June and July books, finally
Aug. 9th, 2008 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienRobert Charles Wilson, Axis
Sequel to Spin, set mostly on the world next door that's opened up to Earth at the end of the earlier story. Dead nanotech starts falling from the sky, causing considerable inconvenience and eventually leading to revelations about the mysterious Hypotheticals. It's an entertaining read, but not on the scale of its predecessor.
Paul Park, The Tourmaline
Sequel to A Princess of Roumania, in which the nature of the world becomes somewhat clearer and the main characters find their way from undeveloped America back to
civilized Europe -- though it's clear that the really advanced countries are in Africa and
other parts of what we know as the developing world. The Countess is an excellent example of
a villain who is the heroine of her own story.
Peter Watts, Starfish (e)
Another saga about unpleasant and not quite human people in a dark and dangerous environment
-- in this case, at the bottom of the sea in the vicinity of a geothermal vent. Unfortunately, it seems to be the first of a trilogy of which the remaining volumes are fairly thoroughly out of print, but it stands well enough on its own and I don't have an overwhelming desire to return to that world.
Ian McDonald, Brasyl
Dense and complicated tale of three interlinked timelines -- past, present, future -- in the cities and jungles of a Brazil that isn't exactly the one we know; vivid, full of telling details, exotic and adventurous and gradually unfolding into something much stranger and more science-fictional than is apparent at the beginning.
Chaz Brenchley, River of the World
Spectacular sequel and conclusion to Bridge of Dreams; wrenching and satisfying.
Jane Lindskold, Wolf's Blood
Last in the second fantasy trilogy about a young woman who identifies as a wolf, in an elaborately built and slightly unconventional fantasy setting. Resolves some things, but as far as I can see completely fails to wrap up the ostensible story problem, leaving the plague that's been the main plot point since halfway through the previous book understood but not (unless I missed something) got rid of.
Margaret Frazer, The Novice's Tale
First in a long and still ongoing series of mysteries set in a medieval nunnery, with a middle-aged nun as detective and viewpoint character, (somewhat in the Cadfael manner) and a
guest appearance by Chaucer's son. The plot involves poisoning, a monkey and an earnest young novice. Quite short -- I finished the whole thing between Dallas and Tucson; competent but not very exciting.
Elizabeth George, Playing for the Ashes
Inspector Lynley mystery from the 1990s, where the victim is an England cricketer found dead
of arson in someone else's country cottage. The atmosphere of the whole novel is thick with smoke and ash. I was not entirely convinced by one of the narrative devices, in which a large chunk of the text -- a good novella's worth -- is supposed to have been written by a witness who is slowly succumbing to motor neurone disease; under the circumstances, it seems unnecessary for practical purposes for her to have painfully written out her whole sordid
life history when a brief account of the night in question would have done the job.
July:
Sandra MacDonald, The Outback Stars
In an Australian-flavored milieu where Earth is mostly ruined and mankind travels among the
stars using a sort of wormhole network apparently created by vanished aliens, Jodenny Scott
goes back to work as a junior officer aboard a giant starship while still suffering the traumatic aftereffects of a disaster on her previous ship. The new ship has its own problems, plagued by bad morale and mysterious malfunctions, but she finds herself drawn to
a non-comissioned officer in her chain of command -- not something that is encouraged by the authorities. The plot is complex and engaging, but I found the love-interest a bit too hapless for the romance to work for me. There's more going on than the romance, though, with an intriguing milieu I'd like to see more of.
Modessit, Natural Ordermage
Yet another craftsman's son with a bad attitude gets himself exiled from Recluce and caught up in the affairs of the continent. As has been Modessit's recent habit, this is the first half of a duology.
Ruth Rendell, The Water's Lovely
Two sisters share a flat in half of the house where they grew up and where their stepfather drowned in the bath; upstairs lives their mother, driven mad by that death and cared for her by a sister who is about the only sensible and decent person in the book -- not that it helps her much. A grim story of messed-up relationships and dysfunctional people, sharply drawn to the point of caricature; the ending draws on real and horrible events to provide a much too pat resolution.
Anthony Trollope, He Knew he was Right (e)
Long, soapy saga in which the main thread is the slow decline of a husband who becomes jealous of his young wife's friendship with an older man, and ends up pretty much ruining both her life and his. It's never entirely clear what his psychiatric or medical problem is; if he's supposed to be drinking himself to death, which does seem to be hinted at, it's deeply obscured by polite Victorian convention; if it's something else, it doesn't seem to fit anything known to modern psychiatry. There's a tangle of secondary and tertiary romance plots -- the tertiary ones straying into comedy -- involving the wife's sister, the husband's friend and his sister, and the people the two young women's rejected suitors end up with -- one of whom is American. most of the American characters would have been quite at home in Martin Chuzzlewit. I was amused to note a couple of throwaway references to characters from the Barsetshire/Palliser series; otherwise, the book doesn't add much to the TV adaptation I watched last year, though it does cast the wife in a rather less sympathetic light. There was also a reference to the awfulness of the 'railway sandwich' that made me laugh out loud; British Rail sandwiches were still a byword into the 1980s, after which the catering got privatized and improved a lot.
Wilkie Collins, Poor Miss Finch (e)
Melodrama with a pretty but blind heroine and two identical twin brothers who both fall in love with her, narrated by an opinionated Frenchwoman who is the blind girl's hired companion.
David Weber, On Basilisk Station (e)
Hornblower (or Ramage?) in space, with occasional moments of excitement between the infodumps that set up the mapping between spaceships and wooden ships, winds and wormholes. (At least Hornblower has some interesting self-doubt, unlike Ms. Harrington.)
Harry Turtledove, The Disunited States of America (e)
YA from a series in which an organization trades across alt-history timelines. This one is
set in a North America where the US constitution was never ratified, divided into warring
states; a young visitor from California and one from the 'home timeline' get caught in the middle of a nasty war between Ohio and Virginia, with racial elements and an engineered plague. The epidemiology of the plague was a bit odd, more plot-driven than biologically likely to my mind, but it was an engaging enough read.
Ken MacLeod, The Execution Channel
Thriller with SF elements set in a dystopian near-future Britain; the slightly-alternate history doesn't make it any less disturbing. (The $200-dollar barrels of oil seemed like an underestimated projection, back when I was reading this in July.)
George Gissing, New Grub Street
Tale of struggling writers in late nineteenth-century London: the blocked and depressed novelist sinking deeper and deeper into poverty and the pragmatic hack who succeeds. Some of these people wouldn't be out of place on the blogs and internet fora of today, firmly set as they all are in Victorian values and class-consciousness.
Sequel to Spin, set mostly on the world next door that's opened up to Earth at the end of the earlier story. Dead nanotech starts falling from the sky, causing considerable inconvenience and eventually leading to revelations about the mysterious Hypotheticals. It's an entertaining read, but not on the scale of its predecessor.
Paul Park, The Tourmaline
Sequel to A Princess of Roumania, in which the nature of the world becomes somewhat clearer and the main characters find their way from undeveloped America back to
civilized Europe -- though it's clear that the really advanced countries are in Africa and
other parts of what we know as the developing world. The Countess is an excellent example of
a villain who is the heroine of her own story.
Peter Watts, Starfish (e)
Another saga about unpleasant and not quite human people in a dark and dangerous environment
-- in this case, at the bottom of the sea in the vicinity of a geothermal vent. Unfortunately, it seems to be the first of a trilogy of which the remaining volumes are fairly thoroughly out of print, but it stands well enough on its own and I don't have an overwhelming desire to return to that world.
Ian McDonald, Brasyl
Dense and complicated tale of three interlinked timelines -- past, present, future -- in the cities and jungles of a Brazil that isn't exactly the one we know; vivid, full of telling details, exotic and adventurous and gradually unfolding into something much stranger and more science-fictional than is apparent at the beginning.
Chaz Brenchley, River of the World
Spectacular sequel and conclusion to Bridge of Dreams; wrenching and satisfying.
Jane Lindskold, Wolf's Blood
Last in the second fantasy trilogy about a young woman who identifies as a wolf, in an elaborately built and slightly unconventional fantasy setting. Resolves some things, but as far as I can see completely fails to wrap up the ostensible story problem, leaving the plague that's been the main plot point since halfway through the previous book understood but not (unless I missed something) got rid of.
Margaret Frazer, The Novice's Tale
First in a long and still ongoing series of mysteries set in a medieval nunnery, with a middle-aged nun as detective and viewpoint character, (somewhat in the Cadfael manner) and a
guest appearance by Chaucer's son. The plot involves poisoning, a monkey and an earnest young novice. Quite short -- I finished the whole thing between Dallas and Tucson; competent but not very exciting.
Elizabeth George, Playing for the Ashes
Inspector Lynley mystery from the 1990s, where the victim is an England cricketer found dead
of arson in someone else's country cottage. The atmosphere of the whole novel is thick with smoke and ash. I was not entirely convinced by one of the narrative devices, in which a large chunk of the text -- a good novella's worth -- is supposed to have been written by a witness who is slowly succumbing to motor neurone disease; under the circumstances, it seems unnecessary for practical purposes for her to have painfully written out her whole sordid
life history when a brief account of the night in question would have done the job.
July:
Sandra MacDonald, The Outback Stars
In an Australian-flavored milieu where Earth is mostly ruined and mankind travels among the
stars using a sort of wormhole network apparently created by vanished aliens, Jodenny Scott
goes back to work as a junior officer aboard a giant starship while still suffering the traumatic aftereffects of a disaster on her previous ship. The new ship has its own problems, plagued by bad morale and mysterious malfunctions, but she finds herself drawn to
a non-comissioned officer in her chain of command -- not something that is encouraged by the authorities. The plot is complex and engaging, but I found the love-interest a bit too hapless for the romance to work for me. There's more going on than the romance, though, with an intriguing milieu I'd like to see more of.
Modessit, Natural Ordermage
Yet another craftsman's son with a bad attitude gets himself exiled from Recluce and caught up in the affairs of the continent. As has been Modessit's recent habit, this is the first half of a duology.
Ruth Rendell, The Water's Lovely
Two sisters share a flat in half of the house where they grew up and where their stepfather drowned in the bath; upstairs lives their mother, driven mad by that death and cared for her by a sister who is about the only sensible and decent person in the book -- not that it helps her much. A grim story of messed-up relationships and dysfunctional people, sharply drawn to the point of caricature; the ending draws on real and horrible events to provide a much too pat resolution.
Anthony Trollope, He Knew he was Right (e)
Long, soapy saga in which the main thread is the slow decline of a husband who becomes jealous of his young wife's friendship with an older man, and ends up pretty much ruining both her life and his. It's never entirely clear what his psychiatric or medical problem is; if he's supposed to be drinking himself to death, which does seem to be hinted at, it's deeply obscured by polite Victorian convention; if it's something else, it doesn't seem to fit anything known to modern psychiatry. There's a tangle of secondary and tertiary romance plots -- the tertiary ones straying into comedy -- involving the wife's sister, the husband's friend and his sister, and the people the two young women's rejected suitors end up with -- one of whom is American. most of the American characters would have been quite at home in Martin Chuzzlewit. I was amused to note a couple of throwaway references to characters from the Barsetshire/Palliser series; otherwise, the book doesn't add much to the TV adaptation I watched last year, though it does cast the wife in a rather less sympathetic light. There was also a reference to the awfulness of the 'railway sandwich' that made me laugh out loud; British Rail sandwiches were still a byword into the 1980s, after which the catering got privatized and improved a lot.
Wilkie Collins, Poor Miss Finch (e)
Melodrama with a pretty but blind heroine and two identical twin brothers who both fall in love with her, narrated by an opinionated Frenchwoman who is the blind girl's hired companion.
David Weber, On Basilisk Station (e)
Hornblower (or Ramage?) in space, with occasional moments of excitement between the infodumps that set up the mapping between spaceships and wooden ships, winds and wormholes. (At least Hornblower has some interesting self-doubt, unlike Ms. Harrington.)
Harry Turtledove, The Disunited States of America (e)
YA from a series in which an organization trades across alt-history timelines. This one is
set in a North America where the US constitution was never ratified, divided into warring
states; a young visitor from California and one from the 'home timeline' get caught in the middle of a nasty war between Ohio and Virginia, with racial elements and an engineered plague. The epidemiology of the plague was a bit odd, more plot-driven than biologically likely to my mind, but it was an engaging enough read.
Ken MacLeod, The Execution Channel
Thriller with SF elements set in a dystopian near-future Britain; the slightly-alternate history doesn't make it any less disturbing. (The $200-dollar barrels of oil seemed like an underestimated projection, back when I was reading this in July.)
George Gissing, New Grub Street
Tale of struggling writers in late nineteenth-century London: the blocked and depressed novelist sinking deeper and deeper into poverty and the pragmatic hack who succeeds. Some of these people wouldn't be out of place on the blogs and internet fora of today, firmly set as they all are in Victorian values and class-consciousness.
