Reading Log, 2008

[niko]

December, 2008
I Am America (And So Can You) - Stephen Colbert
Just a final laugh for year's end.  :)

Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede
Another light, quick read before year's end.  I adored Patricia Wrede's books when I was in my formative years of fantasy reading, but I don't think I'll bother with the sequel to this one.  The characters and situations didn't grab me.

Without You - Anthony Rapp
I don't often read memoirs (or much nonfiction at all, truthfully) so I don't have much frame of reference to judge.  It was a fairly quick read, at any rate, which means that it kept me interested and turning pages into the night.

Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
I hit my limit with this book around page 300, but stuck it out for another 50 pages, but it's just not worth it to finish.  I was mostly amused by the ridiculously over-the-top Mary Sue-ness, but once the main character and vampire hook up and the book became hundreds of pages of the two of them fawning all over each other with nary a plot-point in sight, it became unbearable.  I think my breaking point was the revelation that Meyer's vampires can't go in the sun because they're... sparkly!  My. Gawd.

Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
When I read Mieville's The Scar a few years ago, it kinda rocked my world.  There was something so visceral and vivid about his writing...  It took me back to fifth grade when I was such a voracious reader that the rest of the world completely disappeared when I had a book in my hands.   I knew Perdido wouldn't be quite that awesome for me, despite its reputation.  It's much more solidly in "urban fantasy" territory than The Scar, and I don't usually respond well to urban fantasy.  Every review or comment I've ever seen about Perdido focused almost entirely on how remarkable an invention the city of New Crobuzon itself was, which is not the sort of thing I respond to in reading, so I knew I wasn't going to be falling all over myself in love with the book.

That being said - it *is* quite a good read.  It didn't bowl me over with awe, and some plot-twists felt a bit more disjointed or deus-ex-machina-y than I expected from such a well-regarded book, but I did enjoy it wholeheartedly. 

November, 2008
Queen of Sorcery - David Eddings
Continuing my re-read of an old favorite series.  Not much to say - it's the bubblegum-pop of fantasy lit, but it's still fun to read.

October, 2008
The Darkness That Comes Before - R. Scott Bakker
Oi vey.  I'm not sure where to start on this one.  I purchased this book because it's one of those series that became something of an instant classic among fantasy readers.  It pops up in every recommendation thread on the fantasy boards I frequent, and is spoken about as if its greatness is a given.  In my humble opinion:  Not so much.  I guess I can see why it would appeal to some - it could fit fairly well into the "gritty" fantasy mold alongside Erikson and others, but there's a bit of a professorial bent to it that gives it a weightier heft than your average coattails-hopper.  Unfortunately, that aspect also made me feel like I was reading fantasy by way of a college textbook.  The book never became anything more than an intellectual exercise for me.  I never crossed that boundary between reading words on a page and being in the moment.  The characters were fleshed out well enough, but they never stepped off the page and made me *care* about what was happening to them and their world.  In some ways, I worry that maybe I'm being shallow in this.  Bakker's world here is quite an ugly, oppressive one, his characters are all rather drab and downtrodden, and I wonder if I'm not falling into some sort of stereotypical fantasy reader bias.  I don't think there's a light-hearted moment in the whole book, and I do like me a bit of witty banter from time to time, after all.  I don't *think* that issue invalidates my dislike of the book, but I can't be sure I guess.

Anyway, my second point of issue with the book was the handling of female characters.  There are two significant female viewpoint characters in the book, and both of them are primarily identified as sex-objects being victimized by men - one is an aging prostitute, the other a former court lady enslaved by a "noble savage" sort of barbarian and kept alive for sex.  I don't consider myself a prude or one of those feminists who get riled over Supernatural's treatment of women or anything, and I'm sure the point of the story is going to at some point have these women find their own footing, but this was blatant enough to make my skin crawl a bit.

Long story short: I don't anticipate continuing on to the second book in this series.

Swordspoint - Ellen Kushner
I enjoyed this a lot as I was reading, but now that it's over, the whole thing feels like it needed a bit more... one more plot twist or something to give it a final bit of oomph.  That being said, I love what's there.  Snarky, slashy, somewhat insane boys are always fun.  These two appeal to me in much the way the Weiss boys do... they're tied up in rather serious adult stuff, but there's a sense that there's still a bit of the boy to them - the unthinking confidence that pulls at both the girlish crush and the motherly urge to give them a shake and tell them to be more careful.   Not sure if that makes sense.  Alors.

September, 2008
King Kelson's Bride - Katherine Kurtz
It's taken me a long time to be able to read this book.  I had a huge infatuation with Sean Lord Derry growing up, to the extent that I've been sort of bitter for the last 20 years that he was barely mentioned in the second Kelson series... and when this book came out, I did enough research to realize that Derry got the shaft in other ways in this book, and couldn't summon any enthusiasm for it.  I've let go of some of that angst, though, and was able to enjoy this book quite a lot for what it is... which is more of a "Book 4" of the Kelson series than an actual standalone.  Everything that happens in this book is driven by the need to tie up a loose-end from earlier series: Gwynedd's relationship with Torenth after Wencit's defeat,  the Mearan conflict that was left up in the air after Sidana's murder, Kelson's relationship with Rothana, Nigel and Rothana's angst over Conall's treason, Jehana's conflictedness about Deryni, and yes, Kelson's need for a Bride - all get sorted to a happy ending.  Readers who aren't familiar with the backstory for the above issues will likely be rather bored, as there's not a whole lot of action going on here - just lots of talk, talk, talk.  But as a once-and-future fan of the series, I found the closure to be quite cathartic.  Unlike some authors (I'm thinking David Eddings, here) where the urge for a happy ending results in a rather clumsy rush to pair everyone off, Kurtz does a nice job of making her resolutions make sense within the context of what's come before.  Even Kelson's bride, who doesn't actual play a central role in the book, manages to slide into her role as Kelson's soulmate quite naturally, despite the fact that we've never heard of her before.  Nice.

Siren Song - Holly Scott  (Stargate: SG-1 tie-in)
Not bad!  Plot-wise, this had a little more oomph to it than just the usual "coulda-been-an-episode" storyline.  This would've been a two-parter, at least.  I thought the author did quite a good job with the characters.  The other SG-1 book I read didn't really hit the right notes with characters, but this one has a nice balance for all of them.

August, 2008
City of Bones - Martha Wells
Ah, feeling sad because I don't have any Martha Wells books on my TBR now.  I like the world-building in this a lot... a post-apocalyptic world that doesn't seem to be *our* world in any way makes for a not-the-norm reading experience.   As usual with Wells, the characters are amazing, with relationships that feel comfortable and natural and *real*.  Plotwise, this felt a little short... but largely because the scope of the world-building and characters feel like they have more than one adventure to them.  That's always an issue with standalone fantasies... we fantasy readers expect there to always be *MORE*.  :-)

Flesh & Spirit - Carol Berg
First book of a duology.  The world-building seemed a little overly dense at first and I had some trouble getting into all the conspiracy stuff that our hero was encountering, but about a third of the way in, things kicked into high gear and I was reminded all over again why I love this author. :)  She does such a wonderful job at creating character relationships that seem fairly straightforward at first, and then suddenly have all these other pieces to them.  And call me a hopeless case, but the reveal at the end of the book had me absolutely gobsmacked.  I was actually swearing out loud to my cats at how *horrible* that turn of events was.  I'm not sure I can obey my usual mandate and hold out a while before going into Book 2. 

Myth-Gotten Gains - Robert Asprin & Jody Lynn Nye
Oh, I'm going to miss Robert Asprin. Typical Myth-book.  Fun and whimsical and always a pleasure.

July, 2008
Od Magic - Patricia McKillip
Hmmmm... not one of her better ones, I'm afraid.  It's been a bit more than a week since I read this, and I can barely remember anything about the actual plot.  No sense of any serious urgency or peril... Now that I think about it, there's an interesting contrast to be drawn over to Carol Berg's "Flesh and Spirit" that I just finished.  Both have magic-user's restricted by the rules of their society, and magical characters chafing against those rules, but Berg makes a much better case for the seriousness of those restrictions and the consequences of being caught breaking them, so the story had more urgency to it.

A Coalition of Lions - Elizabeth Wein
I was a little resistant to this book at first.  A sequel to her *wonderful* Winter Prince, but without Medraut or any of the Arthurian connections and relationships that made me love the first book so passionately... a tough sell.  It turned out ok, though.  Medraut may not be the main character, but his presence is felt throughout, and Goewin is a great character in her own right, and her handling of the situation she finds herself in is well done.  Scurrying off to pick up the next volume.

Waiting for the Galactic Bus - Parke Godwin
A light reread.  Enjoyable in a Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett sort of vein.

House of Chains - Steven Erikson
Another Erikson book eats up a solid two months of reading-time, but at least I finished it before I head out for vacatin.  After the previous two books, which were both major powerhouses, this one felt like it was spinning its wheels a bit.  The conflict wasn't as interesting, and there were a few too many players this time around, I think.  The story didn't get *confusing* the way it did in GotM, but it just got to a point where we were getting too much information about what everyone was doing, to the point of being a bit redundant... especially with the various factions in Sha'ik's rebel army.  It also lacked the really powerhouse finish of the previous two, so I think this might just have suffered from a general "middle book" syndrome.

June, 2008
Deryni Checkmate - Katherine Kurtz
Proceeding with a reread of this series that was one of my first and most influential reads in adult fantasy.  Like the first one, I was surprised at how relatively *slight* it was.  Not in a bad way - it's just funny how the memory plays tricks.  I have a laundry list of key points I remember from back in the day, and of the ones that are left, it seems like there's a lot more squeezed into the final book than I thought. 

May, 2008
The Blood Knight - Greg Keyes
An enjoyable new chapter in the series, but definitely a middle volume.  I really like that he's willing to shake up the status quo of the world with each new book.  Events at the end of this one again drastically change the playing field for whatever comes next, and that's cool.  My only significant gripe is that I'd really like to see either longer chapters or fewer POV characters.  The frequent POV switches, often with drastic shifts in location and situation, were giving me a bit of mental whiplash.  Oh, and the "blood knight" of the title doesn't make an official appearance until the very, very, very end, which is odd. 

The Wolf of Winter - Paula Volsky
Another re-read of a book that I've often ranked as one of my favorites, but that I couldn't really remember much about.  I loved it every bit as much this time through.  The world-building is fairly unique in fantasy (riffing on tsarist Russia, with necromancy as the main magical component), and Volsky is an author whose characters really shine.

April, 2008
Fires of the Faithful - Naomi Kritzer
Pretty darn good!  Reminds me a bit of Lloyd Alexander's Westmark books in that it features a hero(ine) who comes to lead a rebellion while not necessarily agreeing with the primary goals of her fellow rebels.  Takes place in a land where conflict is between the established, pro-magic religion that worships a "Lord and Lady" with Spanish-Inquisition-style zeal and the Christian-like "Old Ways" religion which worships a female "God" and her sacrificial son "Gesu".   Our heroine, Eliana, learns that the magic of the newer religion is responsible for a famine that is slowly starving much of the kingdom, and when she ends up in a labor camp housing refugees who've had to flee their homes, she eventually becomes a rallying point and leader for an uprising against the powers-that-be.  Similar to the Robin Hobb book I read last, it seemed at first that Kritzer was going a very black and white route:  pagan-religion=bad, pseudo-christianity=good.  Happily, she surprised me, too.  It's clear by the end of the book that the "Old Way" religion has just as many problematic elements as the newer one, and Eliana is rather uncomfortable with the idea of siding entirely with one religion or the other, despite the fact that much of her support comes from Old Way revolutionaries.  Liked this enough that I've already ordered the next book to have it on the TBR shelf.

Shaman's Crossing - Robin Hobb
Excellent.  I think I really *enjoyed* this book more than any of the Six Duchies/Liveship books.  I can imagine that some fantasy readers will be turned off by the non-epic scope of the book - a fairly narrow focus on one young man's coming of age in the mostly closed society of a military academy, with only a few places where the rest of the world gets involved - but I found it quite refreshing to really get to know a group of characters in a more intimate setting like this.  I'm guessing that the stakes are going to go up in later books, and this volume will provide an excellent grounding for that.  Character-wise, I liked Nevare a lot, and I was able to buy into his worldview enough that I never had the desire to thump him over the head for sheer stupidity the way I often did with Fitz, Althea, and Wintrow.    Hobb seemed to be laying some of the eco-themes on pretty heavy early on, and I was rolling my eyes a bit at the blatant progress=bad, nature=good message.  (Not that I disagree with the sentiment, necessarily, but I usually prefer my fantasy not to bludgeon me with messages.)  Happily, this element got evened out a lot, and things didn't go at *all* the way I expected from the early episodes.  Great, satisfying read.

Bridge of Dreams - Chaz Brenchley
Enjoyed this quite a lot.  Has some surface similarities to the Outremer books (Middle-East-inspired setting, story divided primarily between dual main characters - one a girl from nobility with romance & marriage issues, one a "normal" boy dealing with magical abilities).  I really enjoyed his use of language in this - there's an almost stream-of-consciousness feel to it that suits the story well, and certain phrases just made me swoon. :)

March, 2008
Daughter of Destiny - R.A.V. Salsitz
Kinda weird, old-school-ish fantasy.  In this age of lengthy, multi-volume epics, this story felt very choppy, as we had multiple character viewpoints going on in different areas, with big jumps forward between each viewpoint character's section to keep the plot moving forward.  Occurs to me that it suffers from weird plot flow similar to how the Glasswright books did... but the characters here weren't as actively unlikeable as the ones in that series.  Not particularly eager to pick up any other titles from this author, though.

The Drawing of the Dark - Tim Powers
This book had a similar appeal to what made me enjoy The Anubis Gates - informal, rather rough-and-tumble writing style, likeable characters, a plot that needs a bit of unwinding to really get what's going on.  But, being an earlier work, it's not surprising that this is a bit more jagged around the edges than Anubis Gates.  In particular, the "unwinding" aspect of the plot isn't really up to the task.  When done well, these sorts of stories keep a little something back so you might figure pieces of it out, but you're still discovering new bits all along the way.  Here, there came a point where the story was still unwinding, but everything important had already been revealed, and you were just going through the motions to unravel the rest because that was where the book required you to go.  Needed something a little thicker at its core to keep the interest up to the end.

February, 2008
The Porcelain Dove - Delia Sherman
This was a reread, though I didn't remember much except that I liked this book very much the first time around.  This time, what strikes me most is how much of the book is straightforward historical fiction.  If it weren't for the fact that we're told all along that this is being written from a magical vantage point, the actual magical elements of the story would have seemed to come out of left field.  Awesome book, and very much to my tastes with the fantasy-of-manners-ness and nouvelle-fairy-tale tones that are always a big win for me.

The Glasswrights' Master - Mindy Klasky
Well, I'm glad to be done with this series.  Like the previous volumes, this was a bit of a slog.  The book doesn't suffer quite so much from the ham-fisted world-building of the previous books, but the pacing is this weird, plodding "one chapter per plot-point" pace that doesn't really seem to try to maintain any sort of flow.  I realized, though, that what really bugs me is the characters.  I'm sure it wasn't the author's intent, but the main characters all just kinda strike me as the sort of shallow, self-absorbed sort of people you get on one of those CW teen soaps.  I'm sure I'm supposed to be horrified when we learn that Mair has turned to cutting herself in her grief for a lost son, but I just feel like I'm reliving a "very special" episode of Seventh Heaven or something.  I'm supposed to *care* about these characters, at least a little... and I spent the whole book rolling my eyes at all the drama.  Not a series I'll be quick to recommend.

January, 2008
The Hidden Saint - Rick Hautula  (Poltergeist: The Legacy tie-in)
This book is squarely in the "coulda been an episode" vein.  Usually, that's a fairly good thing, but as a series Poltergeist: The Legacy did tend to be a bit lukewarm and bland, and the same holds true with this "episode".  It fulfills its duty as a tie-in to provide a standalone story that fits the series, but doesn't do anything above-and-beyond the average.

Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey
Well, color me impressed.  After having a bad experience with Anne Bishop's Daughter of the Blood a few months ago, I was very leery about going into another book that seemed best known for its "erotic" content... especially one the size of a brick.  Happily, this book has WAY more going for it than I'd been led to believe.  For a story about a woman who is born to be used as an S&M plaything, the sexual content in this is surprisingly tasteful.  There's a lot of sex, yes, but once our heroine's nature is established, the author doesn't belabor the point too much, and most of the sex scenes don't seem to be aiming for titillation so much as moving the story forward.  In the end, what we have is a *superb* fantasy story that *could* have stood alone without the sexual aspects, but which feels fresher and more unique than it probably would have thanks to the way those elements are woven in to become an integral part of the story line.

Pawn of Prophecy - David Eddings  (reread)
I needed a break from a longer book I'd been reading (Kushiel's Dart) and this series had come up in a conversation recently.  There was a time in my life where I lived and breathed these books, but it's been 15+ years since I even glanced at them.  In that time, it's become clear that Eddings isn't the god of authors that he seemed to me back in the day, but judging by this reread, the Belgariad is at least still worth a visit.  Garion, Belgarath, Silk, and the rest of the crew were just as engaging and enjoyable to read as I'd remembered, if somewhat less "deep" than I once thought. :)