Author: katenepveu

Posted on

Milan, Courtney: (100.5-101.5) “The Governess Affair,” The Duchess War, “A Kiss for Midwinter”

I had a serious case of “don’t wanna” for the book I “should” have been reading, so I took a short excursion into historical romance with two novellas and a novel in Courtney Milan’s Brothers Sinister series.

I’d previously read the prequel novella, “The Governess Affair,” because I’d heard friends talking about this author, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Serena wants a Duke to compensate her for getting her fired, and is prepared to make quite a fuss to get what she ways; Hugo is the Duke’s problem-solver who needs her to go away, not out of loyalty to the Duke, but because it’s part of his path to financial independence. Sparks, naturally, fly–I particularly liked their note-passing. I liked them, I liked their dilemmas, and I liked the way the story was focused on issues of sexual consent.

The first novel, The Duchess War, is set a generation later. This is kind of a mixed bag. I read it quickly in a haze of sleep deprivation, and the banter and the angst was fine for that. But while I can see that it attempts to do something substantive with its class issues–it’s set in 1863 England and union organizing is nominally the springboard for its plot–even in my fuzzy state I could tell that it wasn’t engaging with those issues in a very sensible way. (There is more, with spoilers, over at Dear Author; I’m in agreement with the general sense if not all the details.) I liked what it did with some of the character relationships, I liked that the main sex scene was awkward and then got better after actual, you know, communication, but a good deal of it feels like it doesn’t bear much thinking about.

The side novella “A Kiss for Midwinter” is kind of a mess, unfortunately, even when read in the same haze of sleep deprivation. It’s about Minnie’s best friend Lydia and a local doctor, who she dislikes because he knows she’d been pregnant out of wedlock (she miscarried). But the characters don’t particularly click individually or together, and the not-very-subtext ends up undercutting the explicitly feminist message. More detail, again with spoilers, from coffeeandink.

At any rate, I do really like “The Governess Affair,” and I appreciate what the other stories set out to do even if I don’t think they always fully succeed. I look forward to seeing how Milan continues to attempt to integrate broader social issues now that she’s self-published, as well as going back to her prior books.

No Comments

Posted on

Aaronovitch, Ben: (01-03) Midnight Riot, Moon Over Soho, Whispers Under Ground

I have been blocked on writing up Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series for ages, which is ridiculous because they are the books I have most recommended in conversation. So today I am ditching the laborious attempts sitting around from literally years ago and just going with my feelings about these books, let me show them to you.

Right. So far there are three books: Midnight Riot (US)/Rivers of London (UK), Moon Over Soho, and Whispers Under Ground. These are police procedurals with magic in present-day London, told in First Person Smartass, and I love them to pieces.

Our narrator is Peter Grant, who when the series opens is just ending his probationary period with the Metropolitan Police. He’s expecting to be assigned to deskwork of some kind and is very glum about it, and then he comes across a witness to a very improbable murder . . . who is a ghost. From there he discovers that the Met has a branch devoted to magic–well, what was a branch and is now just one guy. Peter gets assigned to this branch and starts learning magic.

Here are some of the things I love about the books brought to mind just by this opening scenario: that magic’s existence is quietly acknowledged and so we’re in a police procedural context. That Peter is not as good a street cop as his best friend, Leslie, and they both know it. That Peter–who is biracial, his mother is a black immigrant from West Africa and his dad is a white UK native–hears that upon being apprenticed, he is traditionally supposed to call his teacher “Master” and, because it keeps coming out “Massa” in his head, negotiates calling his teacher “Inspector” instead. That Peter immediately starts trying to figure out the rules and logic and any possible scientific basis for magic, and is gravely disappointed at the state of knowledge about it:

The sons of Musa ibn Shakir were bright and bold and if they hadn’t been Muslims would have probably gone on to be the patron saints of techno-geeks. They’re famous for their ninth-century Baghdad bestseller, a compendium of ingenious mechanical devices that they imaginatively titled Kitab al-Hiyal — The Book of Ingenious Devices. In it they describe what is possibly the first practical device for measuring differential pressure, and that’s where the problem really starts. . . . At this very moment astronomers are detecting planets around distant stars by measuring how much their orbits wobble and the clever people at CERN are smashing particles together in the hope that Doctor Who will turn up and tell them to stop. The story of how we measure the physical universe is the history of science itself.

And what do Nightingale and I have to measure vestigia [the imprint that magic leaves on physical objects] with? Sod all, and it’s not even as if we know what we’re trying to measure in the first place. No wonder the heirs of Isaac Newton kept magic safely under their periwigs. I had jokingly developed my own scale for vestigia based on the amount of noise [the dog] Toby made when he interacted with any residual magic. I called it a yap, one yap being enough vestigia to be apparent even when I wasn’t looking for it.

(The magic so far hasn’t reduced down to anything mechanical and probably isn’t going to, and there’s some nice sense-of-wonder stuff going on with it, especially the Rivers, who are anthropomorphic personifications–Father Thames packed up and left London during the Great Stink of 1858, and so the lower Thames is now personified by Mama Thames–formerly an African immigrant who was going to throw herself into the river, which offered her an alternative–and her many daughters. I have no idea how this sounds put baldly but it works really well in the story, and I love all the family interactions that result.)

And I just like Peter, and Leslie, and Nightingale, and pretty much all the characters. Peter’s voice is delightful, more Pratchett than hardboiled, and it’s wonderful seeing London through his eyes.

The books are not at all perfect and so far all have plot problems of varying degrees. The first book has two plot threads that Peter seems to think comes together at one point, but heck if I can figure out how (I kept waiting for the traditional “let me explain the plot to everyone” wrapping-up conversation and did not get it). The second has an idiot plot, that is, depends on Peter being an idiot (for understandable reasons, but still). And the third has a plot but I could not even keep what it was in mind from page to page–my brain kept skating off it and wandering off to think about worldbuilding and characters and so forth.

So if you really need solid plots, these are not for you. If you want to spend time in a magical London with lovely people and cool (sometimes surprisingly creepy) magic, in an urban fantasy that’s not My Awesome Werewolf Significant Other, then these are for you. One of the many things I like that I haven’t gotten around to saying yet is that Peter and Leslie are genuinely good friends and, while he finds her physically attractive, I get absolutely zero sense that he’s interested in her sexually or romantically or that the series is going to go in that direction. Anyway, these are a lot of fun, I look forward to seeing where the bigger arc of the series goes, and they just make me happy. Go read them.

7 Comments

Posted on

Riodan, Rick: Kane Chronicles (The Red Pyramid, The Throne of Fire, and The Serpent’s Shadow)

Let me pick a random thing from the never-to-be-cleared backlog: Rick Riordan’s Kane Chronicles, consisting of The Red Pyramid, The Throne of Fire, and The Serpent’s Shadow. I was a big fan of his Percy Jackson books, but didn’t want to start the sequel series until it was complete. (Well, also, I tried the first book at least twice and found that I missed Percy’s voice a lot, so clearly some distance is a good thing all around.)

The Kane Chronicles are about the ancient gods of Egypt; they technically take place in the same world as the Percy Jackson books, but you’d only notice the reference if you’d read them. I was inclined to like them from the start, because the central two characters are biracial siblings, a girl who looks more like their white mom and a boy who looks more like their black dad, and they both have sharp things to say about people’s racial prejudices as applied to their family. And I like that it sets up a general belief that the ancient gods of Egypt are dangerous and uncontrollable and then demonstrates that no, no more so than the ancient Greek gods.

But in the end, I didn’t think this series was nearly as good as the Percy Jackson books. Maybe I’ve gotten wise to Riordan’s plotting, but there was nothing that surprised me. Between books two and three, I actually said, “Could X be as simple as Y?” (spoilers, obviously). And alas, it was. More, the costs were surprisingly low, which combined with the predictability made me feel that it was all just too easy.

Finally, these books anchor their first-person POV to a specific device—voice recordings that the siblings are making for others to listen to—which is a mistake, because every time one of them mentions that, I lose my suspension of disbelief, because there is no way that these are narrated out loud. If you’re not going to commit hard to the form of a first-person narration, leave it free-floating and unspecified (see this journal post for a bit more discussion).

Short version: if what you liked about the Percy Jackson books was their tension and high stakes, these are not likely to be satisfactory substitutes.

No Comments

Posted on

Bujold, Lois McMaster: (116) Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance

Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance is the most recent Vorkosigan book by Lois McMaster Bujold. It’s set between Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn, it alternates between Ivan POV’s and a new character, and it is very, very fluffy.

I wanted to like this, I did, and mostly it was pleasant. There’s a great late set-piece, and some terrific Simon stuff, and Ivan is enjoyable company. But twice I was mentally tapping my fingers, waiting for the plot to happen, for much longer than was optimal, and once I said, “Uh, we’re going to be happy and fluffy about this?” I also continue to side-eye the way that same-sex relationships apparently only exist on Athos in this universe, a pattern that becomes particularly conspicuous in this book. And in the end, it felt like Ivan changed and grew more in A Civil Campaign, where he was one viewpoint character of five, than here, which is nominally “his book.”

I don’t know what Bujold’s plans for this universe are (I don’t know if she knows). But this feels very much like a deliberate wrapping-up—there is, no kidding, an epilogue where the characters read each other letters from all their family members—and I confess to very mixed feelings about this. As I said with regard to Cryoburn, and also in a journal post about my issues with the later Vorkosigan books, Bujold and I are clearly no longer interested in the same things in this universe. And of course that’s her right as an author and my right as a reader, and no blame is implied or should be inferred. But I don’t know what to wish for, that our Vorkosigan-related interests come back into alignment or that she leaves the series as it stands to let me imagine things going more to my taste.

Anyway. If you don’t mind a fluffy leisurely Ivan-centric story, then Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance is probably worth a read. If you were hoping for more than that, you’ll probably be disappointed.

2 Comments

Posted on

Wein, Elizabeth E.: Code Name Verity

Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth E. Wein, is hands-down the most talked about book among my social circle this year. It’s an epistolary novel set in WWII: a young British woman has been caught as a spy in France, and after torture has agreed to write down all she knows about the British war effort. She uses the paper and temporary reprieve to tell the story of how she came to be in France, particularly her friendship with the pilot (also a young woman) who flew her there.

Lots of people have said “don’t find out anything else about the book before you read it, no spoilers!” And some people have said that this emphasis gave them an unfortunate reading experience, because—somewhat perversely, though understandably—it led them to expect something different than what they got. So: this is not a Big Shocking Twist book, that’s not why people are saying “no spoilers!” It is an extremely emotionally tense and suspenseful book, and it’s the resolutions of what’s-going-to-happen?!?!! that would be a shame to spoil, because the tension is so beautifully built and released.

The things I can say: it’s an excellent book and I highly recommend it if you like spies, suspense, flying, historical novels, WWII, first-person narration, and/or awesome women. It’s got lovely complex characterization, down to the minor characters. Its focus on female friendship is sadly rare but all the more welcome for it. It makes excellent use of its chosen narrative device. Though it is obviously about some tough subjects (Nazis and interrogation and torture, oh my!), it is not particularly graphic and manages to not be soul-crushingly depressing—indeed, is often witty along the way (I love the proposition that the unnamed British intelligence officer is Peter Wimsey, by Becca in a post with spoilers for everything).

Seriously: if you regularly read this booklog, our tastes almost certainly overlap enough for you to like this book. Go read it. (If you are buying a paper copy in a bookstore, you’ll have to look in YA.)

(If you buy an ebook: the first half of my U.S. edition contains some underlined text, which is indeed supposed to be underlined. The second half contains some underlined text, which is alas supposed to be struck through (this is reasonably clear from context, but I was glad to confirm it from someone with a paper copy). Also for some reason most if not all of its upper-case “U”s are lower-case. Unfortunate, but still readable.)

4 Comments

Posted on

Byatt, A.S.: Possession

A.S. Byatt’s Possession is kind of ridiculously important to me. I first read it when I was 13 and imprinted upon it, re-reading it multiple times over the next few years, hand-copying quotes into a paper journal, that kind of thing. But the last time I re-read it was in 1998, and so when I discovered recently that it finally had an e-book edition, I decided the time was ripe for a re-read: it had looked different the last time, when I was newly in love, and I thought it would likely look different now, when I’m married and have two kids.

And indeed it does, though I’m pleased to say that by and large it holds up very well. The American characters were never particularly real to me, and they don’t improve upon re-reading: I don’t know what my mental image of Cropper’s looks is, but whenever the narrator describes him I get a visceral jolt of “not like that”; and I have discovered a new and intense loathing of Leonora, which the narrator and indeed the rest of the characters seem not to share.

I’ve also always had a difficulty in maintaining momentum through the abrupt distancing that happens about halfway through (starting with chapter 16, for those of you with the text to hand; I’m going to discuss this more in a spoiler post). I was virtuous and read all the poems, but I would suggest to a first-time reader that unless you particularly enjoy the poetry, the long poems that get a chapter to themselves may reasonably be skipped.

Two other non-spoilers things I can say. I’m not sure I’d registered the narrator before, omniscient yet an individual, who nevertheless scrupulously avoids using “I,” to the best of my recollection (there’s at least one “we,” meaning “you the reader and I the narrator”). Perhaps as a part with that, the narrative strikes me as resolutely non-judgmental, which was something I was interested in this time around.

Possession has always been an odd duck on my lists of favorite or important books, because I very rarely read literary fiction (I think it was the mention of the fairy tales in the post-Booker Prize reviews that got me to pick it up). But even though those lists are extremely out of date, Possession stays on them, because (almost) all the characters feel very real to me, and because I appreciate its exploration of what I will clumsily describe as intellectual engagement and its relationship to autonomy and physical connections. (I assume the comparison to Gaudy Night is old hat by this point.)

Finally, I should note that the text of the e-book edition appears to have been meticulously converted and proofed, though I disagree with some of the layout choices.

A spoiler post follows, in which I gossip shamelessly.

No Comments

Posted on

Pratchett, Terry: (11) Reaper Man

Next in the Discworld re-read, Reaper Man. I have the impression that a lot of people think very highly of this one, but it was never on the list of my favorites and I couldn’t remember why until this re-read: like Becca, I completely forgot that there’s a part of the book that isn’t Death-as-farmhand. And while the plot that starts with the snow globes appearing out of nowhere has some good bits, like this bit of dialogue late:

“Tell me,” Ludmilla whispered to Ridcully, “is this how wizards usually behave?”

“The Senior Wrangler is an amazingly fine example,” said Ridcully. “Got the same urgent grasp of reality as a cardboard cutout. Proud to have him on the team.”

it’s still a really weird fit with the rest of the book. (For the record, though, it is kind of another “invading pop culture” story, as I was asking about last time. And this may be the book that actually breaks the Bursar.) As discussed over in comments to Becca’s post, it mostly feels like trial runs for later Ankh-Morpork stories.

However, the Death bits are really lovely and put this in mid-to-upper Discworld for me. Even if the introduction of the Auditors (who I didn’t remember appearing this early) does include this unfortunate line: “They might be numbered among those who see to it that gravity operates and that time stays separate from space.” Whoops. (And hey, if you want to learn more about why you can’t do both of those at once, Chad’s book on relativity is coming out in a month!)

No Comments

Posted on

Riordan, Rick: Percy Jackson & the Olympians series

Word of mouth is terrific, because I would never otherwise have picked up Rick Riordan’s series Percy Jackson & the Olympians. These are apparently middle-grade books, but are very readable by adults. [*] The premise is that the Greek gods are real, are still around, and have a bunch of kids by mortals, who tend to attract attention of monsters as they get older so are brought to Camp Half-Blood to learn survival skills. Plus the gods get along as well as they ever did, and (of course) there’s a prophecy.

[*] I gather that, marketing-wise, Harry Potter is also middle-grade, and in some ways it’s an inevitable comparison. Both series start fairly light and get quite dark by the end, and both have one-book-per-year structure. However, the Percy Jackson books focus on the summers, not the school years, which makes them a lot tighter; the third also departs from the pattern by taking place in December.

I was warned that the first book, The Lightning Thief, is somewhat weak, which it is, suffering from too-obvious threats and a bit of a tone mismatch, especially at the end. But I could see the seeds of what people recommended it for, the humor (the first chapter is titled “I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher”) and the strong female characters and the start of a clear theme that, for lack of a better way to summarize it, I will call a deliberate rejection of the lone male action hero paradigm. And it was a very fast read and I’d gotten them all from the library, so I kept going.

Things get more complicated with the second, The Sea of Monsters, and the stakes rise with the third, The Titan’s Curse. By the fourth, The Battle of the Labryinth, I’d progressed to “wow, that was good!” in my sketchy notes to myself. I think that one may be my favorite, though the final book (The Last Olympian) is thoroughly satisfying on the whiz-bang and thematic levels.

The books do require a reader be able to roll with the idea that the Greek gods are key to Western civilization and that as a result, the destruction of Mount Olympus (now atop the Empire State Building) is a genuine threat to said civilization. I mean, yes, it does at least limit it to Western, but it’s the kind of thing best not examined too closely—if one can, and if one can’t, that’s perfectly understandable.

With that caveat, however, I had a ton of fun reading these, I suspect they may become comfort reading for me, and I look forward to SteelyKid and the Pip being old enough to read them (which will make three generations of our family to enjoy them; Chad & I gave the set to his dad this Christmas and he just finished the last, which is a near-record pace for him.) If this is the kind of thing that might appeal to you, don’t let the bookstore location or the apparently-dreadful movie adaptation of the first put you off.

5 Comments

Posted on

Kelly, Carla: Admiral’s Penniless Bride, The

The Admiral’s Penniless Bride, by Carla Kelly is a quite enjoyable marriage-of-convenience Regency romance with some unusual touches—well, okay, I haven’t read widely in the genre for quite a few years, so maybe a matter-of-factly disabled male protagonist, Jewish neighbors dealing with anti-Semitism, and a child rescued from what is plainly stated to be sexual abuse are no longer unusual. Until it feels the need to have a plot, which is predictable and unpleasant and unnecessary. If this is your kind of thing, stop reading at, let’s see, halfway through chapter nineteen—you won’t miss a thing. Unfortunately I wish I had, because that sort of plot now leaves a bad taste in my mouth, genre furniture or no.

No Comments