This already was on my list because *everybody* wrote good reviews, and then I happened to need new reading material the day after it won its Hugo. SoThis already was on my list because *everybody* wrote good reviews, and then I happened to need new reading material the day after it won its Hugo. So fine. I read it.
It's an excellent book, a tremendously deft and assured book, but I never had that moment of my socks flying off my feet as the world moved. But again, I had more to *think about*, during and after, than any other recent read has offered me. That's worth a high rating all by itself.
(I consider the possibility that I spoiled my reading experience by reading too many reviews first. Usually I avoid that sort of thing; I *am* spoiler-sensitive. But the question is un-investigatable, so I'll set it aside.)
I'm not going to summarize the setup or plot; all the other reviews have done that. Instead I will talk about the protagonist.
The fun of this book, the fun I had -- again, leaving aside the fun of figuring out the setting, which I basically missed out -- was figuring out what the protagonist is.
Early on, I said "The narrator is not human." She (I'll also skip the pronoun discussion) describes events that she participated in, but with a sense of utter disinterest. She describes the horrific Radch civilization -- brainwashing, genocide, god-emperor autocracy -- with complete complacency. So I think, right, she is a computer. Her sense of human emotion is a medical data stream of hormone levels. She says "Awn was frightened" but has no human understanding of what that means.
Then, as the book runs on, we can see a trickle of what the narrator *isn't* telling us about herself. She has responses, involuntary reactions, which are only mentioned in retrospect or in implication. So I think, no, it's that style of unreliable tight-focus narration where you have to dig. The sort where our hero looks down after a conversation and sees that he's smashed his hand into the wall until it bled. (Not an example from this book, but you know the sort.) In that mode, the narrator is all sorts of human -- if perhaps not *my* sort -- but refuses to admit it.
*Then* the book gives us scenes where the narrator -- who is unquestionably a computer, on the literal level, no matter what else she is -- is being *programmed*. She has involuntary responses, beliefs, memories or memory lapses, which have been manipulated in obvious ways. Some of them are obvious to *her*, but there's no guarantee that's always the case.
So now the strategy of unreliable narration as character-building has been undercut, or mixed, with unreliable narration as a simple fact of the story. The character is divided against herself as a narrative theme, but also *actually* divided against herself. And the balance of these elements in the story is where I say, okay, the author is pulling off a serious stunt here.
*Then*, even further, we realize that this division-against-oneself is not an element of the story; it is the entire story. The Lord of the Radch is divided in exactly the ways that the protagonist is: by programming, by refusal to communicate, by the impossibility of reconciling with the self, by guilt, by the inability to perceive love. As the Lord of the Radch, so the Radch entire -- by definition. This series is about a civil war of a galactic empire, and the civil war is the same as the protagonist's struggle to exist and to tell us her story.
This is where I say, okay, I see why this book has awards raining down on it. ...more
Book four of five. In traditional fantasy arc theory, this should be where everything starts to really fall apart. In this series, we get a dragon, anBook four of five. In traditional fantasy arc theory, this should be where everything starts to really fall apart. In this series, we get a dragon, and... okay, that's when everything starts to really fall apart. I have to admit the dragon feels a little pro-forma. That is, the dragon is terrifying and should pretty much wreck the world on contact. The dragon stays more or less restrained because that's a plot requirement to reach book five.
Besides, nobody thinks book five will be about Slaying The Dragon -- although the dragon will wind up dead, I'm sure. The series is called "The Dagger and the Coin" because it's about armies and banks. That's what "realistically gritty fantasy" means, right?
No, what *really* starts to fall apart is Basrahip's religion. Here's one last fantasy trope for the series to deconstruct: the crusading Church Militant of single-minded cardboard priests, led in perfect unison by an insane but tactically brilliant vizier... No. Why would you ever expect that? Churches schism over the color of the *drapes*. The nature of the spider-priests means that when they were one monastery-full hiding away in the mountains, they were all on the same page, and Basrahip was just the most charismatic of them. But now Basrahip is in the capital and there are temples dotted all over the continent, which means -- remember the game-of-Telephone? -- there's linguistic drift.
Also, think about it. Basrahip is incapable of doubt. That means he's insane, maybe *tactically* brilliant, but strategically -- an idiot. A blind idiot. He can't be anything else. That becomes very clear to the reader, although not, so far, to Geder Palliako.
Arrayed against him is a dragon (good luck with that), various free cities (so far Geder's armies remain unstoppable), and our heroes. Our heroes continue to quietly travel the world, looking for ways to array better. Okay, Cithrin -- as a prominent bank official and Geder's well-known secret crush -- is travelling not-so-quietly.
Clara Kalliam meets up with other significant Kalliams. Marcus Wester meets up with Yardem Hane and doesn't bother to kill him. Master Kit sits back and argues philosophy. (I like the guy but he doesn't have much plot power at this point.) And Cithrin, ah, Cithrin pulls the banking plot thread which has been patiently waiting these past four books. I am very, very happy with Cithrin's story.
Yeah, I'm happy with this entire series. You can probably tell. ...more
Many years ago (2008!) I read _Clockwork Heart_. What I remember: (1) The setting was surprisingly well-considered, with economics and international pMany years ago (2008!) I read _Clockwork Heart_. What I remember: (1) The setting was surprisingly well-considered, with economics and international politics playing into the background and ultimately into the storyline. (2) The romance plot offered a shy nerdy blonde brother and a brooding dangerous dark brother; the latter turned out to be a villain and the heroine wound up with the former. (3) Clockwork computers and antigravity wing suits.
(The flying suits and the computers both rely on the same plotdevicium metal. The physics isn't as well-put-together as the economics and politics. Give it a pass, move on.)
Now, in book two, shy-nerd-guy has been coopted as an ambassador (the curse of being high-caste) and his now-wife is part of the ambassadorial party. A surprising number of assassination attempts later, they discover that they've jumped from the romance genre into spy thriller. They have to stay alive, get home, and then foil a dastardly plot. I will let slip that the dastardly plot involves airships so that you can anticipate impressive wingsuit-vs-airship hijinks.
The writing remains good. All the character have natural cultural biases. They make assumptions and sometimes make mistakes; but they're not *blind* mistakes. Nobody is made out to be a stupid provincial.
Also, the author gets that when you put two random romance protagonists into a spy plot, they do not magically become spy heroes. Being wounded is horrible; killing people is horrible; being exhausted and wounded and hungry puts a serious crimp in your life. But our heroes grit their teeth and get on with it because they have to. Admittedly, the plot is contrived to make sure they're the ones on the spot, but it seems ungrateful to complain. I mean, ungrateful for *me* to complain. The characters have every right to.
Finally, it's nice to see a series start with "romance" and move on to "partners". I recently dinged _Fortune's Pawn_ for failing to make that jump, so I should praise this one for succeeding at it. The protagonists are married, they love each other, they worry about each other, and they know each other pretty well. (They also don't have to stop the plot every other chapter to have mad sex. In fact, in most chapters, they're too tired and hungry and wounded to try. Realism!)
The closing tag promises that a third book will conclude the trilogy. I suspect that it will get back to the assumptions of Ondinium society. The country is a blatant police state and a strict caste society. Albeit a caste society with social mobility via (theoretically) fair computer-administered examinations. The protagonists, native Ondiniums, do not question any of this; others do. I hope the author is building up to questioning it, because the "papers please" attitude is creepy as heck to the audience. ...more
A strange little book. I think I use that phrase more when writing about Elizabeth Bear than any other author.
One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King are gA strange little book. I think I use that phrase more when writing about Elizabeth Bear than any other author.
One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King are genii loci, the legendary avatars of Las Vegas. The Las Vegas of 2002, that is, because the city's symbology shifts from decade to decade. (And 2002 is roughly when the book was written, says the author.)
We find Jack and the King setting up a ritual at Hoover Dam. It happens that Las Vegas is involved in a mystical war with (no points for guessing) Los Angeles, and an avatar of LA shows up at the Dam to stop them. At the same time, a couple of fictional secret agents find themselves under fire from *another* fictional secret agent. Their fictional 1964 (the eternal Cold War) leads them to the real-world 2002, at the same time as... I think I won't name the rest of the characters. A large part of the fun is seeing everybody walk on-stage.
I don't necessarily get a lot out of seeing characters walk on-stage. I am not a watcher of the TV shows in question. For reasons of intellectual property, their names are never used, which means long chapters of text about "the athlete" and "the Russian" and "the American" and so on. I had to look some of them up. (Spoiler: it suffices to google "tennis-playing spy".) Yes, the author makes a plot point of how media ghosts are esoterically nameless, but it still feels like playing with action figures.
So the book is fanfic, in fandoms not my own; this makes it a rough ride. It's perfectly *good* fanfic, and in fact it succeeds at showing me how these characters are delightful. It doesn't rest entirely on familiarity. And the central viewpoint is that of Jack, an original creation. But I'm missing some of the fun, regardless.
It's in the Promethean Age continuity. Like most of that series, it involves a lot of running around for mystical reasons which don't make much logical sense but have solid gut impact behind them. The magic is good stuff. Since it's also a spy story (and a vampire story, and a Western) there's a lot of chasing and gunfights and sneaking around in the desert. So, more accessible than some of the Promethean Age books.
I feel like I'm making random stabs at description without saying very much. I fear this is because I enjoyed the book without loving any part of it. I'll leave it at that. If any of the above sounds like your thing, go for it. ...more
Maia is an indifferent grandson of the Emperor, by an out-of-favor fourth wife, living in exile with his equally out-of-favor cousin. Then, pow, page Maia is an indifferent grandson of the Emperor, by an out-of-favor fourth wife, living in exile with his equally out-of-favor cousin. Then, pow, page one, he gets a message: the entire Imperial family has been killed in an airship crash. The Empire is your hot potato now. Don't drop it.
This is a big fat fantasy novel which is not a big fat *adventure* novel. It is, as you might expect, all politics all the time; national politics, court politics, bureaucratic politics (which is different from court politics). Also elf politics, by definition, as this is an empire of the pointy-eared.
Maia has a long list of disadvantages: hostile established power structures, ambitious figures who resent him, total unfamiliarity with the business of ruling. Plus the likelihood that the old Emperor's accident wasn't an accident. Plus he's mixed-race, goblin and elf, which doesn't help anything. Plus he's never kissed a girl.
He has a short list of advantages. He's got a thorough schooling in court etiquette, forced on him by his cousin, even though neither of them thought he'd ever need it. (The cousin is an ass.) He's got a sense of decency. (Just what an emperor needs, right?) He has compassion, or tries to; his personal faith is something close to Buddhism.
He's also got a damnable sense of duty, and you'll have to decide whether that's an an advantage or not. Arguably Maia's best move would have been to head for the border on page 2 and never come near the Empire again. But he doesn't even *think* the word "abdication" until someone shouts it at him, halfway through the book.
You have to be prepared for names. The names are polysyllabic and they fly by rapidly; the whole social structure of the Empire takes some getting used to. (It was embarrassingly many chapters before I figured out that "Osmer", "Osmin" were titles rather than personal names.) The consolation is that Maia finds it nearly as hard to navigate, so forgetting who's who is in character for everybody.
There are no quests, no magic tokens of kingship, no battles. (A few scuffles.) The book is entirely about how Maia copes with the Empire and how the Empire copes with him, which means it's a branching fractal tree of character stories and very little else. I don't always go for this kind of book, but this one is tremendously readable because all the characters are great. Some of them are nice people, some of them are bastards, all of them have interests and goals and opinions and -- peopleness. Some of them make mistakes. (Maia makes *a lot* of mistakes.)
The book doesn't exactly end; there's no big quest to wrap up. It has the pacing of history, rather than epic fantasy. But a very tiny slice of history; it covers less than a year, and at the end, Maia *still* hasn't kissed a girl. But on the other hand, it doesn't beg for a sequel. Oh, I'm sure the author could write six more if she wanted, and I'd read them. But we have met Maia and learned to admire him, and that is sufficient. ...more
Basically ridiculous as always. The author has managed to tone down his worst verbal tics ("so much more than that") which only makes his second-worstBasically ridiculous as always. The author has managed to tone down his worst verbal tics ("so much more than that") which only makes his second-worst stand out more ("all over the place", "it would only upset you"). ...more
In a city by the sea, a stone-cutter lived with his eight daughters. Not a *poor* stone-cutter -- really the owner of a moderately prosperous stoneyarIn a city by the sea, a stone-cutter lived with his eight daughters. Not a *poor* stone-cutter -- really the owner of a moderately prosperous stoneyard business. But when he dies abruptly, the business affairs are left in a precarious state. Thus Karah, the eldest and most beautiful daughter is sold off to a keiso house; and Nemienne, the middlemost and quietest daughter, apprentices to a mage.
For keiso house, read "geisha house", at least the polite and perhaps bowdlerized definition. Keisos are social hostesses who grace high society with music, dance, art, and service. They do not put out. (Unless you're *extremely* rich, and then there's a formal contract which includes property and child support clauses.)
And then there's the mage's house, which is a high house of shadows and secrets and doors that open to obscure spaces in the middle of the night. My favorite trope!
I haven't read Neumeier's other books, so I don't know if this is her normal style. It is a direct homage to Patricia McKillip, I know that; thus was the book was recommended to me. We get the mage's house in the first chapter, and I'll give damn near anything a chance if it does that well.
Weirdly, the book *does* do the house well. The setting and the language work. The magic works. The characters and the story, those fall flat. That's the long and short of it. Imitating McKillip: not as easy as it looks, and it never looked easy in the first place.
Karah, the prospective keiso, is not interesting at all. The narrative (not just the characters!) makes much of her wonderful innocence and sweetness -- these being properties that might be spoiled if she is exposed to nasty spiteful people, such as the one nasty spiteful girl in the keiso house. I don't think I can express how little I care about that character arc. She should have spent her time learning to pick locks or tell dirty jokes or something. Woulda made her a better conversationalist.
Mage Ankennes starts out as an interesting contradiction. He is a patient and nonjudgemental, if cool, teacher to Nemienne. But he is also involved -- patiently, coolly -- in a plot of extortion and assassination. We see him from two contradictory perspectives, and I was keen to see how that would be resolved. Boring answer: one of them is wrong. There's no story between the student and the master because the master turns out to be the villain of the piece. It's not even a surprise betrayal; the reader suspects it by chapter 3.
Nemienne is not exactly boring, but she is seriously upstaged by Taudde, the bardic sorcerer caught in Ankennes's web. Taudde has choices to make, and if he starts off wrongfootedly with "Sure, I will let myself be blackmailed into murder" there's at least some level of consequence to it. Nemienne falls into things and survives them. We're told that Nemienne wants magic, but we *see* that Taudde *needs* magic, and that's where the story is.
And then there's Leilis, the middle aged failure of a keiso, who... I'm not sure what she's doing in this story at all. We're told that she's cursed -- to touch her is painful. So, okay, why does that matter in the keiso life? People aren't supposed to touch her! There's at least one keiso we meet whose skill is dance; she's never going to become a paid consort because her dancing brings in more money. So...
Look, I'm spending too much time on this. It's supposed to be an intricately jeweled fairy tale. But McKillip can make this sort of thing *make sense*, on some emotional level. Several emotional levels, in fact. The fact that I'm questioning this book's logic means that it's already failed. ...more
An old book (2004! -- relatively early in the urban-fantasy craze). Still very enjoyable, although in retrospect it doesn't quite feel like it's pulliAn old book (2004! -- relatively early in the urban-fantasy craze). Still very enjoyable, although in retrospect it doesn't quite feel like it's pulling in any particular direction. Retrospect includes the fact that the author never wrote a sequel, or any other fiction at all, as far as I know.
We are given an *extremely* motley crew of San Francisco occultists. Motley to the point of dysfunctionality, right? Chloe is a shaman whose spirit animal is the geoduck clam. Maggie-Sue is a misanthropic veterinarian and elementalist. Kristof Arbeiter is a psychopharmacist junkie. Joe Washington is a dead midget voodoo sorcerer. And others, ending with Al Rider, who practices the subtlest art: synaesthetic magic. In his spare time he makes sculptures out of traffic noise and the light reflected from stirred coffee.
The group are undercover operatives in the secret war, the war that underlies our reality, the war between... well, between Seattle and San Diego. It's a philosophical thing, or maybe just a lifestyle thing elevated to the level of philosophy. The war is real, though, and the skirmishes are ugly.
I'm not really communicating the tone, here. The point is, this book is understatedly and consistently hilarious. Violent, flamboyant, full of horrific monsters and fates worse than death -- but funny as heck.
You get one bookful of these characters, plus a bonus monograph on *Zombi diego*, the San Diego Sunbathing Zombie. (I haven't been to San Diego so I don't know how accurate it is.) Enjoy while it lasts. ...more
This series has gone from "great" to "really damn excellent" in three books, and I'm not sure I have anything useful to add to that. Except to pass alThis series has gone from "great" to "really damn excellent" in three books, and I'm not sure I have anything useful to add to that. Except to pass along the author's comment (at a bookstore signing) that the numerals in the titles denote chronological order. Might be handy to know.
Oh, I'll give you the setup. The island nation of Kavekana has been theologically empty ever since its gods swam away to fight in the God Wars. (The other side won.) But empty doesn't mean bankrupt. The priests of Kavekana now construct idols -- non-sentient constructs of soul energy -- suitable for worship on any terms, excellent rates of return on prayer, hedged against financial crises of faith, and immune to audit by any sacrifice revenue service. Imagine Hawaii as the Cayman Islands, only money is souls and magic is money.
Of course no financial instrument can *guarantee* return. Occasionally an idol goes bankrupt. The priestess Kai makes a last-ditch effort to save one, and trips over a web of shady dealings. Simultaneously, a street thief named Izza helps a fugitive witch -- or fugitive something, anyway -- and a poet gets writer's block. All these things are connected, of course.
The magic-as-capitalism-as-everything metaphor is the fizz in this series, but it's the character writing that makes it great. Everybody is awesome. Even the poet, who is a self-important snot, is awesome. Nobody is there just to hold up a length of plot; nobody is stupid. Nobody is entirely trustworthy, because they all want things, and nobody is entirely awful, because they all want things and you can understand why. Nobody is entirely admirable but they're all people. So. ...more
Bob Howard meets vampires. "But Bob, everybody knows vampires don't exist!" Yeah, funny you should say that.
I hardly need to convince you to read thisBob Howard meets vampires. "But Bob, everybody knows vampires don't exist!" Yeah, funny you should say that.
I hardly need to convince you to read this after four previous Laundry novels and a handful of short stories. You're in or you're out. But I'm impressed with how the author has continued to deepen what was, at the beginning, a silly-concept zombies-and-Nazis procedural (with bureaucracy jokes). The jokes are still there -- committee meetings and security theater galore -- but the characters have accumulated real wounds. Both physical and psychical. They accumulate more; this is definitely the descent-into-Hell (or into CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN) part of the series.
Of the last book, I said that Stross had figured out how to bring real-world human evil to the forefront, with the supernatural elements as thematic support. It is now clear that this is a conscious turn for the series. We have vampires, but the notion of vampirism is grounded in several directions: financial shenanigans, addiction, predation (maybe you're a vegetarian; I'm not), and the brand of glamorous sociopathy that we call "being rich". Stross is careful to show us *lots* of vampires, and they are not all evil, all good, enemies of the Laundry, friends of the Laundry, or any other simple category. The vampires are, you know, human.
This being a Laundry novel, it is a spy-agency plot along with everything else. And there are schemes and plots and schemes on top of those. Perhaps too densely packed; the narrator has to go back and explain it all to us, from his post-facto viewpoint, a couple of times. But that's okay. It's not *primarily* a spy-agency plot. It's... I guess it's an episodic character drama set in a goofy-slash-horrific secret-history urban fantasy setting. Which is to say, it's the same model as several different television shows that I'm addicted to. No wonder. ...more
Everyone knows that the big fantasy mistake is to write a sequel to some series that was big twenty years ago. The Seventh Sword trilogy was big in 19Everyone knows that the big fantasy mistake is to write a sequel to some series that was big twenty years ago. The Seventh Sword trilogy was big in 1988, it's still thoroughly readable, and... Dave Duncan has written a sequel that flows as smoothly as if it were 1989. I have no idea how he did it.
The book is set fifteen years after the trilogy. Long enough for Lord Nnanji to conquer half the World in the name of not-barbarianism. Long enough for Wallie Smith / Shonsu to have a bunch of kids and, well, he's still a *great* swordsman but maybe not as fast as he used to be, eh?
Then assassins climb over the wall for both Wallie and Nnanji, separately, on the same night. Nnanji is wounded. Wallie is not, but he knows that wizards are on the move, somewhere out on the River. And the wizards are *supposed* to be good guys now. But then, so are the swordmen.
The fun of this series is the mix of scintillating swordwork, rigid code-of-honor barbarian culture, and the clever twists that people come up with to do the right thing without either violating their cultural standards of honor or getting their guts scintillated. Also: the layer of pure-fun adventure on top of a story that's really about the birth of a civilization.
This fourth book holds up the bar. It concerns the next generation -- Wallie's adopted kid Vixini and Nnanji's heir Addis -- as much as the original characters, so we get both wild younglings and their somewhat-level-headed elders. And it plays scrupulously fair with the god's promise, at the end of the trilogy, that the age of miracles was over.
When I say "scrupulously fair", of course I mean that the god cheats outrageously. But within the rules! Like I said, clever twisting. ...more
It's rare to see someone get the New Weird tone right. It's not about transgressive body squick and creepy monsters (although those never hurt); it's It's rare to see someone get the New Weird tone right. It's not about transgressive body squick and creepy monsters (although those never hurt); it's the modernist tone taken to fantasy. Technologies of magic, bureaucracy of necromancy, financial transactions of the soul. Mixed metaphors that turn unexpectedly literal. Set it in this world and you get Matthew Swift; invent a new world and you have Mieville. (We will discuss Max Gladstone at another time.)
This book gets the tone right, but the story isn't strong enough to support it, I'm afraid. It starts out great: a university of magic (always a win), a library at the university (you've got my attention), petty students tangling with corrupt faculty and sneaking out to get laid. (Not my university experience but I'll accept it as a fantasy motif.)
Post this introduction, however, it gets thin. The protagonists are the heir to the High Throne and a witch. The witch wants to locate a magic book of magicness. The prince wants -- well, it doesn't matter what he wants, because a civil war just started and he's got to play realpolitik.
Nothing wrong with that stuff as a setup; I just don't think the author carries it through very well. The conflicts are all blunt and uninteresting. The witch needs to betray the prince to open the magic book, but she secretly likes him; the prince needs to use technology to save his city, but the technology is evil; the spymaster has a plan... it's characters built to support history, not vice versa.
Then, later, the plot outruns the author's ability to clue me in on what's going on. People scheme, go insane, run around, and betray each other. I didn't understand why. There's a royal ghost. Two royal ghosts? Not sure.
The language is fruitily over-the top. I wound up feeling drowned in synonyms. Well-chosen synonyms, but way overused. Ironically, at one point the witch explains that magic is most powerful when it uses as few words as possible. I think the author failed to re-read that bit. The use of diacritical marks is also over-the-top, although, to be fair, I enjoyed seeing fake language that went beyond apostrophes and Tolkienesque ä/ï/ë. (I'll spare you examples. I think they were in the style of romanized Vietnamese script?)
I think I want to revisit this author in a few years, when he's gotten some more experience. Will skip the rest of this series, try again on his next one. ...more
An exceptionally unconstrained story about old ladies. It's genre writing from an outsider. The author was a surrealist painter (and old lady), and whAn exceptionally unconstrained story about old ladies. It's genre writing from an outsider. The author was a surrealist painter (and old lady), and while her book concerns levitating nuns, werewolves, the Grail, and the end of civilization, it's not fantasy in the post-Tolkien sense.
Actually, I know exactly what tradition this book is in. It's magical surrealism, a genre that you know best as "that stuff Daniel Pinkwater writes". (Pinkwater is of course an attested Dadaist; there's an essay about this.) Pinkwater's stories concern kids falling into a world of absurdity, which they accept wholeheartedly because childhood is continuously absurd. Well, imagine dire old ladies doing the same thing -- second childishness, equally absurd -- and that's _The Hearing Trumpet_.
I don't think I'll bother thumbnailing the plot. As I said, it's got reams of everything, and nothing like a structure you'd expect. I suspect half of it is a direct reflection of whatever the author was cranky about that day (Theosophists and patriarchy?) and whatever she had a kink for (nonconforming women). You take a running leap at the rabbit-hole and see what you get. ...more
Bills itself as a fantasy heist novel, but it's actually post-apocalyptic dystopia with a heist on top. And a great first-chapter hook. I loved the fiBills itself as a fantasy heist novel, but it's actually post-apocalyptic dystopia with a heist on top. And a great first-chapter hook. I loved the first chapter and liked the book pretty well. I don't suppose that's what the author was hoping for when he was gloating over his awesome first chapter. But then, he's got my money.
California is ruled by osteomancers -- wizards who dig up fossil bones and devour their essence. The La Brea Tar Pits were the original California mana-rush, but there's extinct (and non-extinct) magical species all over the world.
(The book does not address how humanity could evolve in a world with krakens and cerberuses and so on, and still wind up with a California that had a Walt Disney in it. This is because it's unaddressable, of course.)
The protagonist is the son of a powerful magician who was killed by the Hierarch of Southern California. If eating the bones of a magical animal is good, see, then eating the bones of a magician is better. The Hierarch is the top of the food chain. It makes for a really *vivid* setting, rather Deviant's Palace -- yes, I can compare anything to Tim Powers -- but somewhat stomach-churning in the details. It's an autocracy of greed-mad cannibal monsters, unpleasant through and through. Putting a good-guy osteomancer-thief through amusing hijinks isn't quite enough of a distraction.
I always like convincing magic in my fantasy, and this is convincing, all right. Osteomancers operate by smell, above any other sense; that's not an angle I run into often. (A TV mini-series would be a challenge.) The characters are appropriately motley and the plot is appropriately twisty. Agendas everywhere. I just don't really want to go back. ...more
Devi Morris is an ambitious young mercenary; she works for a top-notch armored company. She's resigning, because she's got her sights set on *the* topDevi Morris is an ambitious young mercenary; she works for a top-notch armored company. She's resigning, because she's got her sights set on *the* top armored company -- the private military guard of the Sacred Kings of Paradox. (Her stellar nation is a religious monarchy. The book doesn't really get into why.)
You don't just apply for a job on the Devastators' web site, so Devi decides to sign on with a crazy Terran merchant named Caldswell. That is, he doesn't *look* crazy... but his cargo hauler gets shot up, shot down, boarded by lizard people, and generally battered five times as often as anybody else. The word is that surviving a tour of duty with Caldswell looks *really good* on your resume. Devi is a determined young woman -- or, depending on your perspective, she can't resist bone-stupidly dangerous shortcuts -- so it's the merchant's life for her.
We thus have a zippy little space adventure novel, which is fine. The ship is crewed by eccentrics who owe more than a few inspirational drinks to _Firefly_, with some _Star Wars_ for a chaser. In powered infantry suits. There are monsters, there are lizard people, there are secrets and lies. (No points for guessing that Crazy Captain Caldswell is more than he seems.) It's a fast read but satisfying for what it is.
Unfortunately, I have two problems with the book; or rather one problem twice. This is SF-romance, built around the trope of "he was such a hottie that my brain stopped working". I never had much truck with that cliche, and the book's romance doesn't have a lot more going for it than to follow the numbers. Devi is presented as a smart and pragmatic career woman, but as soon as the ship's cook walks on stage, pow, stupid. Trouble follows.
And then there's the bit at the end. (I must get somewhat spoilery.) Because of Trouble reasons, Devi winds up with her memory partially wiped. And yes, it is "to protect her", although the author sets it up so that all the options are terrible. Still: bad taste left in everybody's mouth.
Leaving aside whether the *characters* are justified in this mindwipe -- I'm sure there's a big ugly fannish debate about that -- I went completely sour on the *story* at that point. I just sat through the whole meet-and-fall-in-stupid-love chapter of the series. Now you want me to read book two, where they have to fall in stupid love *again*, only with unexplained repressed angst? Sorry. There's supposed to be a stage of the romance where they're actually in a relationship. I hear it's a pretty rewarding stage. Buckle down and write it.
I suppose they must manage it in book 3, but I've lost too much momentum to get back on the ride. ...more
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