I picked up Bloodcircle, the third book in P.N. Elrod’s Vampire Files, one night when I was waiting for the dregs of a horrible headache to pass so I could sleep. It’s short, it moves quickly, and Jack gets beat up routinely, so he feels worse than I did. In this book, Jack continues his search for the woman who made him a vampire, and we meet Jonathan Barrett, another vampire who has his own series. I have no interest in reading historical novels with Barrett, but I was interested enough in what happens to him in this time frame to pick up the next book the day after, Art in the Blood. However, Barrett doesn’t actually appear in this one; we seemed to have moved off of the beginning arc in the series (Jack is turned into a vampire and deals with it) into, possibly, one-shot mysteries. The plot of this one is basically unrelated to the prior books (though the emotional resonances from prior books remain), and a fairly standard, perfectly serviceable murder mystery it is. I have no great urge to read the next one, but I will someday.
Pierce, Tamora: (208) Shatterglass
I bought Tamora Pierce’s Shatterglass, the last book in the Circle Opens quartet, while at Boskone, but didn’t complete a proper read for a while after that. This is as good as the first two, and considerably better than Cold Fire. This series is structured around two aspects of magework: discovering and teaching one’s first student, and the use of magic in forensics. In this book, Tris’s student is a grown man whose skill as a glassblower has been strangely warped after he was struck by lightning. He learns that he has both glass and lightning magic, with a strange precongitive aspect: sometimes his glass globes show crime scenes, including those of a serial killer preying on his community.
I’m really tired and not thinking of much else to say about this book. If you liked the prior books in the series, you’ll like this one, and really, that’s about it.
Conover, Ted: Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, by Ted Conover, is one of my rare nonfiction reads. My job prompted me to get this out of the library: I have a lot of cases brought by prisoners, and while I’ve learned a lot about the working of prisons in the last few months, I thought it couldn’t hurt to get some more information. This was written by a journalist who spent a year undercover as a corrections officer, going through the academy and then working in Sing Sing.
This was a good book, though it didn’t tell me much more than I already knew. If I’d read it earlier, I would have found it more helpful: it does a nice job explaining how the popular conception of prison life is considerably different than the reality. (That popular conception, by the way, can make defending corrections officers rather tricky.) Well, okay, it told me that Sing Sing is a damn difficult prison to run, since it’s so old. I’m more familiar with the newer medium and maximum security facilities, which are much less chaotic.
I skipped a few chapters here and there, because this needed to go back to the library, but what I did read was well-written and interesting. One lunch during trial, I asked our defendants (six corrections officers) what they thought of it. Interestingly, not all of them had read it, but they’d all heard good things about it. This doesn’t surprise me, as my impression of it was that it was trying hard to be an honest and balanced look at the author’s experiences, both internal and external. It’s not a deep philosophical look at the problems of the corrections system, but it’s quite good at what it does. Recommended.
Stout, Rex: (46) A Family Affair
We found A Family Affair, the final Nero Wolfe & Archie Goodwin book by Rex Stout, in a used bookstore a few weeks ago; in honor of the purchase, I re-read it. (Only two Wolfe books left to find and buy now—we’re getting there.)
The first time I read this, the most notable thing was the ending—those who’ve read it will doubtless know what I mean. This time, I really noticed how much the narration reflects the nature of the story. Normally, even when bad things are happening, Archie’s First Person Smartass Narration is ornamented with clever descriptions or turns of phrase that keep it fairly light. This time, the prose is really stripped-down and bleak: it seems to me that there’s more dialogue-only sections and much less description by Archie. The prose creates an additional level of tension that really propels the story—enough so that I read it all at once before bed, which had not been my intention.
The other thing I found interesting about this one is Archie & Lily. We get much more insight into their relationship here than in almost any of the others; for whatever reason, Archie spends a lot more time reflecting on it than in other books. Also, it’s much more palatable than what we saw in, for instance, Not Quite Dead Enough.
While most of the series stands alone, this would be a terrible place to start reading. (So would In the Best Families.) Go read some of the others first, such as Prisoner’s Base, one of my favorites and recently back in print. Save this one for the end, but do read it.
Robb, J.D.: (16) Portrait in Death
I drop everything when a new J.D. Robb novel comes out, so I finished Portrait in Death next after Feet of Clay. This came out after Boskone, and I was vastly amused to see that a number of comments people had made at the J.D. Robb panel were addressed here. In particular, Roarke gets pretty thoroughly knocked off balance in this one, which was well overdue, in many people’s opinions (including mine).
My only real complaint about this one is that the brief sections from the killer’s point of view aren’t necessary; not only that, but I think they’re a touch misleading. I don’t know if it’s part of the genre that I’m not otherwise aware of, or something that Robb/Roberts just likes to do, but she seems to have the killer POV snippets in almost every book where there is a killer. I don’t see that it adds a whole lot, frankly.
Overall, this was an unusually solid entry in the series. Say what I will about some of Robb/Roberts’ craft details, she definitely has the storytelling instinct.
Pratchett, Terry: (19) Feet of Clay
Continuing the re-read of Terry Pratchett’s Guards books, we have Feet of Clay. This is the third, after Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms. I generally think of this as one of my favorites. However, it rather suffers from being read in reasonably close proximity to the other two, because you really notice that this one hammers on the king theme, again. I had quite a good idea about Pratchett’s attitude towards monarchy after the first one, and an even better one after the second; the third is starting to feel like overkill. Other than that, this is another enjoyable police procedural. Someone’s poisoning the Patrician, and Vimes is on a rampage to figure it out: Vimes might hate the Patrician, after all, but the Patrician is Vimes’ to hate.
Things of note: Carrot continues his evolution towards superhumanity; we’re still getting his points of view, but not that many. I suspect we may lose his points of view completely in the next book, Jingo. I would really like to hear Pratchett’s explanation of Vetinari’s actions and motivations regarding the Watch; I can sort of make his attitude in these earlier books fit in with Night Watch, but it doesn’t quite work. And, on a lighter note, Nobby’s reaction at the end of the dinner party was absolutely perfect.
Roberts, Nora: Chesapeake Blue
How far behind am I on the booklog? So far behind that I was reading Nora Roberts’ Chesapeake Blue to decompress from packing the apartment to move into the new house: end of January, in other words.
[ If you’re curious as to what’s been taking up all my time, see my LiveJournal and the Miscellany page. ]
This is Roberts’ latest mainstream hardcover. I wasn’t planning on reading it; I didn’t know what it was about, but lately her mainstream hardcovers have been rather heavy on the random serial killers for my taste. Then, while looking for something else, I discovered that Chesapeake Blue was a sequel to the trilogy that ended with Inner Harbor, and focuses on Seth, who was a pre-teen at the time of those books. When I found this out, I said, “Well, heck, now I have to read this, which means waiting for the library to have it.”
A few weeks later, I was browsing the vendors at a book sale at work. One charity was selling funny small-sized hardcovers (book club editions?) for paperback prices, including Chesapeake Blue. Clearly, this was A Sign, so I purchased it and read it shortly thereafter.
It’s not true that if you’ve read one Nora Roberts book, you’ve read them all. However, once you’ve read lots of Nora Roberts books, as I have, you pretty much know what you’re getting. Her strengths, as always, are her people and their families and other relationships. Her weaknesses tend to be in the details. For instance, there’s this conversation in Chapter One that positively screams as-you-know-Bob infodumping. An excerpt:
“ . . . The boat business is thriving. . . . Aubrey’s working there.”
“No kidding? . . . How’s she doing?”
“Terrific. She’s beautiful, smart, stubborn and, according to Cam, a genius with wood. I think Grace was a little disappointed when Aubrey didn’t want to pursue dancing, but it’s hard to argue when you see your child so happy. And Grace and Ethan’s Emily followed in her mother’s toe shoes.”
“She still heading to New York end of August?”
“A chance to dance with the American Ballet Company doesn’t come along every day. She’s grabbing it, and she swears she’ll be principal before twenty.”
I read that and said, “Good grief, even I can do better than that.” For my own amusement, a first pass at more subtle incluing follows:
“Did you hear that Aubrey has started working at the business?”
“No kidding? How’s she doing?”
“Cam says she’s a genius with wood.”
“How’s Grace taking it? Are they still butting heads over Aubrey pursuing dancing?”
“I think she was a little disappointed at first, but it’s hard to argue when you see your child so happy. And Emily’s big news took the pressure off Aubrey.”
“She leaves for New York pretty soon, right? Is she nervous?”
“August, and Emily, nervous? Are you kidding—this is the woman who insists she’s going to make principal by twenty. And you know, even though it’s the American Ballet Company, I wouldn’t want to bet against her.”
Enough self-indulgence. Once the plot gets started, the craft level smoothes out considerably, and the comfort read unfolds: all the family and friends from the prior trilogy are thriving, Seth deals with issues from his past and falls in love, and everyone ends up happy except for the villain—exactly what I needed during packing and moving.
There’s one other thing that struck my eye: the book is dedicated “To every reader who ever asked : When are you going to tell Seth’s story?” Now, call me crazy, but I rather think “rescued from evil biological mother by kindly people and given a home, family, and opportunity to develop your artistic talent, all before you hit puberty” is enough story for most people’s lives. The dedication’s phrasing, though, suggests that a person’s story is automatically their failling in love, which I found disconcerting. I don’t know what my story is, but I don’t think it’s only that—or that it has to be only that. (Yes, this is partly a function of the genre, and it’s possible that no deep thought was put into that phrasing, but as I said, I found it striking.)
(Hmm, I guess I wasn’t done with the self-indulgence after all.)
Brust, Steven: (203) The Paths of the Dead
Yay, Brust.
So, The Paths of the Dead does, indeed, rock just as much as I’d hoped during the long wait for it. This is the next book in the series of Dumas pastiches set on Dragaera; the first two were The Phoenix Guards and Five Hundred Years After. Paths is the either the third book in the series, or the first part of the three-volume third book, The Viscount of Adrilankha. Normally, I strongly recommend publication order. However, I do suspect that if all you’ve read so far is the Vlad Taltos books, Paths would not be a horrible place to start the Khaavren series, because it includes many more familiar characters and referenced events than the prior Khaavren books. (I think The Phoenix Guards was the first of Brust’s Dragaera books I read; obviously I enjoyed it, but I recall finding the worldbuilding a bit difficult to decipher. As best I can judge, Paths does a smoother job of incluing the reader.)
Paths is set approximately 250 years after the Empire was destroyed. It’s clear from the first (even if you haven’t read the other books) that the Empire gets restored; this is the story of how various people set out to do so. It’s a hugely fun ride, one that’s extremely smooth and compulsively readable: so much so that it’s quite ironic that it took me so long to start reading, and then to write about, this book—because it took me practically no time at all to read it. This is all the more impressive when one considers that this is the first third of a longer work, meaning that several plot threads are left dangling. It ends on somewhat less than a cliffhanger, however, and so I’m not biting my nails for the next one for that reason. (The Lord of Castle Black was recently completed and is scheduled for release in August. While the release of each volume separately has caused some comment, it’s fine with me: Paths is 400 pages long, and I’d like to be able to lift my books, please.)
There’s a multitude of items, both small and large, to delight the reader in this book. For some reason, I am unaccountably fond of Pel and Sethra’s conversation, and Pel’s subsequent account of it, in Chapter 28. I also like the trip through the Paths of the Dead; at one level, I’m sure there’s some significance to the landscape, because this is Brust, who structured a whole book around a fable and the creation of one painting (The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars), yet on the other, I have to agree with the character who mutters, “Useless, although, no doubt, significant in a mystical way that is beyond my mortal comprehension. Bah.” (And I still don’t understand how the paths for each House get communicated. Have I missed something?)
There’s also a Prelude, by Paarfi’s publisher; “Some Notes Toward Two Analyses of Auctorial Method and Voice,” as an about-the-author; and a Cast of Characters, which, notably, includes some presumably-significant people who haven’t yet appeared. Even this extra stuff is fun. The Prelude, by Emma Bull, continues to build Paarfi (the narrator) as a character in his own right, and includes the lovely sentences “But I’m sure none of his readers begrudge the extra decade it took him to complete this book, beyond our announced date of publication. Certainly we here in the editorial offices understood completely, and are sure our creditors will, as well.” (Cf. “long wait for” Paths, above.) The “Two Analyses,” by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, are “How to Write Like Paarfi of Roundwood” and “How to Write Like Steven Brust” (which, oddly, appears to be in a larger typeface than the Paarfi bit). The first note under the Paarfi section is perhaps my favorite:
1. Always refer to yourself as “we.” It is unclear why Paarfi prefers to use the first person plural. He doesn’t seem to be speaking jointly for himself and his patron of the moment; neither is he speaking jointly on behalf of himself and Steven Brust. His true camaraderie is reserved for himself and his manuscript, but that doesn’t usually prompt a writer to speak in the plural. It may be that he’s using the editorial “we.” Alternatively, he may just have a mouse in his pocket.
Emma Bull and Teresa Nielsen Hayden are pretty darn cool, too.
My only complaint is that I’m not crazy about the cover, but that’s a minor thing: don’t let it stop you from going out and reading this right away (well, stopping first to read some of the other books in this world, if you really must). Have fun.
[ This was also posted to rec.arts.sf.written, so if you have Usenet access, feel free to take comments there. (Google link, may take a few hours to show up.) ]
Pratchett, Terry: (15) Men At Arms
Several nights ago, I picked up Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett, because I didn’t want to start reading The Paths of the Dead before bed (for fear that I would be up all night reading the whole thing. This turned out to be a good decision.). I’ve been done with the book for a while, but the last few nights, my time has been taken up with computer issues instead. (My new port replicator hates the USB card I wanted to put in it. Grr.)
Men at Arms is the second book in the Guards sub-series of the Discworld books, after Guards! Guards!. Most of the book is styled as a police procedural, as a series of unusual killings puzzles the Watch and sparks ethnic (dwarf-troll) tensions in the city. This part of the book is really enjoyable; I love the interactions between the new members of the Watch, particularly Detritus and Cuddy, and it’s always fun watching Vimes and Carrot policing. However, I think the book bungles the semi-MacGuffin by being about as subtle as a sledgehammer—not that the Discworld books are generally known for being subtle, but this is bad in a Real World political kind of way, which makes it even more strident. There are lovely moments in this book, and I really like it if I skip over those few pages here and there.
As an aside, I’ve been trying to see why I thought that the Patrician was considerably older than portrayed in Night Watch. Here’s one reason: he’s described as limping and hobbling during his end-of-book conversation with Carrot (which, by the way, is a great conversation). I know, you were all losing sleep over that one . . .
Walton, Jo: (103) The Prize in the Game
John M. Ford once wrote that “Every book is three books, after all; the one the writer intended, the one the reader expected, and the one that casts its shadow when the first two meet by moonlight.” (“Rules of Engagement,” in From the End of the Twentieth Century.)
Using that metaphor, the first time I read Jo Walton’s The Prize in the Game, the cast shadow was even stranger than Deformed Rabbit (everyone’s favorite).
The reason, I realized, was that I had one of the stranger possible sets of expectations going into the book—including the fact that the book is dedicated to me. So I re-read it with a clearer head, and I’m happy to say that it’s very good. However, in hopes of avoiding messing up other people’s expectations, I’m not going to talk about my weird expectations here, because it’s too hard to use spoiler protection in this format. Instead, you can read my spoiler comments in a post to rec.arts.sf.written (Google link; may take a few hours to show up). What follows is a semi-objective review that ought to suit people who haven’t yet read the book.
Prize is set in the same world as Walton’s first two novels, The King’s Peace and The King’s Name. It tells the backstory of the Isarnagan (Irish-equivalent) characters appearing in those books, as well as that of some who hadn’t appeared on-stage before. It ought to be possible to read Prize first, but my general rule is to read things in publication order. In this case, I think Prize would end rather abruptly to someone who didn’t know the eventual fates of the characters (there will be a sequel to Prize, called Breaking the Ward). It would certainly be a very different experience, anyway—a good analogy is reading A Deepness in the Sky before A Fire Upon the Deep. If anyone tries it, please report back to us.
Prize is told from four alternating points of view. Conal is one of the King of Oriel’s nephews. Elenn and Emer are the daughters of Connat’s rulers; Elenn is one of the most beautiful women in the world, and Emer aspires to be a charioteer. Ferdia is the heir to Lagin, third of the five kingdoms of Tir Isarnagiri; he is also close friends with Darag, Conal’s cousin and rival.
As the book opens, Elenn, Emer, and Ferdia are all fostering at Oriel for a year. The plot is grounded in Irish myth, and stems from the contention over the heirship to Oriel, the ambitions of the King of Connat, and a deity’s curse—you know, standard stuff. I find myself unable to come up with a more useful summary that doesn’t spoil the book, for which I apologize. In a way, this is a compliment to the book, which is very effectively and efficiently constructed: the story flows very smoothly, with every event leading toward the climax, either directly or through foreshadowing (which is used frequently and, I thought, to quite good effect).
The characterization and world-building are also portrayed thoroughly and economically, which I think is a pretty good trick. I doubt there’s a wasted word in the novel, though I wouldn’t call it an obscure or difficult book; it simply rewards careful reading. (There are one or two things that I’m not entirely clear on, which will appear in the spoiler section at the end of this post. However, they aren’t central to the book.) Obviously, a lot of thought has gone into building the world, but the book never stops and says, for instance, “Here now is an explication of different kinds of trees and the knowledge associated with them.” Instead, the third-person viewpoints mention the information that would naturally cross the minds of those characters—thus combining two of my favorite things, depth of world-building and internally consistent narrative voice.
Thanks to the quality of the narration and the characterization, I certainly did not lack for emotional involvement with the characters. This was almost a problem; as Dennis Leary said in No Cure for Cancer, “From the beginning of time all the way up to U2—there has never been a happy Irish song,” and I rather suspect that applies to Irish myth, too. You’ve been warned. I found also it interesting to meet the younger versions of Conal, Emer, and Elenn, since I could see pretty easily how they became the people we first met in The King’s Peace, and to see Darag and Ferdia, who are mentioned in Peace and Name but do not appear.
In summary: this was an excellent book, and I’m glad that I eventually liked it. Go read it and let me know what you thought.