across it by accident while browsing the YA section of my local Borders. (It was running a “buy two, get a third for 50% off” sale. New Westlake, new Pratchett, Teresa Edgerton’s latest, present for someone else, Michael Chabon-edited anthology, and a relatively non-offensive edition of I Capture the Castle. And elsewhere, Sherwood Smith’s Crown Duel. Yay, books.) It didn’t appear in the SF section at all, so if you have trouble finding this, check the YA section. (And then buy Sorcery and Cecilia while you’re there—but that’s another post.)

As I’ve said before, Pratchett’s YAs are basically the same as his adult novels except that they’re shorter, darker, and have chapters. I think of The Wee Free Men as Lords and Ladies II: The Next Generation. The Queen of Faerie is still trying to push her way into reality, because, well, that’s what she does; this time the witch facing her down is not Granny Weatherwax of Lancre, but nine-year-old Tiffany Aching of the Chalk. The title refers to her allies, a clan of the Nac Mac Feegle (pictsies; they’re six inches high, paint themselves blue, and spent all their time drinking, swearing, stealing, or fighting).

One of the things I particularly like about this book is Tiffany’s relationship with her grandmother, recently deceased and one of the two former witches of the Chalk. (The other is dying as the book opens, which is why the Chalk is vulnerable to the Queen’s incursions.) The book uses flashbacks heavily to portray this relationship, which is comforting, loving, and yet filled with awkward moments and unspoken regrets; I found the portrayal realistic and refreshing.

It’s that relationship, and the sense of place and history that are bound up in it, that keep this book from being just a rehash of Lords and Ladies. Yes, much of the action takes place in Fairyland, which is a first for the Discworld, and the Nac Mac Feegle have a somewhat more prominent role—but the natures of witchcraft and the Queen are themes that have already been done in the Discworld books, and without this additional dimension, I think I would find this book somewhat stale.

Okay, except for the Nac Mac Feegle, who I can’t help but find amusing no matter what the context (even if they’d run away from me because I’m a lawyer).

[Tiffany and the clan are going after the Queen, who has stolen Tiffany’s brother.]

“Why’re we stopping? Why’re we stopping here? We’ve got to catch her!”

“Got to wait for Hamish, mistress,” said Rob Anybody.

“Why? Who’s Hamish?”

“He might have the knowin’ of where the Quin went with your wee laddie,” said Rob Anybody soothingly. “We canna just rush in, ye ken.”

A big, bearded Feegle raised his hand. “Point ‘o order, Big Man. Ye can just rush in. We always just rush in.”

“Aye, Big Yan, point well made. But ye gotta know where ye’re just gonna rush in. Ye canna just rush in anywhere. It looks bad, havin’ to rush oout again straight awa’.”

Words of wisdom, indeed.

If you like prior Pratchett novels, I recommend picking up this one as well.

[ Also posted to rec.arts.sf.written; the post should show up here in a few hours. ]

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Edgerton, Teresa: (01) Goblin Moon

Look, a book I liked!

I went looking for Goblin Moon, by Teresa Edgerton, after a positive review of the sequel by Rich Boyé (whose booklog has vanished into 404 oblivion). This is a fantasy of the Regency-with-magic sort, though unlike Patricia Wrede’s Mairelon the Magician and Magician’s Ward, this is set in an imaginary world rather than in an alternate history, if that makes sense.

I really enjoyed this, not the least for its setting. I can’t possibly have liked every fantasy with either a courtly or a city setting, but at the moment, I’m not thinking of a strong counterexample. This book has both, one for each plot thread: on the courtly side, there’s something strange about the afflictions of a sickly society girl; on the city side, a sorceror’s coffin washes up, leading a pair of old friends back into dangerous experiments.

Therein lies the major flaw of the book: it suffers from the “A Plot, B Plot” problem. There are some connections between the two plots, but the main one seems to be that their convergence forces our protagnoists to flee the country at the end of the book, setting up the sequel. It’s possible that this book and its sequel, The Gnome’s Engine, are actually tightly woven together and thus the A and B plots end up being part of the same plot; I don’t know, because I haven’t read the sequel yet. I should add that except for the minor fact of fleeing the country, the book is reasonably well-contained.

The two plots are enjoyable, revealing their information and world-building at a good pace. And the characters populating those plots are good too: not stunningly original, but solidly drawn and engaging. This book is also further proof that I really do have a weakness for Lymond-types (in fiction only, I hasten to add); this one gets off most of the best lines, like

“Lord Skelbrooke . . . what a turn you gave me,” said the little apothecary, but a mischievous twinkle indicated that she had seen through his disguise immediately. “Might one ask what this . . . astounding costume . . . is supposed to portend?”

“Bad men, ill deeds, and (if I am successful) vengeance of no mean order,” said Skelbrooke.

Actually, when I typed that, I heard the Dread Pirate Roberts in my head, but it’s still a great line. There’s also:

“I have killed scores of men,” said Skelbrooke. “And there used to be a practice, among wild young men of good family, to ride the Imbrian countryside in the guise of highwaymen, and rob carriages and mail coaches . . . merely for the thrill of the thing.”

The Duchess was smiling now, a warm intimate smile. He was not certain whether she believed him or not, but at least he was keeping her amused.

“Heavens above!” said the Duchess. “I believe that I have fallen into the hands of a rascal. And tell me this . . . among your other vices, have you perhaps experimented with . . . the more intricate forms of sexual dalliance?”

Skelbrooke shook his head. “You see, I am not yet five and twenty,” he said apologetically. “I thought it wise to save something for later in life, lest I grow too soon bored.”

I just had fun reading this book. I look forward to seeing Skelbrooke, and the rest of our protagonists, in the sequel.

[ And then I will re-read Sorcery and Cecilia in honor of its being reprinted and because it’s also Regency-with-magic; and then I’ll read the Sector General omnibus with the only Sector General novel I haven’t read yet; and then I finally found a copy of The Element of Fire at a reasonable price (yay! But Patrick, if you’re reading this, I still think Tor should re-print it), so I’ll re-read that in celebration; and then there’s the sequel to Deep Secret and the new Bill Bryson; and at the pace I’ve been reading lately, I won’t be through these before the new Harry Potter comes out . . . I’ve pretty well got my reading planned out through the summer. *wists for the days when this list would be two weeks’ worth of reading* ]

[ Also, prompted by certain discussions, I’ve finally got around to trying an RSS feed with just the title of the post. Let’s see if it works. ]

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Bertin, Joanne: Last Dragonlord, The

I’ve been feeling guilty about the number of unread books on my shelves. In particular, I have a bunch of books I picked up cheap at used bookstores, on the theory that they looked vaguely interesting and why not? Since these are even more prone to sitting unread that others, I made a vague resolution to start trying some of them. I started with Joanne Bertin’s The Last Dragonlord mostly because it was on a shelf that I looked at every day.

I believe I bought this because 1) it was a Tor book, and 2) it had a cover blurb by Judith Tarr, who was not on my mental list of “overly blurby.” I discovered when I read the Acknowledgments that Bertin was apparently a participant in a writing workshop that Tarr ran or taught at. (This is not a suggestion that Tarr wasn’t serious in her blurb, but a possible explanation why I don’t recall seeing her blurb a lot of books.)

Anyway, I suspect that one’s opinion of this book will be determined by one’s opinion of the central worldbuilding conceit—which is not revealed fully until about halfway through, as I recall, so it suppose this could be considered a spoiler. You’ve been warned.

Okay. There are truedragons, which are just what you think they are, truehumans, which are just what you think they are, and Dragonlords, which are weredragons that can change at will. Dragonlords get made when somehow a truedragon soul and a truehuman soul get stuck together and then split in two before birth: each Dragonlord has a “soultwin,” someone who literally has half of their (human) soul. (The dragon bits usually sleep most of the time, apparently, and when the human bits tire of life, they take over.) I don’t recall anything as to whether all soultwins are of opposite genders, or whether they have the same birthdates. The book does state that not all soultwins live happily ever after, at least.

Also, Dragonlords function as sort of super-arbitrators and judges; in this case, they’re asked to settle a regency. Some characters ask, essentially, “hey, what gives them the right?” I could tell that these were supposed to be the Bad Guys, but I rather sympathized with the question: “the gods destined us to be the arbiters between nations” is not really what I consider a good answer. Neither is the longer creation story, which tells how Dragonlords were created by Eeeevil people and decided they would atone for that Eeeevil by seeking to avert war instead. (Yes, the theory is that they’re invited in for dispute-solving. It still strikes me as a dubious setup.)

There was probably a time in my life when I would have thought the Dragonlord concept was really cool. Now, it doesn’t do anything for me, and as a result, I wasn’t that enthused by the book.

This book did keep me up reading one night, but it was more the combination of a massively uncomfortable hotel bed and the realization that, every time I thought I knew where the plot was going, I was right—so I kept reading to see if it kept holding. And it did.

I don’t really regret the hour or two of my life I spent on this, but as you might have guessed, I’m not going to read the sequel.

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Lee, Sharon, and Steve Miller: Tomorrow Log, The

I dithered for a long while at Boskone about whether to buy Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s latest, The Tomorrow Log. This is a non-Liaden novel, first in an apparent series. I was getting lukewarm on the Liad books anyway, and flipping through this at the dealer’s table gave me the impression that it was a novel in the angsty mode, à la Local Custom, when I prefer the calmer mode of Scout’s Progress.

I read the sample chapters online (which turn out to be a full third of the novel [!]), and decided to buy it at Amazon’s discount. Yes, it looked a little angsty, and there were hints of Foreordained Destiny, but I’m a sucker for cool caper bits, and I can generally count on Lee and Miller to make me care about their characters.

I read this when puppy-sitting, and then re-read it after to make sure I was giving it a fair chance.

It was okay.

To be fair, it seems quite likely that I’m not the right reader for this. I’m not as fond of Foreordained Destiny plots as I once was, and here we have not one but two of the things working on our protagonist. More specifically, our protagonist is an involuntary exile from a multi-generation colony ship, which picks its captains from a prophecy, the eponymous Tomorrow Log. At the same time that a cousin from the ship shows up to tell him that he’s next on the list, he comes into possession of a mysterious artifact that appears to have a mind of its own, and plans for our protagonist. Happily for plot purposes, the two end up heading in the same direction. (Speaking of plot, it also depends on an absolutely mind-boggling, suspension-of-disbelief-blowing coincidence about halfway through. That may have been the straw, actually.)

I am curious as to how the protagonists are going to get out of the plot hole they’re in at the end of this—but there’s the rub, I can’t say I have any confidence that they’ll get out of it in a believable way, after the end of I Dare and the aforementioned enormous coincidence in this book. Maybe I’ll just beg for spoilers online.

[ That’s what I did, by the way, with the latest Robert Jordan book, in the unlikely event that someone was wondering why it hadn’t appeared here yet. I asked Chad to spoil it thoroughly for me, listened carefully, and said, “Nope, I don’t need to read any of that.” It was remarkably freeing. To be fair, there is one plot thread that sounded interesting, but I think I would have found it distressing to read. ]

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Collodi, Carlo: Pinocchio (illustrated by Gris Grimly)

Pinocchio, written by Carlo Collodi and illustrated by Gris Grimly, came to my attention at the Tor party at Boskone. Many of the pages were scattered around (along with the more usual book covers), and I found the illustrations very striking. Bookstores seemed strangely baffled when I inquired about this edition, so here’s a link to Amazon (ISBN 0765344580); click on “more pictures” for some of the illustrations.

I’d never read Pinocchio before, and saw the Disney movie years ago. The book is certainly stranger and more complex than my recollection of the movie. For instance, Pinocchio’s primary character flaw in the book is his utter fecklessness, rather than lying. The translator is not listed, for some reason, but the prose is sprightly and engaging, and it has the sort of chapter headings that I’m a sucker for: “Pinocchio is hungry and searches for an egg to make himself an omelet; but just at the most interesting moment the omelet flies out the window.”

I can’t say I’m confident that Pinocchio has truly, permanently reformed by the end, but that’s Geppetto’s lookout, not mine. And his antics provided a quick, amusing read and the platform for some great illustrations. I quite enjoyed this edition.

(There was some discussion at Boskone about whether this edition was abridged. Since I don’t read Italian, I can’t say for sure, but this web site has a side-by-side translation, which looks like about the same amount of text as in my copy.)

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