What I read in June
Fiction
Kin by Holly Black. Rue is a smart punk kid with a hot singer boyfriend and a close-knit group of friends. But then her mother disappears, her father is blamed, and she starts seeing people with wings and antlers...
There's not a lot new to this story, but I like the way Black tells it. Her teen characters always feel believable to me, and I appreciate the inclusion of subcultures and characters of color--they make the world feel more real. Plus, the art is great. I'm looking forward to the next book.
Indiscretion by Jude Morgan. Caroline Fortune is a woman of good sense and good humor, both of which she's needed in order to survive. Her father lost what little wealth he had years ago, and now the debt collectors have grown quite severe. Although Caro has better experience with gambling hells than genteel parlors, her father nevertheless manages to secure her a place with a cantankerous old lady. Despite years of experience fending for herself, Caro is still young, and she finds that shifting into the quieter mode of Society rather difficult. Moreover, people keep taking her into their confidence, quite against her protests. When scandals start popping up, how will she protect her reputation?
I really enjoyed this novel. First and foremost, Caroline and the love interest (who I won't name, for fear of spoiling the pleasure of discovering who he is) are unique, well-thought-out characters. Their virtues and their foibles both make complete sense, and their conversations are very entertaining. The secondary characters have distinct voices and personalities, and neither they nor the plot is cribbed from Austen (unlike the majority of Regencies written today).
But like Austen, this is a book that uses a great deal of satire. It's a true pleasure to read an author with both wit and something to say with it. I'm really looking forward to reading more books by Morgan.
Lord Iverbrook's Heir by Carola Dunn. Dunn is one of my favorite regency writers, so I had high hopes for this one. Alas, the pacing is uneven and the plot requires far too much suspension of disbelief. The basic tale is that Lord Iverbrook returns from his estates in Jamaica* to find his brother dead and his nephew his heir. But young boy is in the charge of an aunt, which Lord Iverbrook thinks utterly inappropriate. He goes in search of the aunt with the intention of forcing her to give the boy up. But of course, he almost immediately falls in love with her instead. They are kept apart by a number of increasingly hard to believe circumstances--how many drastic misunderstandings could possibly occur between two people so otherwise sensible and well-suited? Plus, the villains are rather too silly and two-dimensional--I never felt anyone was in any danger. Overall, a fun few hours spent in Regency England, but nothing to truly recommend.
*Iverbrook freed his slaves and is coming back to the UK to convince the government to stand strong against the slave-trade. Although I appreciated the reminder that money in a colonial power is not blood-free, that subplot only takes up a page or two, and exists mainly to show off Iverbrook as a hero and the servants as prejudiced bumpkins.
Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell. Buckell's writing is exuberant, his plot choices audacious. There is a fantastic energy to his books, as though anything might happen. Each book has been better than the last, without ever losing the adrenaline rush or interesting world-building with which Buckell first burst onto the scene.
For generations, a race of mind-controlling aliens calling themselves the Benevolent Satrapi enslaved the human race. Small bands fought back, and finally defeated their overlords in Ragamuffin. But the victory against the Satrapi did not mean an end to all pain--humans have once again splintered into a number of warring factions. The humans-only League of Human Affairs and the inclusive Ragamuffins have fought to a tense stand-still, while smaller cultures like the totally democractic Aelions (who decide everything--everything by popular vote) or the Aztec-descended Yatapek, carve out what little they can for themselves.
When the story begins, a man has just jumped out of a spaceship and is falling toward a planet. This is Pepper--one of the most notorious of the Ragamuffins' Mongoose Men. He's gruff, he's well-nigh immortal, and he's spent hundreds of years travelling the stars, fighting anything and everything that menaces humanity. And after he burns through the atmosphere and crash-lands on a city, he finds that his suspicions were correct. But this time, humans aren't the only prey--all sentient life is in danger.
This is a fantastic adventure, told with a brisk, tight energy. But there's far more to it than just space monsters: there's a lot in here about privilege, pragmatism, sacrifice, being part of a community...It reads like a cross between Watt's Blindsight and an X-men comic, with all the good points of both.
Soulless by Gail Carriger. Miss Alexia Tarabotti is too old, too plain, and far too assertive to hope for a husband. But Alexia isn't just any spinster--she literally lacks a soul, and as such has a natural defense against anything supernatural. Vampires and werewolves turn human when they touch her (and revert back as soon as they stop touching). In Carriger's London, a vampire and a werewolf advise the Queen, there are night sessions of the Houses of Lords and Commons so the supernatural can attend, and vampires can just go down to the blood-brothels to get a legal sup of blood, being "soulless" is quite a useful defense indeed. Alexia is swept into a whirl of intrigue, and only her allies (her flamboyant vamp friend Lord Akeldama and her love interest, the werewolf alpha Lord Maccon), her quick wits, and her skill with a parasol can save her.
I enjoyed reading this. But once I put it down, I started to feel annoyed. The problem is, none of this story holds together. The Victorian society Carriger posits reads like any other romance-novel-version of Victorian London. Apparently, having vampires and werewolves living as part of the ton for the last three hundred years has had no impact whatsoever on the development of society. Oh sure, there are a few comments about how the supernatural creatures have sped up technological progress--aluminum as fashionable jewelry, odd balloons as a method of transport. But it's all window-dressing. They still get around via horse-and-carriage, their medical knowledge is as basic as can be, they're only just figuring out gas lighting, they don't even have telegraphs yet. And all the societal rules are the same! A big deal is made about how vamps and weres are so socially powerful and fashionable--and yet their mores aren't part of Victorian society at all. Humans don't ape the dominance displays of the wolves, or powder their faces to look like vamps, or show any awareness at all that they're surrounded by predators that think of them as food. The Church of England isn't even mentioned, but it apparently has no problem with supernatural beings that transcend death and live on blood. The book gives one neither the feel of Victorian England nor the feel of a magical city. It's just all thrown together, and it makes no sense!
And neither do the characters. They work like coin-operated figureines, performing whatever romance cliche they're supposed to, one trick after another. Here's how it goes:
girl and boy meet!
they bicker!
each leaves and reflects on how hot and bothered they are by the other! plot device throws them together!
he shuts her up with a masterful kiss!
her sexuality is awakened!
(interlude with secondary characters to maintain pretence that love interests have friends outside of their relationship)
oh no danger!
forced by plot to be naked together!
defeat evil together!
married!
And scene. It's frustrating, because this book amused me while I read it, but esprit d'escalier is its downfall. Carriger throws a lot of cute windowdressing and nearly-funny one-liners into this book, and if her writing were a smidge more clever or a bit more thoughtful, I'd have enjoyed this immensely. As it is, I feel like I bit into a scrumptious looking pastry and got nothing but air.
Styx and Stones by Carola Dunn.Daisy Dalrymple, a well-bred, earnest, and deeply inquisitive journalist in the 1930s, has discovered yet another mystery. People in her sister's village have been getting cruel anonymous notes about their secret foibles*. People get increasingly tense, until at last, someone is killed. Daisy and her fiancee Alec, a Scotland Yard Inspector, investigate.
I liked this book a bit better than the last few in the Dalrymple series. All the suspects are interesting, and Dunn is good at creating the cosy yet claustrophobic atmosphere of a small English town. The problem is that these books are too short for much character development or plot. I am tired of mysteries that are solved, not through clues or people skills or anything, but purely through the wrong-doer confessing at the most convenient moment. Dissatisfying!
*Spoiler, highlight to read: one of the notes accuses a man of abusing his wife. Horribly enough, it's clear that he really is physically hurting her, but nothing is done about it. It's never mentioned again. More time is spent investigating whether or not a shopkeeper overcharges for cheese (seriously). If Daisy is supposedly such a great people-watcher, why didn't she notice this? And if she's supposedly so very kind, why didn't she intervene? Did this section get edited out, or what?
Non-Fiction
Friends of the Family: The English Home and Its Guardians, 1850-1940 by George Belhmer. A fantastic (and dense) study of "family values" and the public programs aimed at it in Victorian England.
My favorite quotes:
"we persist in eulogizing the way we never were...our present family 'crisis' is not so much about the need for thicker doors and higher walls as about constructing a different sort of community--one in which the private and public spheres are treated as symbiotic rather than antagonistic."
"Although it is convenient to locate social salvation in a bygone era of inviolate family values, this era defies discovery...at no time was the English home seen as sufficient unto itself."
"Those weary of the politics of panic may find some solace in recalling that social disintegration, like beauty, remains very much in the eye of the beholder."
Sissinghurst, an Unfinished History by Adam Nicolson. Vita Sackville-West spent much of her life and fortune rehabilitating Sissinghurst, a Tudor-era castle in Kent. Upon her death, her son Nigel Nicolson turned the castle over to the National Trust, who took on much of the admin work and expense of up-keep. The Nicolsons were allowed to live at Sissinghurst free of charge for two generations. When Nigel's son Adam became the in-resident Nicolson, he was fired with the idea of making Sissinghurst into a working farm, as it was in his youth. After years of meetings and negotiation, the National Trust refused to go for it. So Nicolson scaled back the scope of the project (no cattle or hop fields, for instance) and tried to get an organic vegetable patch for the Sissinghurst restaurant. At this, he succeeded. And then he wrote a whole book about his doings, generously padded with the history of Sissinghurst through the ages (well-done, and very interesting), and his memories of his grandmother Vita (which struck me as a bit uncouth).
When Nicolson writes about other people and places, he is good--when writing about himself, he is horrid. He exhibits little idea of how to edit his own experiences: I don't need to read about every damn meeting he went to. He seems rather self-aggrandizing, and certainly tone-deaf. I was interested by the first half of this book, but heaved a great sigh of relief when I was done with it.