October Books
Nov. 7th, 2005 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienYes, I did read some books in October! Comments and reactions below, with some spoilers under the cuts.
Michelle Sagara, Cast in Shadow
The author is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
msagara, also known as Michelle West, author of the Sun Sword series. This is a much shorter and simpler story, but hardly slight. Published under the Luna imprint, it's a story about many different kinds of love, with the romantic sort only barely in evidence. The first few chapters set up an intriguing society while deftly playing with reader expectations, and the story goes on swiftly and engagingly from there.
Some of the motifs are very recognizable from the other series: the street children huddling together, the healer-talent that creates a bond between healer and healed; the enigmatic dark love interest. This is a different world, though, and not all the rules are the same. The hawk-people and lion-people are delightful; the immortal Barrani are basically elves, but in various shades of grey. I must admit, I wondered how the Fieflord managed to spare the time from dealing with his temperamental magic castle to do ordinary gangleading things, but that's a minor quibble.
I look forward to the sequel, due next year.
Steven Brust, The Lord of Castle Black
Middle volume of the Viscount of Adrilankha trilogy. I thought it suffered rather from middle-book syndrome, and was not nearly as much fun as The Paths of the Dead, but that may just be my lack of appreciation for Brust's battle scenes, of which there are several. (I'm getting on much better with Sethra Lavode.)
China Mieville Iron Council
A revolution and a (literally) runaway train provide the plot of this latest Bas-Lag tale. I didn't enjoy it as much as I did Perdido Street Station or The Scar, though it has some wonderfully surreal moments; ultimately, it's a rather depressing tale about people I didn't care for very much. I seem to remember some people objecting to it on the grounds of communism, which considering the ultimate fate of the revolution seems to rather miss the point.
Robert Jordan, Knife of Dreams
It's strange to think that when I started reading this series the Web barely existed and the endless September of Usenet had not yet begun. It was, I must admit, the cover art that caught my eye as I browsed the new Waterstones in Birmingham. The first six books came out in the space of four years, and I eagerly snatched up each one as soon as it came out in paperback. This was fantasy a cut above the ordinary, with a huge and detailed world and a cast of thousands; even in the early days, though, I could have wished for a little less description of clothes and furnishings. After 1994, sadly, things slowed down a lot, with a book coming out maybe once every couple of years and less and less happening in each book, to the growing frustration of what was by now a huge and vociferous online community. This is book 11, and the author has promised faithfully that the next will be the last; after the almost total non-event of the last volume, it was hard to imagine how things could speed up that much, but I was intrigued to see Jordan try. I wasn't entirely disappointed.
Things do, in fact, happen in this book, though there's still a lot of padding garnished with references to the coming Last Battle as if to generate a sense of synthetic urgency. Several subsidiary plot threads are wrapped up at last, and a prophecy or two checked off. The corporal-punishment theme gets entirely too much airtime. I have to say, the last scene lends serious credence to the notion prevalent in some corners of the net that M. T. was originally supposed to be D., but the author changed his mind to annoy the fans who had figured it out. If he isn't D., he certainly looks and sounds a lot like him, all of a sudden!
It's still hard to see how everything can be wrapped up in one more volume without leaving a fair number of threads dangling. And what happened to all those parallel worlds, anyway?
Rachel Manija Brown, All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India
I doubt I would ever have heard of this book ifrachelmanija hadn't been on LJ and on the flist of some people on mine. If there's anyone reading this who hasn't heard of it yet, I hope I can pass on the favour. The memoir of a traumatic childhood in an Indian ashram and at a dreadful Catholic school, this book is funny and beautiful and brutal by turns, full of vivid imagery and references to books both familiar and unfamiliar.
Jane Lindskold, Wolf Captured
This begins what is presumably planned as a new Firekeeper trilogy, following on from the one that ended with The Dragon of Despair. It's well up to the standard of the earlier books, introducing another intriguing society, filling in some of the gaps in Firekeeper's background, and telling an entertaining story in its own right.
I worry about Firekeeper and Blind Seer, though. It's hard to see how they can have a happy ending in the end, and they're starting to get angsty about it.
Michelle Sagara, Cast in Shadow
The author is
msagara, also known as Michelle West, author of the Sun Sword series. This is a much shorter and simpler story, but hardly slight. Published under the Luna imprint, it's a story about many different kinds of love, with the romantic sort only barely in evidence. The first few chapters set up an intriguing society while deftly playing with reader expectations, and the story goes on swiftly and engagingly from there.Some of the motifs are very recognizable from the other series: the street children huddling together, the healer-talent that creates a bond between healer and healed; the enigmatic dark love interest. This is a different world, though, and not all the rules are the same. The hawk-people and lion-people are delightful; the immortal Barrani are basically elves, but in various shades of grey. I must admit, I wondered how the Fieflord managed to spare the time from dealing with his temperamental magic castle to do ordinary gangleading things, but that's a minor quibble.
I look forward to the sequel, due next year.
Steven Brust, The Lord of Castle Black
Middle volume of the Viscount of Adrilankha trilogy. I thought it suffered rather from middle-book syndrome, and was not nearly as much fun as The Paths of the Dead, but that may just be my lack of appreciation for Brust's battle scenes, of which there are several. (I'm getting on much better with Sethra Lavode.)
China Mieville Iron Council
A revolution and a (literally) runaway train provide the plot of this latest Bas-Lag tale. I didn't enjoy it as much as I did Perdido Street Station or The Scar, though it has some wonderfully surreal moments; ultimately, it's a rather depressing tale about people I didn't care for very much. I seem to remember some people objecting to it on the grounds of communism, which considering the ultimate fate of the revolution seems to rather miss the point.
Robert Jordan, Knife of Dreams
It's strange to think that when I started reading this series the Web barely existed and the endless September of Usenet had not yet begun. It was, I must admit, the cover art that caught my eye as I browsed the new Waterstones in Birmingham. The first six books came out in the space of four years, and I eagerly snatched up each one as soon as it came out in paperback. This was fantasy a cut above the ordinary, with a huge and detailed world and a cast of thousands; even in the early days, though, I could have wished for a little less description of clothes and furnishings. After 1994, sadly, things slowed down a lot, with a book coming out maybe once every couple of years and less and less happening in each book, to the growing frustration of what was by now a huge and vociferous online community. This is book 11, and the author has promised faithfully that the next will be the last; after the almost total non-event of the last volume, it was hard to imagine how things could speed up that much, but I was intrigued to see Jordan try. I wasn't entirely disappointed.
Things do, in fact, happen in this book, though there's still a lot of padding garnished with references to the coming Last Battle as if to generate a sense of synthetic urgency. Several subsidiary plot threads are wrapped up at last, and a prophecy or two checked off. The corporal-punishment theme gets entirely too much airtime. I have to say, the last scene lends serious credence to the notion prevalent in some corners of the net that M. T. was originally supposed to be D., but the author changed his mind to annoy the fans who had figured it out. If he isn't D., he certainly looks and sounds a lot like him, all of a sudden!
It's still hard to see how everything can be wrapped up in one more volume without leaving a fair number of threads dangling. And what happened to all those parallel worlds, anyway?
Rachel Manija Brown, All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: An American Misfit in India
I doubt I would ever have heard of this book if
rachelmanija hadn't been on LJ and on the flist of some people on mine. If there's anyone reading this who hasn't heard of it yet, I hope I can pass on the favour. The memoir of a traumatic childhood in an Indian ashram and at a dreadful Catholic school, this book is funny and beautiful and brutal by turns, full of vivid imagery and references to books both familiar and unfamiliar.Jane Lindskold, Wolf Captured
This begins what is presumably planned as a new Firekeeper trilogy, following on from the one that ended with The Dragon of Despair. It's well up to the standard of the earlier books, introducing another intriguing society, filling in some of the gaps in Firekeeper's background, and telling an entertaining story in its own right.
I worry about Firekeeper and Blind Seer, though. It's hard to see how they can have a happy ending in the end, and they're starting to get angsty about it.