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Pratchett, Terry: Bromeliad, The (Truckers, Diggers, Wings) (audio)

I listened to Terry Prachett’s Bromeliad (Truckers, Diggers, Wings) recently. As I said last time I read it, I really like these books. I’d forgotten, until listening, just how broad the problems faced by the nomes are, principally how to respond when the factual underpinnings of your religion are removed and how to establish a society. There’s a lot at stake here, as much or more as in any given Discworld novel. (Speaking of Discworld: those allergic to the humor in that series have sometimes liked Pratchett’s non-Discworld YAs, this series and the Johnny books (Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead, Johnny and the Bomb). Both are now in print in the U.S.)

The other thing of note to me about listening to the audiobooks: Bromeliad has four syllables, not three as I’d guessed. I suppose next time I should really learn to look these things up . . .

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Yoshinaga, Fumi: Antique Bakery

The four-volume manga Antique Bakery, by Fumi Yoshinaga, is not the kind of thing I usually read, because by Western genre standards, it’s mainstream: four guys running a bakery and living their lives. (By Japanese genre standards, it’s shojo (aimed at female teenagers), though apparently its U.S. publisher is strongly associated with a different genre and markets it as such.) However, I saw the first volume in our local library and remembered that Micole had spoken well of it, so decided to give it a try.

I quite enjoyed this. It got over my mainstream aversion by being a how-things-work story, where the “thing” is a successful patisserie. There is a lot of loving detail about baking, and building up a business, and did I mention baking? Fair warning: this is a bad thing to read when one is either hungry or has been unable to eat chocolate for several months. (I miss chocolate.)

Anyway, four guys working in a patisserie. They’re all more complicated than they appear at first—not with Saiyuki-grade angst, but with pleasing amounts of depth. There is something like a plot, too, in among the side stories about the customers, which to my appreciation was not as neat and tidy as it could have been. I like the way the story keeps reaching back to prior events, expanding the reader’s understanding and moving the characters forward each time, through to the end. It’s quietly humane, often funny, and on the whole was a not-too-fluffy, not-too-heavy way to spend a couple of afternoons.

The art is clean and fairly spare when it comes to the characters, but detailed and as mouth-watering as black and white can be when it comes to the food. (The dust jackets are scratch-and-sniff, which I thought was just weird.) The page layouts are generally uncomplicated, andI found the overall effect was of lightness. My only complaint is that flashbacks were often not visually signaled, causing me to be briefly confused on several occasions, particularly in the third volume.

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Willingham, Bill: (08) Fables: Wolves

The best thing I can say about Wolves, volume eight of Fables, is that it saved me a lot of money: it made me sufficiently cranky that I now have no desire to buy the series. (This volume, like prior volumes, I got from my local library.)

This contains a two-issue arc, “Wolves,” in which Bigby is found again; an extra-long single issue, “Happily Ever After” (#50); and a regular-length issue on a plot tangent to the prior two, “Big and Small.” As the first two titles suggest, this wraps up the Snow/Bigby arc. Unfortunately, I found everything Snow/Bigby in this volume offensively sexist—the more so because much of it felt out of character, as though the author were forcing the story to fit his own prejudices. (His comments in the script for issue 50, included in the trade paperback, doesn’t help. “This is the one panel at which the dream of every female reader of FABLES has come true,” my ass.)

Oh, and this volume also contains an explicit identification of Fabletown with Israel, which I could have done without (and which makes the stereotyped treatment of the Arabian Fables even more unpleasant).

I’ll keep reading, because I expect plotty things in the next volume, and the one after that (currently in progress) is about the Frog Prince; but Willingham will get no money from me.

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O’Brian, Patrick: (14) The Nutmeg of Consolation (audio)

Patrick O’Brian’s The Nutmeg of Consolation was remarkably exciting and enjoyable until the ending, which annoyed me so much that I put off logging it for quite a while. It does resolve the prior book’s staggering cliffhanger very satisfactorily, and has some great sea scenes, and some interesting new characters; but that ending vexes me extremely. (See the following spoiler post for details.)

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O’Brian, Patrick: (13) The Thirteen Gun Salute (audio)

The Thirteen Gun Salute, the thirteenth book in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series, is not quite as stunning as The Letter of Marque, but its staggering cliffhanger of an ending will make up for quite a lot. You’ll want the next one on hand.

This book is divided into two parts, and events from the first part are of a type with other and more significant things that happen in the second (though the two sets are only connected by theme, and don’t necessarily have the same results). For whatever it’s worth, my mental picture of the structure is something like o O! (the exclamation mark is the cliffhanger). When I realized this, it helped me understand, in retrospect, the shift in plot that happens roughly a third of the way in.

The other non-spoilery thing of note is the remarkably sharp contrast between animal and human societies, for lack of a better word. I don’t think the book draws explicit conclusions or morals, but this is the first time I’ve noticed such a close juxtaposition, which makes me wonder if there is A Message.

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Wrede, Patricia C.: Enchanted Forest Chronicles, The (audio)

I listened to Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons, and Talking to Dragons) as full-cast audio productions. Unfortunately there were some casting choices I strongly disagreed with, so while I hope they won’t become my defaults for the characters. (The worst two were Kazul in Dealing, which of course is when she’s most present, and Telemain throughout, which made him sound about twelve.) And Shiara (of Talking) is incredibly annoying out loud. I also thought the pacing of the production was a little too fast in Dealing.

Listening also really underscores the very odd relationship of Talking to the rest of the series—Talking was published first, and the other three are prequels, but any way you read them, it’s weird. (However, I think this is one case where I would not recommend publication order over internal chronology.)

These are still a lot of fun, though, and those fond of revisionist fairy tales (subtype YA and gently humorous) should check them out.

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Pratchett, Terry: (24) The Fifth Elephant (audio)

The transformation of Carrot is complete in The Fifth Elephant, which is the fifth of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books to feature him and the rest of the City Watch. Not only is he possibly—but not certainly—unnaturally good, but he doesn’t do anything goofy or clearly incompetent, either. It’s quite the odd character arc, and I continue to wonder what Pratchett has in mind for him. (I can see a couple of possibilities for Granny Weatherwax, the other character that Pratchett seems to have maxed out, as it were; but neither of the obvious paths for Carrot feel right.)

Instead of Carrot, this is a book about the rest of the Watch: mostly Vimes, but Angua, Cheery, and Fred all have important sub-arcs. (Fred’s feels somewhat awkwardly over-the-top comic relief when compared to the others, but it’s hard to see what else could be done with that setup.) This trend in the Watch books could almost be plotted on a graph: as the proportion of Carrot in a book goes down, the proportion of Vimes goes up, reaching its culmination in the next book, Night Watch, which takes place almost entirely before Carrot was born. From the point of view of a re-read, I’m not sure how much new or different there is about Vimes in this book; but, on the other hand, that doesn’t seem to bother me in either the City Watch or the Lancre Witches books.

Two other things that struck me about this book. First, it’s very much a prequel to Thud!, as it starts the in-depth exploration of dwarf culture. Second, I have no idea why I remembered the three sisters when I’d forgotten everything else about the book but “werewolves,” because they have a really small role in the book. Perhaps it’s just that “the gloomy and purposeless trousers of Uncle Vanya” is such a wonderful phrase.

(Stephen Briggs does a good job reading the audiobook, as always, and his voice for Vimes sounds right to me (unlike Nigel Planer’s, which set my teeth on edge).)

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Carey, Mike: The Sandman Presents: The Furies

I picked up Mike Carey’s The Sandman Presents: The Furies not out of any strong desire to find out what happened to Lyta Hall after Sandman, but because I like to encourage our library system to get graphic novels and various people think highly of Carey’s other Sandman spinoff, Lucifer. (I read the first volume, liked it, and decided to wait on the rest until the trade paperbacks were all out. They are now, but I just haven’t got around to it.)

This is a very peculiar story. Lyta Hall, who went batshit crazy during Sandman, is still far from well. More Greek mythology is about to complicate her life in the form of Cronus, youngest of the Titans. And there aren’t any page numbers in the volume and I’m not about to count them, but it’s all wrapped up in a fairly slim volume.

As that might suggest, the story’s climax didn’t resonate with me emotionally. I felt Lyta’s emotional journey was given short shrift, which was compounded by my lack of interest in Cronus and, accordingly, the external plot. At any rate, a harmless enough volume, but nothing to seek out unless you’re a completist.

The art, by John Bolton, is in a style that the cover copy calls “groundbreaking” and “painterly”; to me it looks like photographs have been heavily airbrushed. I actually find it more distracting, in its not-quite realism, than more stylized work. But then, I’m apparently one of the few people on the planet who liked Marc Hempel’s art in The Kindly Ones, so take that for what it’s worth.

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