November Books
Dec. 1st, 2005 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienThe Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
I'm not really a vampire fan; I must have been in a particularly impulsive mood to grab a fat book about Dracula by an author I'd never heard of. In some senses, I suspect that this is vampire literature for people who don't read modern vampires; on the other hand, I had the feeling I was probably missing allusions, and it might have helped if I'd read the Bram Stoker novel, at least. The narrative structure is complicated, with three or even four nested narrations in places, spanning three generations and wandering all over Europe with excursions into Turkey and America. I was nearly to the end before I realized that the top-level narrator -- I hesitate to call her the protagonist -- doesn't actually have a name. That rather threw me out of the story when I did cotton on, but it fits with the rather old-fashioned tone of even the contemporary parts of the narrative. The actual vampire appearances are a rather small part of the action, most of which consists of extended treasure-hunts through libraries and archives. If I was actually a librarian (instead of just being prone to being mistaken for one on the street) I might find the whole librarian-vampire theme a bit offputting.
Sethra Lavode, Steven Brust
The mixture as before; battle and banter in deliberately archaic style. I found this final installment of the series rather more fun than the middle one, for some reason. I'm puzzled about one thing; according to these books, Castle Black is kept aloft by witches chanting in shifts. If that's still the case in Vlad's day, wouldn't he have noticed?
The World Before, Karen Traviss
It's good. Read it. Read the whole series. It's hard to say anything about this one that isn't a spoiler, but I found it very satisfying. It's sort of the antithesis of humans-are-special SF.
Dragon's Eye, James Hetley
Witches and thieves and drug smugglers in a remote corner of present-day Maine. Plenty of action; a marked absence of characters I would call good, but you can tell who the bad bad guys are because they don't get POV, or indeed much screen time. This is not a sequel to The Summer Country and The Winter Oak, but it's still well-written dark fantasy. Ignore the cover design. (Though if I've ever seen a book I wanted to hide in a plain brown wrapper, this was it.)
I'm still working on The System of the World.
I'm not really a vampire fan; I must have been in a particularly impulsive mood to grab a fat book about Dracula by an author I'd never heard of. In some senses, I suspect that this is vampire literature for people who don't read modern vampires; on the other hand, I had the feeling I was probably missing allusions, and it might have helped if I'd read the Bram Stoker novel, at least. The narrative structure is complicated, with three or even four nested narrations in places, spanning three generations and wandering all over Europe with excursions into Turkey and America. I was nearly to the end before I realized that the top-level narrator -- I hesitate to call her the protagonist -- doesn't actually have a name. That rather threw me out of the story when I did cotton on, but it fits with the rather old-fashioned tone of even the contemporary parts of the narrative. The actual vampire appearances are a rather small part of the action, most of which consists of extended treasure-hunts through libraries and archives. If I was actually a librarian (instead of just being prone to being mistaken for one on the street) I might find the whole librarian-vampire theme a bit offputting.
Sethra Lavode, Steven Brust
The mixture as before; battle and banter in deliberately archaic style. I found this final installment of the series rather more fun than the middle one, for some reason. I'm puzzled about one thing; according to these books, Castle Black is kept aloft by witches chanting in shifts. If that's still the case in Vlad's day, wouldn't he have noticed?
The World Before, Karen Traviss
It's good. Read it. Read the whole series. It's hard to say anything about this one that isn't a spoiler, but I found it very satisfying. It's sort of the antithesis of humans-are-special SF.
Dragon's Eye, James Hetley
Witches and thieves and drug smugglers in a remote corner of present-day Maine. Plenty of action; a marked absence of characters I would call good, but you can tell who the bad bad guys are because they don't get POV, or indeed much screen time. This is not a sequel to The Summer Country and The Winter Oak, but it's still well-written dark fantasy. Ignore the cover design. (Though if I've ever seen a book I wanted to hide in a plain brown wrapper, this was it.)
I'm still working on The System of the World.