May and June Books
Jul. 1st, 2007 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienSpoilers, as usual, may lurk behind cuts.
Steven Brust, The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars
Tale of struggling young artists and the artistic process, interwoven with an obscure Hungarian folk tale; not really a fantasy novel in the conventional sense. I couldn't help wondering how much of the description of the artistic process owed to the author's own experience of writing, as opposed to what it's really like to paint. (There was one passage about losing oneself in a frenzy of painting that reminded me very much of what I'd like my writing process to be like, as opposed to the slow and reality-bound thing it actually is.)
K.D. Wentworth, The Imperium Game
Murder and skulduggery in a futuristic role-playing game based on Imperial Rome; a pleasant enough diversion, but nothing special. I was unavoidably reminded of Dan Simmons's Ilium/Olympos, which had some similar tropes but was much more ambitious and interesting, if flawed.
Carole Nelson Douglas, A Soul of Steel
Reprint of an early entry in the Irene Adler series of Holmes pastiche, introducing a love interest for the very Victorian and spinsterish narrator. Written in the late 1980's, it has flashbacks to the Afghan war -- the one in which Dr. Watson was wounded -- and offers a neat explanation for the ambiguity of his injuries in the original story; also features snakes and a mongoose.
Jim Butcher, Dresden Files 5 and 6
Death Masks, aka The One with the Turin Shroud, which is rather darker and gorier than the earlier books; and Blood Rites the One with the Adult-Movie Studio, which is also fairly dark, but has a cute puppy.
Elizabeth George, In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner
Murder mystery partly set in the bits of Derbyshire I think of as my home ground; as such, I was very aware of the small discrepancies between reality and the setting, and was sensitized to small errors of Britishness, such as 'Fig Newtons' instead of 'Fig Rolls'; also I was never sure whether the author was using American or British conventions for counting floors. Poor Barbara Havers is a much less appealing figure in the books than she is in the TV adaptations, I must say. I was also somewhat bothered by the pervasive class-consciousness, which doesn't really match my experience of modern British life, but from my cosy niche in the lower reaches of academia I may not be in a good position to judge.
Peter Watts, Blindsight
Dark but compelling study of the nature of consciousness and the meaning of sentience in a bleak future on the cusp of a singularity that isn't all it's cracked up to be. With vampires, and without much in the way of sympathetic or even normal characters. Incidentally, the scientist mentioned in the endnotes is someone I know slightly.
Minette Walters, The Shape of Snakes
Somewhat unconventional mystery about the murder of a non-neurotypical woman of color in a London suburb, and one woman's decade-long fight to uncover the truth. None of the characters Are flawless or completely sympathetic, and the final resolution is ... realistically Unsatisfying, I'd say. Warning: contains gruesome animal cruelty.
Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters
Very, very long, but fairly fast moving, with a couple of episodes of epic slaughter that would almost qualify for novel-length on their own and some moments of grim humour; after the Relatively light and cheerful Midnight Tides we're back to the aftermath of the chain of Dogs and Shaik's rebellion, with plague ravaging the continent.
Butcher, Dresden Files 7 and 8
Dead Beat, the one with necromancers, and Proven Guilty, the one with the teenage warlock and the horror convention. Still addictive; the series arc seems to be heading for a climax. I'm not entirely convinced by what looks like an attempt, in the latter novel, to retcon everything that happened in all the earlier ones into evidence of some Behind-the-scenes supervillain. It's not quite true to say that I can't wait to see what happens next, even though book 8 leaves some things annoyingly unresolved; I think I can restrain myself until the 9th book comes out in paperback. On the other hand, restraint hasn't exactly characterized my consumption of this series so far; I whomped through the whole thing in less than three months.
Steven Brust, The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars
Tale of struggling young artists and the artistic process, interwoven with an obscure Hungarian folk tale; not really a fantasy novel in the conventional sense. I couldn't help wondering how much of the description of the artistic process owed to the author's own experience of writing, as opposed to what it's really like to paint. (There was one passage about losing oneself in a frenzy of painting that reminded me very much of what I'd like my writing process to be like, as opposed to the slow and reality-bound thing it actually is.)
K.D. Wentworth, The Imperium Game
Murder and skulduggery in a futuristic role-playing game based on Imperial Rome; a pleasant enough diversion, but nothing special. I was unavoidably reminded of Dan Simmons's Ilium/Olympos, which had some similar tropes but was much more ambitious and interesting, if flawed.
Carole Nelson Douglas, A Soul of Steel
Reprint of an early entry in the Irene Adler series of Holmes pastiche, introducing a love interest for the very Victorian and spinsterish narrator. Written in the late 1980's, it has flashbacks to the Afghan war -- the one in which Dr. Watson was wounded -- and offers a neat explanation for the ambiguity of his injuries in the original story; also features snakes and a mongoose.
Jim Butcher, Dresden Files 5 and 6
Death Masks, aka The One with the Turin Shroud, which is rather darker and gorier than the earlier books; and Blood Rites the One with the Adult-Movie Studio, which is also fairly dark, but has a cute puppy.
Elizabeth George, In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner
Murder mystery partly set in the bits of Derbyshire I think of as my home ground; as such, I was very aware of the small discrepancies between reality and the setting, and was sensitized to small errors of Britishness, such as 'Fig Newtons' instead of 'Fig Rolls'; also I was never sure whether the author was using American or British conventions for counting floors. Poor Barbara Havers is a much less appealing figure in the books than she is in the TV adaptations, I must say. I was also somewhat bothered by the pervasive class-consciousness, which doesn't really match my experience of modern British life, but from my cosy niche in the lower reaches of academia I may not be in a good position to judge.
Peter Watts, Blindsight
Dark but compelling study of the nature of consciousness and the meaning of sentience in a bleak future on the cusp of a singularity that isn't all it's cracked up to be. With vampires, and without much in the way of sympathetic or even normal characters. Incidentally, the scientist mentioned in the endnotes is someone I know slightly.
Minette Walters, The Shape of Snakes
Somewhat unconventional mystery about the murder of a non-neurotypical woman of color in a London suburb, and one woman's decade-long fight to uncover the truth. None of the characters Are flawless or completely sympathetic, and the final resolution is ... realistically Unsatisfying, I'd say. Warning: contains gruesome animal cruelty.
Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters
Very, very long, but fairly fast moving, with a couple of episodes of epic slaughter that would almost qualify for novel-length on their own and some moments of grim humour; after the Relatively light and cheerful Midnight Tides we're back to the aftermath of the chain of Dogs and Shaik's rebellion, with plague ravaging the continent.
Butcher, Dresden Files 7 and 8
Dead Beat, the one with necromancers, and Proven Guilty, the one with the teenage warlock and the horror convention. Still addictive; the series arc seems to be heading for a climax. I'm not entirely convinced by what looks like an attempt, in the latter novel, to retcon everything that happened in all the earlier ones into evidence of some Behind-the-scenes supervillain. It's not quite true to say that I can't wait to see what happens next, even though book 8 leaves some things annoyingly unresolved; I think I can restrain myself until the 9th book comes out in paperback. On the other hand, restraint hasn't exactly characterized my consumption of this series so far; I whomped through the whole thing in less than three months.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-01 09:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-01 10:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-01 10:40 pm (UTC)Snort. For certain values of cute and puppy. Those things really are addictive aren't they. I swore I wasn't going to buy the hardcover and then one of my pushers had it for 30% off...
MKK
(no subject)
Date: 2007-07-01 10:52 pm (UTC)