February books, belatedly
Mar. 17th, 2007 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarien(And three of them spilled over into the first week of March and then got finished off in a binge session the weekend before last. Spoilers may exist below the cuts, as usual.)
C. J. Cherryh, Deliverer
Third volume of the third Atevi trilogy. Gripping and satisfying. Cajeiri gets POV -- which is a new departure for a series that has so far been in Bren's point of view all along, apart from the prologue. The Atevi world gets GPS and narrowly avoids the internet. There seems to be plenty of room for yet more sequels, if the publisher wants them, but the ending is a reasonable pausing point.
McKillip, Harrowing the Dragon
Short story collection, full of evocative and dreamlike imagery, mostly set in fairy-tale worlds; many of the stories are variations on old fairy-tales, some twistier than
others; "The Lion and the Lark" seems to be a variant version of "Beauty and the Beast." I liked "Lady of the Skulls," which is wry and beautiful and sad, but was confused by the frog-prince one at the end. Oddly, my copy came with two dust jackets, so if anyone needs one ...
Jane Lindskold, Wolf Hunting
Second volume of the second trilogy about a young woman raised by intelligent wolves and who still identifies as a wolf. The world-building is original if a little clunky, and there are more revelations about the world in this story. (I do think that original worldbuilding, as opposed to the kind that uses familiar tropes, is much harder to do really well. It may be easier to take, for example, the deeply-ingrained concept of unicorn or dragon and make it particular and evocative than it is to invent something out of whole cloth and expect it to work for the reader.) As a completely trivial matter, I was distracted by the use of the word 'bracken' to mean something like 'brushwood'; to me, bracken is that tough, toxic fernlike stuff that's devouring my beloved moors.
Sherwood Smith, Inda
Long, somewhat sprawly tale of a young leader in the making. The world is interesting, with the routine use of canned magic to deal with the more distastful side of life, from sanitation and
washing the dishes to providing your unloved dynastic husband with an heir.
(I want a Waste Spell for my apartment, but I do wonder where all that bio-waste goes and if it's annoying anyone on the other side.)
Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child
This is a first novel, marketed as mainstream, which I picked up on a whim off an Amazon recommendation. It doesn't seem to have attracted much attention, but I enjoyed it a lot -- a low-key, haunting exploration of the changeling myth in post-war rural America, told alternately from the viewpoint of the 'hobgoblin' who takes the place of a young boy, and the boy with whom he changes places. The hobgoblin was himself a human child taken a hundred years before, and as he grows to adulthood he explores that past and is intermittently haunted by the remaining hobgoblins and the fear that they will take his own child. The younger boy writes a narrative of his experiences -- and describes the process in ways that probably reflect the author's own struggles, which does rather remind the reader that this is a first novel.
C. J. Cherryh, Deliverer
Third volume of the third Atevi trilogy. Gripping and satisfying. Cajeiri gets POV -- which is a new departure for a series that has so far been in Bren's point of view all along, apart from the prologue. The Atevi world gets GPS and narrowly avoids the internet. There seems to be plenty of room for yet more sequels, if the publisher wants them, but the ending is a reasonable pausing point.
McKillip, Harrowing the Dragon
Short story collection, full of evocative and dreamlike imagery, mostly set in fairy-tale worlds; many of the stories are variations on old fairy-tales, some twistier than
others; "The Lion and the Lark" seems to be a variant version of "Beauty and the Beast." I liked "Lady of the Skulls," which is wry and beautiful and sad, but was confused by the frog-prince one at the end. Oddly, my copy came with two dust jackets, so if anyone needs one ...
Jane Lindskold, Wolf Hunting
Second volume of the second trilogy about a young woman raised by intelligent wolves and who still identifies as a wolf. The world-building is original if a little clunky, and there are more revelations about the world in this story. (I do think that original worldbuilding, as opposed to the kind that uses familiar tropes, is much harder to do really well. It may be easier to take, for example, the deeply-ingrained concept of unicorn or dragon and make it particular and evocative than it is to invent something out of whole cloth and expect it to work for the reader.) As a completely trivial matter, I was distracted by the use of the word 'bracken' to mean something like 'brushwood'; to me, bracken is that tough, toxic fernlike stuff that's devouring my beloved moors.
Sherwood Smith, Inda
Long, somewhat sprawly tale of a young leader in the making. The world is interesting, with the routine use of canned magic to deal with the more distastful side of life, from sanitation and
washing the dishes to providing your unloved dynastic husband with an heir.
(I want a Waste Spell for my apartment, but I do wonder where all that bio-waste goes and if it's annoying anyone on the other side.)
Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child
This is a first novel, marketed as mainstream, which I picked up on a whim off an Amazon recommendation. It doesn't seem to have attracted much attention, but I enjoyed it a lot -- a low-key, haunting exploration of the changeling myth in post-war rural America, told alternately from the viewpoint of the 'hobgoblin' who takes the place of a young boy, and the boy with whom he changes places. The hobgoblin was himself a human child taken a hundred years before, and as he grows to adulthood he explores that past and is intermittently haunted by the remaining hobgoblins and the fear that they will take his own child. The younger boy writes a narrative of his experiences -- and describes the process in ways that probably reflect the author's own struggles, which does rather remind the reader that this is a first novel.
