Two weekend books
Mar. 7th, 2005 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienNo way was I taking Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell to Phoenix when I was 150 pages from the end, so I grabbed a couple of of this month's paperbacks instead.
This is the tenth in a series of British-set period mysteries, spanning the turn of the last century. He's a reluctant aristocrat and amateur detective; she's an American-born lady novelist. They fight crime. They also cross paths with various real-life literary and public figures. These books are by no stretch of the imagination great literature, but they're amusing enough reading. I was a little startled at first at the modern American perspective on the Victorian class system, with the servants and lower orders seething in resentment of their rich employers, not far from the edge of revolution. Maybe it really was like that, but it's certainly a different slant than one gets from contemporary British novelists!
This entry, opening with the coronation of Edward VII, involves anarchists, the terrorist threat of their day, not altogether unsympathetically treated. It isn't a conventional mystery, really, though it does begin with a death and end with the revelation of who was responsible. It attracted some critical reviews when it came out, mostly because of what were seen as heavy-handed parallels with contemporary reality, complete with secret informants who can't be challenged in court. The guest star is American writer Jack London, who isn't shown in a very good light. I found it was nowhere near as disappointing as I'd been led to believe.
This is that relatively rare thing these days, a self-contained -- and relatively short -- novel that sets up a universe and a history and tells a story that wraps up in one book. The setup is the messy aftermath of a war-triggered singularity, with uploads and technological resurrection, wormholes and FTL ships, 'search engines' that are super-tanks for 'combat archaelogists', and a litter of posthuman artefacts that are dangerously liable to kick off their own singularities if provoked. There are several factions, of course, including a bunch of brash bucolic types known as 'America Offline'. In spite of the battles and destruction, the touch is relatively light. Writing about the singularity is notoriously difficult, but by dancing sideways around it, looking through the eyes of survivors and resurrectees, bringing in characters who've had their own brushes with the posthuman and come back changed, this book makes a good stab at it.
Death in Hyde Park, Robin Paige
This is the tenth in a series of British-set period mysteries, spanning the turn of the last century. He's a reluctant aristocrat and amateur detective; she's an American-born lady novelist. They fight crime. They also cross paths with various real-life literary and public figures. These books are by no stretch of the imagination great literature, but they're amusing enough reading. I was a little startled at first at the modern American perspective on the Victorian class system, with the servants and lower orders seething in resentment of their rich employers, not far from the edge of revolution. Maybe it really was like that, but it's certainly a different slant than one gets from contemporary British novelists!
This entry, opening with the coronation of Edward VII, involves anarchists, the terrorist threat of their day, not altogether unsympathetically treated. It isn't a conventional mystery, really, though it does begin with a death and end with the revelation of who was responsible. It attracted some critical reviews when it came out, mostly because of what were seen as heavy-handed parallels with contemporary reality, complete with secret informants who can't be challenged in court. The guest star is American writer Jack London, who isn't shown in a very good light. I found it was nowhere near as disappointing as I'd been led to believe.
Newton's Wake, Ken MacLeod
This is that relatively rare thing these days, a self-contained -- and relatively short -- novel that sets up a universe and a history and tells a story that wraps up in one book. The setup is the messy aftermath of a war-triggered singularity, with uploads and technological resurrection, wormholes and FTL ships, 'search engines' that are super-tanks for 'combat archaelogists', and a litter of posthuman artefacts that are dangerously liable to kick off their own singularities if provoked. There are several factions, of course, including a bunch of brash bucolic types known as 'America Offline'. In spite of the battles and destruction, the touch is relatively light. Writing about the singularity is notoriously difficult, but by dancing sideways around it, looking through the eyes of survivors and resurrectees, bringing in characters who've had their own brushes with the posthuman and come back changed, this book makes a good stab at it.