August-September Books
Oct. 3rd, 2007 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienNot a very long list for two months, but I've been busy ...
Juliet Marillier, Well of Shades
Another entry in the Bridei series; I'm not sure whether it's meant to be the last of a trilogy, or just another episode in an ongoing dark-ages soap. In this one, Faolan the royal spy meets an abused teenage mother who promptly kills her abuser and takes up with him as he comes to terms with his own dark past. I'm afraid I was not entirely convinced of the healing efficacy of Twoo Wuv between two such damaged people.
M. John Harrison, Anima
I picked this up in the airport on the way home. It's two novels bound together: The Course of the Heart, in which a small group of people is haunted by something dark-fantastical they did in their student days, and Signs of Life, which is the tragedy of a relationship with science-fiction trappings. Very weird, both of them, in a gritty 1990's British way. I kept thinking "Magic gritty realism," as I was reading them, which I don't think is a recognized category.
Sterling Seagrave, Dragon Lady
Not so much the story of the Dowager Empress who figured so largely in the waning decades of the Qing dynasty, as a stripping away of rumor and scandal -- including a very unreliable contemporary source who was basically writing pornography that was taken as gospel for decades -- to reveal how very little is really known about her. The expat community in Beijing does not come out of it at all well, what with the cowboy diplomacy and the shameless looting, though it's still basically an outsider, Western narrative. It's an interesting perspective on a turbulent half-century, from the Opium wars and the Taiping rebellion to the Boxer rebellion and beyond.
David Donachie, The Devil's Own Luck
Murder and skulduggery, battle and rivalry, aboard a warship on the Napoleonic-era high seas; first of the Privateersman Mysteries. O'Brian it isn't, and the prose occasionally clunks, but I'd go for another one of these.
Robin Paige, Death on the Lizard
Last (at least for now) of the series of mysteries set in turn-of-the-century Britain and featuring famous people -- in this case Marconi, running an early transatlantic telegraphy station in Cornwall. The intrusion of apparently story-real supernatural elements was a little disconcerting for a series that's never shown any interest in such things before, though of course spiritualism was pretty big in those days.
Elizabeth Bear, Undertow
SF stand-alone on a watery planet where the aliens are frog-like and chance is manipulable. It's all Because of Quantum, you see. Engaging enough, but it kept reminding me of other things -- notably Spin State, because of the quantum entanglement mines, and Hal Duncan's Book of All Hours for the extended many-universes action sequence.
Chaz Brenchley, Bridge of Dreams
Gorgeous fantasy that somehow manages lushness and bleakness at once, set in a Turkish-style world of harems and janissaries, with magical pollution and interestingly different magic systems; first of a diptych. I look forward to the second half, which should be out in paperback next Spring.
Juliet Marillier, Well of Shades
Another entry in the Bridei series; I'm not sure whether it's meant to be the last of a trilogy, or just another episode in an ongoing dark-ages soap. In this one, Faolan the royal spy meets an abused teenage mother who promptly kills her abuser and takes up with him as he comes to terms with his own dark past. I'm afraid I was not entirely convinced of the healing efficacy of Twoo Wuv between two such damaged people.
M. John Harrison, Anima
I picked this up in the airport on the way home. It's two novels bound together: The Course of the Heart, in which a small group of people is haunted by something dark-fantastical they did in their student days, and Signs of Life, which is the tragedy of a relationship with science-fiction trappings. Very weird, both of them, in a gritty 1990's British way. I kept thinking "Magic gritty realism," as I was reading them, which I don't think is a recognized category.
Sterling Seagrave, Dragon Lady
Not so much the story of the Dowager Empress who figured so largely in the waning decades of the Qing dynasty, as a stripping away of rumor and scandal -- including a very unreliable contemporary source who was basically writing pornography that was taken as gospel for decades -- to reveal how very little is really known about her. The expat community in Beijing does not come out of it at all well, what with the cowboy diplomacy and the shameless looting, though it's still basically an outsider, Western narrative. It's an interesting perspective on a turbulent half-century, from the Opium wars and the Taiping rebellion to the Boxer rebellion and beyond.
David Donachie, The Devil's Own Luck
Murder and skulduggery, battle and rivalry, aboard a warship on the Napoleonic-era high seas; first of the Privateersman Mysteries. O'Brian it isn't, and the prose occasionally clunks, but I'd go for another one of these.
Robin Paige, Death on the Lizard
Last (at least for now) of the series of mysteries set in turn-of-the-century Britain and featuring famous people -- in this case Marconi, running an early transatlantic telegraphy station in Cornwall. The intrusion of apparently story-real supernatural elements was a little disconcerting for a series that's never shown any interest in such things before, though of course spiritualism was pretty big in those days.
Elizabeth Bear, Undertow
SF stand-alone on a watery planet where the aliens are frog-like and chance is manipulable. It's all Because of Quantum, you see. Engaging enough, but it kept reminding me of other things -- notably Spin State, because of the quantum entanglement mines, and Hal Duncan's Book of All Hours for the extended many-universes action sequence.
Chaz Brenchley, Bridge of Dreams
Gorgeous fantasy that somehow manages lushness and bleakness at once, set in a Turkish-style world of harems and janissaries, with magical pollution and interestingly different magic systems; first of a diptych. I look forward to the second half, which should be out in paperback next Spring.
