Author: katenepveu

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Wells, Martha: Death of a Necromancer (re-read)

Paged very quickly through Martha Wells’ Death of a Necromancer, looking for connections to The Element of Fire. There were a few mentions of events in Fire, and one of the characters in Fire is the ancestor of one of the characters here, but that’s about it. I have to say, I thought I liked Death of a Necromancer fairly well when I read it, but it really suffers in comparison to Fire now; I’m not sure why or how subjective that reaction is—very, probably.

[And with that, I’m caught back up! Now let’s see if my wrists make me pay for the number of backdated entries I’ve put up recently . . . ]

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Card, Orson Scott: Ender’s Shadow

Despite hearing some positive things about it, I had been resisting reading Ender’s Shadow, by Orson Scott Card, which is basically Ender’s Game told from Bean’s point of view. However, since I was determined to make a dent in my to-read stack this vacation week, I took it along with me to jury duty today, on the theory that I’d be forced to read it there once I got tired of my Wills, Trusts, and Estates textbook (which is actually more interesting than I’d thought it would be, but not something I could read for hours). It worked: I read it while waiting to see if my panel would be called. (It wasn’t. Seven civil trials and four criminal trials on for today, and they empaneled one jury: the civil all settled, two of the criminal pled out, and one more was put over. Oh well; I would have liked the experience, but I have a lot of things to do this week.)

I couldn’t really get involved in this book, for two reasons. One, Card’s prose style has stopped working for me (if it ever did; more likely, I just didn’t notice it when I originally read Ender’s Game and sequels). Two, parallel novels are by their nature slightly dubious; I can’t help but wonder if the author really knew that this was all going on at the time of the original book, and if so would it really have not shown up in the prior book, etc., which is distracting. (I held off reading this because I was afraid it would force me to re-read Ender’s Game, which I didn’t want to do because I don’t think I’d like it nearly as much now; I’ve managed to avoid a re-read, but I was right, it did make me want to.)

Though I might like to see what happens to Bean, I’m not going to read the sequel, Shadow of the Hegemon, for two additional reasons. One, it also focuses on Petra, who I’ve never thought Card handled well; Peter, who I’ve never found very interesting; and a new villain, who I don’t find interesting at all. Two, in the afterword, Card says that the story that he originally planned to tell in Shadow of the Hegemon had to be split up over two books, adding a book to what was supposed to be a trilogy. Those who remember the debacle that was Xenocide and Children of the Mind know that this is not a good sign. (Some people insist Xenocide and Children of the Mind do not exist, in the same way that the only sequel to Hyperion is The Fall of Hyperion. Fine by me.) Oh, and a half reason: Card’s tossed a lurking tragedy into Bean’s life, which tries to be profound but to me just feels emotionally manipulative (Card? Manipulative? Never.).

It killed a couple of hours at jury duty for me, so for that I’m grateful, but probably I should have gone with my instincts and not read it.

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Morgan, Douglas: Tiger Cruise

Teresa Nielsen Hayden had mentioned Tiger Cruise, by Douglas Morgan, a while ago, but it was then only out in hardcover. At the Tor party at Boskone [*], I saw that it had been released in paper, and so later picked it up (oh, and the cover typo—pointed out by a Tor employee, never say people in publishing have no sense of humor—has been fixed, at least in my copy).

[Edited 10/2003 to add: it can now be revealed that Douglas Morgan is a pseudonym of James D. Macdonald, of Mageworlds and The Apocalypse Door fame. So, even more reason to go read it . . .]

In Tiger Cruise, pirates attempt to capture the U.S.S. Cushing during a typhoon, while it has a bunch of civilian relatives on board (the Tigers); meanwhile, Australia sends a team to keep terrorists from getting their hands on Cushing‘s nuclear weapons, by any means necessary. This is a perfect commuting or beach book: brisk, suspenseful, not a whole lot of characterization (though I was pleased to see it avoid at least one cliché that Tom Clancy would have dove headfirst for), but amusing and with enough authentic feel in the details of Navy life that you still respect yourself in the morning. Good clean fun and recommended.

[*] Tangent: Where people kept asking me if I was connected to Tor somehow. (“No, I just read a lot of their books.”) I was slightly baffled, though, at people wondering if I was an editor, since my instinctive reaction to that was, “Are you kidding? I’m far too young.” Alas, I was jolted a bit later with the realization of why people might have thought that plausible: Jenna Felice, who passed away a year ago, was a full editor at 21 and just a bit older than I am now when she died. Eep. I had been sorry to hear about her death, though I did not know her; this was just a small, personal reminder of life’s frequent innate suckitude.

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Douglas, Carole Nelson: Catnap; Pussyfoot

I picked up Carole Nelson Douglas’s Catnap and Pussyfoot from the dollar rack at a used bookstore a while ago. It’s hard to regret two bucks, but I would have felt better about them if I’d got them from the quarter rack (at a different store).

These are the first two books in another of the innumerable mysteries-with-cats series. Unfortunately, in these, Midnight Louie (the cat) narrates short portions of the story in this wannabe-tough guy voice that ends up being just insufferably twee. Temple Carr, the PR person from whose point-of-view most of the books are told, isn’t much better—not only does she have a tendency to think in strained “colorful” descriptive language, she’s the perpetually nosy type of mystery protagonist that I always want to tell to mind her own business.

I kept skimming these because they were very short and the looks at different industry events—a big bookseller’s convention and a stripper’s competition—were interesting. The one about strippers, which deals also with domestic violence, is more serious and gave me hope for a bit—there’s a notable description of what a thorough beating does to one—but in the end, I couldn’t get past the style. I might flip through some of these in the bookstore to see what happens with the mystery men in Temple’s life, but I won’t be reading the rest.

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Pierce, Tamora: (206) Street Magic

Street Magic is the second book in Tamora Pierce’s Circle Opens series. I broke down and ordered this in hardcover, along with the forthcoming third; since this happened to ship first, and since the series consists of the individual stories of emotionally close but currently physically separated friends, I decided to read it by itself.

In this series, the protagonist mages are traveling with their teachers and find themselves with their first students. Briar Moss, a (guess) plant mage, discovers Evvy, a young stone mage, in the city of Chammur. Since Chammur grew out of the surrounding cliffs, stone magic is quite valuable; and since Evvy is a street rat with no one to rely on—until now—she is a prime target for exploitation. While figuring out how to get Evvy the teaching she needs, Briar also has to come to grips with his gang past.

I had the chance to talk with Ms. Pierce at Boskone last month, and she confirmed what I’d suspected, that the move towards a more concrete approach to fantasy was deliberate. It’s most obvious in these books, as their world was constructed later and lacks knights, dragons, or other sword-and-sorcery type trappings—and also lacks, though I don’t know if there’s a connection, the honkin’ big fantasy structure: though the first four books had a very loose arc, these four are all stand-alone, and Ms. Pierce said that only standalone books are being planned in this world (including Tris at Lightsbridge, which made me blurt out “Oh, no” at the gathering; if you’ve read the earlier books, you’ll understand why). I like her other series just fine, mind you, but I find these an enjoyable change of pace, as well as soothing in the way craft-related fiction often is.

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Peters, Ellis: (08-09) The Devil’s Novice; Dead Man’s Ransom

Two Cadfael novels in two days. The first was Ellis Peters’ The Devil’s Novice, number eight in the series. Nineteen-year-old Meriel is adamant about taking vows as a monk—yet obviously takes no joy in cloistered life, and screams in his sleep after seeing a bloody accident. The Benedictines, concerned about the state of Meriel’s vocation, try to determine his motivation—and what it has to with a missing Church courier.

The timely solution of the mystery turns on a happy accident, as the motive is not disclosed until after the murderer is; in that sense, it is not a fair mystery (as usefully defined by Kristie Taylor). I don’t particularly require my mysteries to be fair, especially those that I read for the characters, but this was noticeably so.

The next Cadfael book, Dead Man’s Ransom, breaks the series’ pattern to date: it’s a non-even-numbered book that turns around the civil war and related disruptions. In the Battle of Lincoln, two important prisoners have been taken. King Stephen has been captured by the Empress Maud’s forces (which shows that this is history, not fantasy, in which the rival claimant to the throne would be killed outright in battle); closer to home, Gilbert Prestcote, Shrewsbury’s sheriff, has been captured by Welsh raiders. Happily, a Welsh youth has also been taken prisoner after a raid on a convent (we get to see Avice of Thornbury again, which is nice), and he is to be exchanged for Prestcote. Except that he and Prestcote’s daughter fall in love, but Prestcote hates the Welsh, and then Prestcote is murdered . . . 

Dead Man’s Ransom turns on a particularly tangled set of love affairs, which made me wonder, rather cynically, how many star-crossed lovers there are out there that Cadfael gets to help them in every single book. But this is a fairer mystery than the previous one, and a more interesting one, as well. The series continues to burble along satisfactorily.

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Wells, Martha: Element of Fire, The

Martha Wells’ first book, The Element of Fire, was recommended to me a while ago. I’d read a couple of her other books in the meantime, and, at best, was hardly blown away. When I was prowling the library the other day looking for non-sexist books, though, I came across this and remembered I’d been meaning to look at it. Since the jacket copy invoked “the swashbuckling tradition of Steven Brust and Ellen Kushner,” I figured I had to give it a shot.

The Element of Fire starts with a bang, as a kidnapped sorcerer is rescued from an evil sorcerer’s house by one of our dashing protagonists, and lives up to that opening. If it’s in the tradition of Brust, it’s more Five Hundred Years After than The Phoenix Guards, though without the elaborate prose. I have this horrible urge to describe it as “if Emma Bull had crossed Five Hundred Years After with The Serpent’s Egg“—which is an early Caroline Stevermer novel that this reminds me of in some ways, though I may be remembering incorrectly.

Before a court already well-supplied with intrigue—a weak King and a scheming royal favorite, a strong Dowager Queen and her loyal Captain of the Queen’s Guard—come two puzzles. A mysterious sorcerer with a grudge against a completely different country has apparently decided to start attacking Ile-Rien. And the King’s bastard half-sister, Kade Carrion, has re-appeared; not only does Kade have a decent claim on the throne, but she’s half-fay and the Queen of Air and Darkness, to boot. (As an aside, I now have one option for a use-name if I ever run away to the Border—not only does it sound cool, it’s close enough to my present name that I might actually remember to answer to it.)

This was a terrific book, with everything I look for in a fantasy: well-rounded, fascinating, strong characters; nifty magical bits; lots of desperate acts of derring-do and last-minute escapes; a nasty yet nuanced bad guy—actually, a couple of them—and even a decent romance. It’s a pity that I haven’t found anything else Wells has written this enjoyable.

(Death of a Necromancer is set in the same world some time later, but I can’t remember if there’s any connection. There has been a copy in the used bookstore that’s on the way back from my dentist’s; next time I’m there (all too frequent, alas; damn this tooth-grinding), I’ll see if it’s still available.)

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Robb, J.D.: (14) Reunion in Death

When I read the last Eve/Roarke novel, Seduction in Death, I rather wanted Eve to face her evil twin, a woman killing off rapists and the like. Well, it’s not quite ask and ye shall receive: in J.D. Robb’s Reunion in Death, the villain wants to be Eve’s evil twin, but can’t quite manage it, for a number of reasons. For one thing, she despises men, period; for another, she’s really just not as smart. Which makes the big set-piece at the end a little silly—she can’t possibly have thought it would work—but it’s nice to have a different flavor of bad guy, so I’ll roll with it.

I’m starting to get a little weary of the constant playing-up of how horrible Eve’s childhood was, though. While it was certainly horrible, the Big Harrowing Scene about it in this book 1) didn’t provide any major new information to justify the harrowing, and 2) accordingly felt like gratuitous Character Torture. Which I am not comfortable with. (I note that the motherhood theme is being played up a little more in this book—we meet Peabody’s parents—so perhaps soon we shall have actual revelations on Eve’s past. One can only hope.)

Anyway, if I skim that scene and the sex scenes (which vary so little from book to book that they’re just boring), this is another guilty pleasure installment in a guilty pleasure series. Besides, true-urbanite Eve’s reaction at Texas prairies is worth at least one cookie-cutter scene and a continuity error to boot:

“This guy’s loaded,” she went on, slightly mollified by the roaring clack of a helicopter that buzzed the near field. “He’s got a thriving, successful business in Dallas. But he chooses to live out here. Voluntarily. There’s something really sick about that.”

With a laugh, Roarke picked up her hand, the one that kept inching up toward her weapon, and kissed it. “There are all kinds of people in the world.”

“Yeah, and most of them are crazy. Jesus, are those cows? Cows shouldn’t be that big, should they? It’s unnatural.”

“Just think steaks, darling.”

“Uh-uh, that’s just creepy. Are you sure this is the right way? This can’t be right. There’s nothing out here.”

“May I point out the several houses we’re passing along this route?”

“Yeah, but I think the cows must live in them.” She had a flash of bovine activities inside the low-slung houses. Watching some screen, having cow parties, making cow love in four-poster beds. And shuddered. “God, that’s creepy, too. I hate the country.”

(Okay, maybe I have a low sense of humor.)

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Wrede, Patricia C.: Raven Ring, The

I was in the mood for something anti-sexist, to cleanse my palate (as it were) after Beginning Operations and The Prisoner of Zenda. While Five Hundred Years After is certainly not sexist, all the same it didn’t quite reach that annoyance. So I grabbed Patricia C. Wrede’s The Raven Ring out of the library, which fit the bill admirably.

The Raven Ring is a small, well-crafted tale of adventure among culture clash. Eleret Salven is a young woman from a culture where all people are trained as warriors; her mother has been killed while in the army, and Eleret journeys into the city to pick up her possessions, according to their traditions. She finds herself rather a fish out of water in a city where gender roles are strictly differentiated; she also learns that someone is after her mother’s ring, and will stop at nothing, etc. (Technically speaking, the Fate of the World is, possibly, at stake, but it never really feels that way, which is rather refreshing.)

This is not a terribly novel or ambitious book, but it is a solid, entertaining, non-guilty-pleasure way to pass a few hours and shake the last bits of annoyance at sexist books.

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Brust, Steven: (202) Five Hundred Years After

It’s the weekend, and I have a copy of Steven Brust’s Five Hundred Years After, the sequel to The Phoenix Guards. Re-reading this was a very weird experience. On one level, I was processing the plot—conspiracies, adventures, and assassinations, all leading up to Adron’s Disaster (“I was afraid Daddy would cause trouble sooner or later,” as Aliera commented about a later consequence of the Disaster—not, note, the Disaster itself, which tells you something about Aliera). On the other level, I was noting all the places where Paarfi must be making all this up: thoughts and actions of people dying in the Disaster, with none around them escaped to tell thee; conversations between people who Paarfi claims haven’t been seen since and people who would never talk to Paarfi; differences between his account and Aliera’s, who was certainly there; and so on. Which makes, as I said, for a very weird re-reading experience. Next time, I shall try to have to ignore the second level and sink more fully into the story. (This is much easier to do in The Phoenix Guards, because of the nature of its plot, which also happens to be more fun.)

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