Reading Log, 2007

[niko]

Just a quick memory entry with the goal of doing a more thorough "Recently Read" log for 2007 with a brief reaction for everything I read, instead of trying to do a lengthier review for everything and failing. :)

December, 2007
Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey
Novel designed to reboot the "Thieve's World" franchise.  It's been a long time since I read the Thieve's World books, and I was pretty tired of them by the time the series ended... but I quite enjoyed this chance to revisit Sanctuary, and I'm sorry to see that the new anthologies seem to have died again after two books.  Abbey moves the universe ahead by several decades, and much of this book is devoted to filling in the gaps between the timelines.  There are plenty of references to many of Sanctuary's most famous denizens  (Illyria, Tempus, Ischade, Hakiem) but all of them are past-tense as a dying Molin Torchholder looks back on how Sanctuary got where it is in the "present".  Since I was never super-fond of any of these characters,  I found this to be just the right touch of nostalgia, but what caught my interest was the present-tense story of a young stonemason named Cauvin who Molin chooses as his successor in guiding the city back to better times.  I'd have liked to see more of Cauvin's story, and wish Lynn Abbey had just stuck to writing standalone books for the series instead of trying to reboot the franchise...

Orvis - H.M. Hoover
Quick intermediate-level sci-fi read.  Nothing exceptional, but a nice palate-cleanser between longer reads.

November, 2007
Phantastes - George MacDonald
Read this because MacDonald is one of those authors who people point to as pre-Tolkien fantasy-authors of note (plus I've always adored his children's stories... especially The Light Princess.)  This one was a bit of a slog.  The "plot" is basically an extended travelogue of one man's journeys through faerie-land.  There are a few intertwined events that provide a throughline, but the bulk of the book is a series of fairly standalone encounters with odd and fantastical people, places, and things.  The scope of imagination at play here is exceptional, but the actual narrative is too blah to really give it much oomph.  The edition I have comes with a forward from C.S. Lewis where he comments much the same thing, so I don't think it's just me judging an old work by modern standards...

The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold
What a breath of fresh air after struggling through the Anne Bishop book.  It was obvious within the first two paragraphs that this was going to be a major improvement, and this definitely goes on the short-list of "quality fantasy" that should be required reading for fantasy readers.

Daughter of the Blood - Anne Bishop  (Quit after 100 pages)
Ugh.  There are only a handful of books that I've ever stopped reading halfway through, and there's usually at least a little guilt involved when I do.  Not this time.  I knew going in that this series had some distasteful sexual content, but was struck by how completely gratuitous it all felt.  I could probably have gotten past that, but there wasn't a shred of anything *else* to keep my interest, either.  Clunky, paint-by-numbers world-building provided in big ol' infodumps, characters who seemed more like goth set-dressing than real people, and a heroine who treads painfully close to Mary Sue-ism  (most-powerful-witch-ever-seen, whole point of the story revolves around her, "good" guys are people who like her and want to protect her, "bad" guys are mustache-twirling eeeeeevol baddies who want to destroy her.)  Just... ugh.

Manga:  Mushishi #1 - I think I'm going to hold off on other volumes of this manga until after watching the anime.  I think the material is going to appeal to me more in anime-ted form.

October, 2007
Daedalus - Dave Stern  (Enterprise tie-in)
I picked this up because I adore Trip Tucker and I'd heard this story featured him.  I liked it enough that I'm planning to pick up the sequel, as this pretty much ends on a cliffhanger.  Story-wise, it's a straightforward "coulda-been-an-episode" story.  Enterprise doesn't have the strong character voices that really get me jazzed about, for example, some of the Stargate tie-in's I've read, but it's an enjoyable read, anyway.

Harrowing the Dragon - Patricia McKillip
Beautiful work.  This is a collection of short stories, and McKillip's fairy-tale-like qualities really shine through in a shorter format. 

Storm Front (Dresden Files #1) - Jim Butcher
All the hype over at ExIsle for this series (and the TV series) convinced me to give it a try.  It's an enjoyable enough light read in a pulpy adventure sort of way, but I'm not chomping at the bit for more.  I may pick up other volumes eventually, but it will be as the whim strikes, not a concerted effort to get through them all. 

The Winter Prince - Elizabeth Wein
Another reread.  This one has stood the test of time much better than Brokedown Palace.  Wonderful twist on Mordred, and a definite keeper.  Hits all my squishy-angsty-hurt/comforty buttons, and is a solid story in its own right as well.

September, 2007
Brokedown Palace - Steven Brust
A reread.  I'd remembered *loving* the atmosphere of this book, and I've always counted it as among my favorite "one-volume" fantasies... but it didn't really grab me as well this time through.  It's not on the list of favorites anymore.

Daughter of Ancients - Carol Berg
Excellent conclusion of the series.  Berg continues to appeal to me with her strong-yet-flawed characters.

August, 2007
Firebirds Rising - Sharyn November (ed.)
Second in what I hope to be a long-lived series.  The Firebird imprint has been doing stellar work at releasing (and re-releasing) YA genre books, and Ms. November has expanded that mandate to this collection of shorter works from well-known fantasy authors like Charles deLint, Patricia McKillip, etc.  The stories are all very clearly targetted to a YA demographic (lots of coming-of-age type issues explored), but their all very well-written and enjoyable.  My favorite was probably "Hives" - a sci-fi story that builds a scarily plausible future tech out of our modern-day concepts of "friends"-circles and instant messaging.

D.A. - Connie Willis
I'd love to know what the rationale for publishing this under a separate cover was.  I'm not even sure it's long enough to count as a novella.  Interestingly enough, my next read is Firebirds Rising, a collection of young adult-targeted SF/F short stories, and this would have fit comfortably alongside the other works in that book, both in length and thematic content.  It was a pleasant enough read from that angle, but disappointing, since I thought I was ordering a long-awaited Connie Willis full-length novel.

The Gate of the Gods - Martha Wells
Just awesome.  I suspect that the plot isn't... dense? ...enough for this trilogy to really be as amazing on an objective level as it is to me on a subjective level... but that's the great thing about subjectivity. ^_^  As a person prone to fannish obsession, Ile-Rien and every character therein just jumped off the page and made me fall in love.  She pushes a lot of fanfic-style buttons with the characters.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
I've never been as much into Potter-mania as the rest of the world, so I didn't have any huge expectations for this book.  It was satisfying enough.  I enjoyed reading it, and it felt climactic enough to do justice to the series.  I'm sure I could quibble, and I do feel a bit bitter that my one pet theory that I thought was a shoo-in didn't come to pass, but there's nothing egregiously wrong, so I'm content.

Last Chance to See - Douglas Adams
Adams' non-fiction book about his travels to visit some of the most endandered species on the planet.  So sad, considering how downhill a couple of the animals have gone since he visited them.

The End of All Roads - Chaz Brenchley 
Conclusion to the series.  The plot to defeat the evil things wrapped up nicely, but I'm not pleased with how he dealt with the two love triangles he had set up.  One of them was an utter cop out, and the other was just glossed over a bit too much for my tastes.  Overall, I'd probably recommend this series, though, and I'm looking forward to digging into the new one he's got coming out.

Nine Layers of Sky - Liz Williams
Picked this up as a conscious departure from my usual fantasy read, but this one fell a little flat for me.  The setting for most of the book (post-USSR Central Asia) was lovingly portrayed, but the plot never really developed any momentum... just sort of meandered around.  Fantasies set in the real-world are a tough sell for me at the best of times, and this one didn't achieve anything special.

Manga:  Death Note 9-12  (Finished this series up.  Satisfying conclusion, and I actually ended up enjoying the latter half of the series quite a lot.  I'm thrilled to see that there's a fair bit of MattXMello fandom out there, and I absolutely adore Matsuda.  I was really glad he got to have a bit of a hero moment at the end.  I think I've heard that the anime and live action movies have different endings, so I'm looking forward to checking out different approaches.)

July, 2007
Entanglement - Martha Wells    (Stargate: Atlantis tie-in)
The plot is a fairly standard "coulda-been-an-episode" tie-in, but as with the first one, it's awesome for the way the characters are so spot-on perfect, capturing exactly the flow of interactions that draws me to the show... not just in individual highlight moments, but all the way through.  She adds Ronan to the mix this time around, setting it at a time where he's still very new to working as part of a team, and that adds some nice undercurrents of a different viewpoint to the group. 

The False House - James Stoddard
I was only so-so on the first book, but enjoyed this one much more... maybe just because I knew what to expect with this one.  Stoddard's prose is a bit on the formal side, which makes for a tougher read for me.  This time around, though, I really did care about the world of the house and the people in it, so it works out all right. :)

The Kestrel - Lloyd Alexander
Another good chapter in Theo's story, again with the enjoyably more adult tones.  I found this one felt rather abridged, as it did a lot of jumping around to the different viewpoint characters.  It was enough to give us the highlights of the war (and, more importantly, Theo's journey) but I find myself wishing that it could've been expanded to an adult-novel length.  Too slim for the extent of the story.

June, 2007
Last Light of the Sun - Guy Gavriel Kay
An interesting work.  The characters and backstory and setting are among my favorites that Kay's ever written (trying to write something more formal and meta-ish on what these characters did to me) and I would happily have spent many hundreds more pages in this world, with these people, but the plot itself is surprisingly slight.  It seems like there were only three actual significant plot points in the whole book, with the rest of the events just sort of jockeying around those big moments.  In the long run, it's going to rank as one of my favorites because you give me characters like Alun and Athelbert, and I am pretty much your slave for life.  But I can definitely see why it hasn't been as successful with the general public.

Hand of the King's Evil - Chaz Brenchley 
Another book where the way they divided three books into six is very visible, but a decent enough division of storyline.  Interesting that he's brought back several characters that we haven't seen for quite a while, and I'm a bit nervous about how he's going to wrap up the two big romantic triangles along with everything else in such a short final volume...

No Traveller Returns - James Wallerstein
Picked this up for a  Fic_On_Demand request that looked interesting.  Still trying to come up with something for the fic request, but it was an enjoyable read.  Mainly a young adult book about a group of boys getting sent to another world and dealing with dangers there.  Great for fans of male-bonding and teamwork stories.

Manga:  Here is Greenwood 8 & 9, Death Note 8


May, 2007
First Rider's Call - Kristen Britain
This was a serviceable enough fantasy, but nothing overwhelmingly wonderful.  I enjoyed this more than the first book, and if she ever writes a third, I'll probably pick it up.    (Edit:  A third book came out in November, but in hardcover.  This is definitely not a "buy it in hardcover" series for me, so I'll be waiting.)

Manga:  Hikaru no Go 5

 April, 2007
Class Dis-Mythed - Robert Asprin
This series is such absolute comfort food.  Nothing really fancy, and definitely not the most challenging or thought-provoking material, but you know what you're going to get.  The comedy is light enough to avoid getting too annoying, and there's a lot of heart to the characters, especially Skeeve, that makes the books very familiar and cozy. :)

Twelve Kingdoms, Vol. 1 - Fuyumi Ono
Hmmmm...  The first several volumes of the anime for this annoyed the crap out of me with how whiny and pathetic the main character was in the face of adversity, and I see now where the anime got that approach.  I can kinda see what she was going for, but the book was just so unrelenting in putting our heroine through hell and having her deal with it poorly.  As in the anime, once Rakushun shows up and she starts to get her feet under her (way too close to the end) things do get better.  The big surprise for the book is the lack of two fairly important characters in the anime.  I wonder if they show up later, or were anime-only?

Katherine Kurtz - King Javan's Year
I'm happy to have finally read this.  Good read, and it added some characters to the Deryni universe that I liked a lot (although they don't survive the book  :(  ).  I did end up kinda skimming the last 70 pages or so.  Deryni-fen know going into this book what the ultimate result for Javan must be, and once it got to a point where it was clear how Javan's plans would go awry and that there wouldn't be room for any last minute twists, I hit a point where I just didn't want to draw things out any longer.  (Low tragedy tolerance this month, I guess.)  I'll probably go back and read those final pages more carefully before I put the book back on the shelf, though.  (Aside:  This was my second slashy book in one month (although this one's purely subtext).  I wonder why I've never seen any Deryni slash.  With the great male-relationships in her books, I'd expect them to be an obvious target.)

Isobelle Carmody - Obernewtyn
Hey! Finally an Aussie import that I enjoyed!  Excellent YA post-apocalyptic story with a very likeable, down-to-earth heroine despite her being a "destined" child who is more super-special than all the other special psychics around.

Catherine Cooke - Realm of the Gods
Enjoyable read with a nice slashy element.  I'm not sure how I feel about the direction the series seems to be headed leading into the next book, but I do *adore* the way she's set up her hero to be torn between so many conflicting alleigances - the goddess who created him to be her sacrifice, the emperor he was raised to serve, and the prince he is sent to assassinate, but who he grows to love.

Manga:  Basara 6-7, One Piece 14, Hikaru no Go 2-4

March, 2007
Karen Miller - Alliances  (Stargate: SG-1 tie-in)
Only so-so.  Was really enchanted by the concept of a follow-up to the Eurondan incident, and she had some nice ideas here, but the overall execution seemed too talkie.  Too many earnest heart-to-hearts about how everyone (especially Jack) feels about what happened.  The real plot doesn't kick in seriously until nearly the halfway mark.  Once it does, the storyline is a fairly enjoyable coulda-been-an-episode adventure.

H.M. Hoover - Another Heaven, Another Earth
Revisiting an old favorite author of mine from grade-school years, although I don't think I actually read *this* book back then.  Kind of a compressed environmental-message story about an advanced society finding a lost colony that has gone native and the clash of cultures between a typical sterile, technology-driven future Earth and the nature-loving natives.  Sets up a nice moral conflict that I'd love to see a classroom's reaction to, although the ending kinda cops out and solves everything off-screen.

Tim Powers - The Anubis Gates
Hard to believe this has been around for so long and I'd never encountered either the book or the author before.  Very much up my alley.  I love stories like this where story elements are introduced out-of-context early on and then they all start to fall into place.  Very comfortable read, with natural language, likeable characters, some really well-done humor added to what is mainly a time travel adventure story.  Kind of a cross between "The Doomsday Book" and "Death of the Necromancer".

Ian MacLeod - The Light Ages
An excellent "steampunk"-ish alternate version of Industrial Age England in which a magical substance, "aether", has replaced coal and other industrial necessities, but leaving the overall situation for the common man the same.  Does an excellent job with world-building, really evoking the sense of time and place as the main character experiences life in various classes - from the oppressive, rigid life in a coal-mining town to fomenting rebellion as a columnist for an incendiary newsletter to life among the Belle Epoque upper classes.  The story itself isn't as strong as the setting and language that support it, but it was a worthwhile read.

Lloyd Alexander - Westmark  (reread)
Great story and Alexander does a more "grown-up" take on fantasy very well.  What really strikes me is the way Theo is immediately so firm in his own opposition to killing.  You don't often see a book where you have the plot evolving out of a strong moral center, and I'm looking forward to getting back to the rest of the volumes.

Manga:  One Piece 8-13

February, 2007
Greg Keyes - The Charnel Prince
Still love his characters and world-building, but I was getting a bit sick of the GRRM-style cliffhangers ending every chapter.  Use of multiple languages in his world is a nice twist, but was a bit overdone in this volume.

Phyllis Ann Karr - Idylls of the Queen
Enjoyed this a *ton*.  I loved the use of Arthurian myths without it being about *Arthur*.  The focus on Mordred, Gawain, and the other sons of Lot was a nice change of pace, and by making Kay and Mordred the main characters, the snark factor gave the book an extra boost of "Yay!"

Martha Wells - Reliquary   (Stargate: Atlantis tie-in)
Excellent book.  Fit seemlessly into the series continuity and had a remarkable handle on what makes the characters tick.  She doesn't just get the obvious mannerisms (McKay's snark, John's laconic sarcasm, etc.) but the underlying personalities and relationships, too.  The story is solidly plot-driven, but there are more than enough little asides and moments to make a character-driven girl like myself giddy. :)

Manga: One Piece 5-7

January, 2007
Michelle West - The Broken Crown
Difficult read.  Settings focusing on extremely rigid rules of social conduct don't appeal to me.  Not a total wash, though.

Douglas Adams - The Salmon of Doubt
Poignant, but enjoyable.  Had to laugh at a mid-90's essay discussing the internet as this boundless paradise where mankind could exchange ideas free of the deluge of advertising swamping every other medium.  How times change.