Posts

Posted on

Aaronovitch, Ben: (04) Broken Homes

The urban fantasy book I needed a palate cleanser before reading was Broken Homes, the next book in Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series. It won’t be out in the U.S. until February 2014, but I bought a U.K. edition.

Plot is not the strong point of these, but this one’s seemed a little shaggier to me than usual—slower to develop, only loosely fitting into the shape of the book, and maybe relying a bit much on Peter being an idiot. However, there’s good stuff with the Rivers, and further developments that support my thesis that the long game of the series is magic coming back and coming out, and Peter is always fun to spend time with.

All that said, on the whole I find myself extremely apprehensive over the direction of the series, to the point where I think I will have Chad read the next one first and tell me if I should read it. Fortunately for the rest of you, this reaction is fairly personal, more about my emotional attachments than an objective assessment of quality. Unfortunately for the rest of you, you’ll have to read the book to know what I’m talking about, because there’s really nothing else I can say about it here. Sorry.

No Comments

Posted on

Westlake, Donald E.: (05) Why Me?

After the Dresden Files, I needed a palate cleanser before I went on to another urban fantasy book, so I returned to the world’s slowest Donald E. Westlake Memorial Dortmunder Re-Read. Why Me? is the one where Dortmunder accidentally steals a ruby ring that gets everyone, and I do mean everyone, out for his blood.

This is the book that introduces Stoon—though, as I recall, we never actually meet Stoon, he’s always the hope that falls through and requires Dortmunder to deal with Arnie. It has more slurs than usual thanks to the POV of Chief Inspector Mologna, another to-be-recurring character. It’s also the book with Dortmunder and Kelp’s phone adventures, by which I mean landline because it was written in the early 1980s. Oh, and it has one of the very few queer characters in any Dortmunder book—at least, right now I can’t think of any others—in Mologna’s gay assistant, who is stereotypically flamboyant but (1) highly competent and (2) possibly playing up the swish to get on people’s nerves.

Anyway, great fun, well into the stride of the series, and just what I needed.

No Comments

Posted on

Butcher, Jim: (02-14) Fool Moon through Cold Days

I am skipping past the rest of the Discworld re-read (and a bunch of other things) to get to some books while they are still reasonably fresh. First up is my marathon Dresden Files read: from the second book, Fool Moon, all the way to the most recent, Cold Days.

Some of you are now giving your screens weird looks and asking, “Kate, why on Earth did you read all of these? They are so not your thing.” I know this because Chad did the exact same thing, only in person. All I can say is, beware of reading fanfic for sources you haven’t read/watched! You’d think I’d have known better after I ended up watching all but one episode of Stargate Atlantis, but then I managed to avoid watching any of Merlin and Teen Wolf, so I thought I was safe. . . . until I found myself wanting some context for the stories I was reading, and a lot of my friends read them so I’d be able to participate in those conversations, and they didn’t sound very demanding so they’d probably go fast . . .

Anyway. For a while this worked reasonably well. I was bulling through them at high speed, so I can’t even match events to titles for most of them. I do remember that Fool Moon is pretty bad, with a distinct air of “I have suffered for my research into every single possible kind of werewolf, and now so must you.” But Harry’s horrible “don’t tell women potentially life-saving information because chivalry!” thing does go away pretty early—hilariously, his subconscious literally manifests to yell at him about it—and he does grow up some in other ways, too (I can’t remember which book it is, but there’s a bit where he thinks that once he would have tried to blow a door up, and now he’s going to use magic to remove its hinges). While I was aware that there were some unpleasant things going on, I could mostly skate over them while watching magical pyrotechnics and Harry getting the shit beat out of him and admiring Harry’s friends and acquaintances (who generally deserve a better protagonist than him).

And then Changes happened, and all the things I was skating over and had been glad to leave behind came crashing down, only worse. Women as a fuel for Harry’s manpain; Harry’s impulsiveness and self-destructiveness; and all the Madonna/whore, sex-negative, Puritan rape culture stuff the books have going (Exhibit A: the White Court). Ghost Story was okay, kind of disjointed and rather anti-climatic in some senses, but Cold Days was a ball of do-not-want. It was all the things I did not like about Changes, plus way, way too much of Harry finding it so difficult not to rape and murder all the time—I wanted to reach through the page and say, “Here, have your goddamn cookie, already”—and then an ending that promises even more ickiness in store next time.

So if you’re in the mood for some fast-paced snarky urban fantasy, well, you should read Midnight Riot. But if you must read these, stop with whatever book is before Changes. Me, I will probably rely on other people’s reports to see what happens; I suppose it’s possible Butcher might get out of the current situation in some interesting way, but then again, the endgame of the series is apparently “a 3-book apocalyptic trilogy”, and I’m not sure I want to see Harry in an apocalypse. On the other hand, I’d originally misread that as post-apocalyptic, which I definitely do not want, so it could be worse.

No Comments

Posted on

Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird

I re-read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird late last year, because I’d agreed to beta-read a Yuletide fanfic story based on it. I ended up more cheerleading the resulting story than anything, but I was glad of the opportunity to revisit a book I’d not read since high school.

It’s an incredibly tense book and the narrative voice is great. I had completely failed to remember (or, more likely, recognize) how central is Scout’s changing conceptions of femininity and relationships with women. I had also failed to recognize, because I neither had the tools to do so nor was given them in school, the way that its portrayal of racism is incredibly limited and, as a result, misleading and harmful.

Which is half of the reason I’m writing about it tonight, here past midnight when I should be asleep. The other half is that despite knowing what happens, somehow I got hopeful at a certain point in the book as I was swept along, and it was like running into a brick wall when my hopes were dashed. And I think the truest demonstration of Mockingbird‘s limitations is that I feel the same kind of crushing sadness in response to today’s news (well, yesterday’s, now) as I did in reading the book. Only, of course, much worse.

Nb.: I do not have the emotional resources to engage in education in the comments; please consult your search engine of choice if you feel the need.

No Comments

Posted on

Pratchett, Terry: (25-30) The Truth through The Wee Free Men (re-reads)

Next up in the Discworld re-read, some short comments about books that already have their own entries.

The Truth: I really like the Ankh-Morpork books about industrialization. I find William and Sacharissa entirely pro forma as a romance but I like them and their changes a lot as individuals. And I find the New Firm kind of boring but I like the point made about them in Becca’s booklog post (spoilers).

Thief of Time: Pretty much exactly what Becca says (spoilers), with a side of Mrs War/War being another example of the tedious, loathsome “henpecked husband” pattern.

The Last Hero: I can’t believe I didn’t realize earlier that it’s about fake London having to rescue fake China from its own emperor. Ugh. Anyway: I find myself sympathizing with Vetinari when he says that civilization has no room for “heroes” like Cohen and that’s a good thing, and when I find myself sympathizing with Vetinari I start to wonder if that’s not a sign of something horribly wrong all by itself. (The way that the books have shifted their portrayal of Vetinari is really remarkable, not in a good way, when you think about it.) Anyway, for all the good things about this book, the lovely little details and character interactions, I am always suspicious of nostalgia, so it doesn’t read as well to me now.

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents: I find Maurice’s harping on not eating talking creatures rather tiresome this time around since it’s blazing obvious from the first mention what happened. And Malicia is notably awful. Otherwise my reaction to this is about the same as last time.

Night Watch: I hadn’t registered before the extent to which this book takes as axiomatic that productive change can come neither from the masses nor the elites, which is really weird and unpleasant. Apparently the joke in early books about Vetinari’s one-man one-vote system (he was the man, he had the vote) really is optimal for Ankh-Morpork. Hoping that you end up with a benevolent and competent dictator because that’s the only way that progress will happen . . . well, I disagree, and let’s leave it at that.

Also, Ned gets seriously short-changed, and it’s nice to meet Vetinari’s aunt.

The Wee Free Men: I still like this a lot for the Tiffany-Granny Aching relationship, which grounds what is surreal even for a Discworld book.

No Comments

Posted on

Pratchett, Terry: (23) Carpe Jugulum (re-read)

I am seeing how many airport-drafted Discworld re-read entries I can put up before my panel on Discworld and gender in twenty-five minutes!

I picked up the Discworld re-read with Carpe Jugulum, which is actually skipping two books. I feel a little bad about skipping Jingo, but I did re-read it relatively recently and I just couldn’t face it being anvilicious about nationalism. Also it seemed to be less relevant to the gender panel.

(I also skipped The Last Continent, but I feel no guilt about that.)

So, Carpe Jugulum. This time around I think I might actually like it better than Lords and Ladies, which feels like heresy, but the subject matter is of more interest to me than the Shakespeare subplot in L&L, and I really love the way the witches refuse to be shoehorned into roles and Oats and all the Crowning Moments of Awesome. I’ve tended to think of this as the weaker shadow of L&L, and maybe objectively that is the case, but I just enjoyed it more.

(However, unless you have seen it done, I would not recommend following Magrat’s example and carrying a 14-day-old baby on your back. I am sure there are cultures where this is commonplace and that have devised ways to do it safely, but me, I’d want that young a baby on my front where I can see what their floppy little neck and great big head are doing.)

No Comments

Posted on

Pratchett, Terry: (18-20) Maskerade, Feet of Clay, Hogfather (re-read)

Blowing through writing up a few more Discworld re-reads before turning to other tasks. Speaking of skippable books, as I just was with regard to Soul Music, I allowed myself to skip Interesting Times on the re-read because, seriously, a whole book of “what this empire needs is a honky”? No thank you.

So next up is Maskerade, which despite being another parody story, this time of Phantom of the Opera, feels much more accessible to me than Soul Music. It could just be that I like the witches better, of course. From a gender perspective (I’m speeding up the re-read now because I’m tentatively slated to moderate a WisCon panel on Discworld & gender), this book is interesting because it is much more scathing about society’s conventions when it comes to attractiveness than at least one later book (Unseen Academicals, which is oddly noncritical about the nascent fashion industry, as I recall). Though I’m not sure the series overall doesn’t somewhat fall prey to what it criticizes; see Becca’s spoilery post for what I mean.

Then there’s Feet of Clay, which I do like for its riffs on the mystery genre (though I don’t understand how the political stuff doesn’t founder on, or even care about, the fact that out-of-wedlock children do not normally inherit titles . . . ). For future-panel purposes, this is the start of the book’s examination of gender and Tolkien-esque dwarves (whose sexes are visually indistinguishable), which gets problematic later but which works well here.

Last for this entry is Hogfather, which is very hard to read when it’s spring. Otherwise the only additional thing I have to say about it is something that never occurred to me to wonder: who is ruling Sto Helit? Susan was 16 when we first met her, so obviously she’s not old enough; possibly that might be true even here, where she’s a governess, but still she’s acknowledged to be Duchess of Sto Helit, something that will drop out completely by the time she’s teaching in Thief of Time, when surely she must be of age. (In the book before that, someone refers to a Duke of Sto Helit, but that might just be an error.)

No Comments

Posted on

Pratchett, Terry: (16) Soul Music

Back to the Discworld re-read with a book that didn’t have its own entry yet: Soul Music. I’d remembered this one as not working very well for me because it’s a very specific parody of something I don’t have strong feelings about, early rock & roll.

This may be why it seems to have no momentum whatsoever to me. It also seems to be lacking a protagonist: Buddy is a blank, there’s not enough Susan, and Death buggers off for most of it. But, basically, I can’t make myself care except anything except trying to figure out when Susan was orphaned (the way the book describes it is very nonspecific; people on the Internet seem to have concluded that it was right before the plot starts, but it doesn’t feel like that to me, though it might be I was reading inattentively because of my overall failure to give a damn).

I think the most telling thing I can say is that I read this in the last three months and in that short time I’ve already forgotten how the plot resolves. It has minimal impact on later Discworld continuity, so unless early rock & roll is your thing, I’d say it’s very skippable.

No Comments