Escapism (November and December Reading)
Jhegaala (Steven Brust) (2007): Vlad Taltos visits his homeland while on the run from the Organization. This wasn't the book I expected (road trip with personal development and witty Jhereg). If it developed the "transformation" theme associated with the title, it was the transformation of the village Vlad visits, which I wasn't as invested in. The window dressing was very nice - reasonably interesting secondary characters, plot that didn't completely implode when prodded with a logic-stick - but I built up some anticipation based on the time-line skip between Phoenix and Athyra which wasn't fulfilled here.
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) (1992): Reread. Space opera. The only countermeasure to a threat engulfing all high FTL civilizations is carried with a handful of sapients on one ship, the Out of Band II, and two children at the bottom of the FTL zone.
As usual, memory plays tricks. The "Net of a Thousand Lies" so strongly conjures usenet, my memory recalls more of it than is actually present ("hexapodia as key insight"), overlaying my subscriptions circa 199. I also forgot the horrific deaths of the Straumer children, what a brat Johanna was (in those circumstances? It was understandable brattiness), what a prick Pham Nuwen was, and how all of this came together in a riveting space opera. The "fun space opera" bit stuck. I think I had more thoughts on this, but they have been subsumed into...
The Children of the Sky (Vernor Vinge) (2011): Sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep; Tines' World after the Straumers and Out of Band II.
This book wins on raw entertainment. It's coherently written in clear prose about a fairly black and white moral dilemma. People are good or villains or misguided, and the misguided are redeemed. This is not a subtle novel. (One could argue that Nevil's wickedness is influenced by Recent Events, but that's not particularly subtle.)
The subtlety might be in setting this up as either a fairly standalone follow-up or a middle novel on its way to trilogy. Jo Walton's review notes it's a smaller-scale story than Fire. I'd add, it's also smaller-scale than A Deepness in the Sky. So Children diverges a but from the tone of Vinge's other "Zone novels". This and several loose threads make me suspect there might be a sequel in a few years. At the end of the book, Ravna hasn't discovered Bili's Zone "temblor" (the Blight is coming! Handwave something about Lone Authority in Fiction here), and Jefri's decided on a risky mission to Best Hope. (The human schism is a giant loose end.) Jefri and Ravna's final scene feels like part of the setup, even if I'm personally not to keen on the romance.
There's other pointers. The "cuttlefish" might be a cameo, if not for the other pieces maneuvering. In that light they look like setup for Skrode interaction with humans and Tines. Joanna's musings on the intelligence of the Tropical Choir, Timor's medical issues, and Amdi's developing maturity seem to be set-ups as well. I could go either way on Pilgrim (oh Pilgrim!); I suspect some serious death there, sadly. But Tines World and the Blight fleet were left in a sufficiently unsettled state that I can say I enjoyed this, and might enjoy further adventures in a future novel.
Amdijefri was my favorite part of Fire; Joanna and Ravna got to be rock stars in Children. This is more about personal taste than writing quality, I think. I am not a fan of traveling circus troupes, but I'm a sucker for tough girls and politics.
A Deepness in the Sky (Vernor Vinge) (1999): Reread; Pham Nuwen's Adventures in the Slowness. The first time I read this I missed the setup for the translators' revolt, so this time I tried to read closely for those clues.
I don't habitually appreciate that Vinge is kind of awesome at aliens, but the unreliable narration in Deepness really sent that up: it's implied the
"spider" sections are Trixia's romantizations, but despite that gloss the spiders come across as disturbing. The Emergency (ha. Ha. Ha.) is classic space opera black-hat. I could wish their evil was more nuanced, but this is already a third-omniscient seven hundred page generation novel with a cast of dozens, give or take hundreds, so perhaps it's best Vinge didn't get even more ambitious. Also, I suspect some of the Focus stuff - and who hasn't wished for better adderol once in a while?) - would fall apart if poked much longer.
What surprised me this time were the flashing yet graphic implications of Ritser Brugel's nasty implied sadism (nasty because it's doubtful he was adhering to the GGG guidelines) and Tomas Nau's hands-on participation in Kira Lisolet's death. In some ways it reminded me of Banks's Consider Phlebas, which is also space opera and which I greatly disliked. The writing is such I was able to gloss those on the first read.
At first, I hadn't planned to reread this, since I was pretty sure the library didn't have a paperback edition, and I had no plans to stuff a 700-page hardcover into my commute bag. (The commute bag is a Timbuk2 Classic Messenger, size small, awesome as long as the train reading is trade or mass market paperback.) So I was pleased to discover that Deepness benefited from being at the end of the alphabet during the last bookcase cull, and was on my shelf in paperback.
That was November. In December I started two nonfiction books, but didn't finish them; flipped through several Union-Alliance novels, and reread Heavy Time (1991) and Hellburner (1992) cover to cover. Heavy Time, about independent asteroid miners versus a large, corrupt, and bureaucratic corporation, has a resolution that is even more out of left field than most of Cherryh's novels, which is I guess what happens when your protagonists high cards are a salvaged miner-ship and Ben Pollard, part-time hacker and full-time pain in the neck. Hellburner is comfort reading for me. The rest of my December reading time was taken up with professional journals.
Numbers game: 6 total finished. 2 new, 4 reread; 6 fiction.
This entry cross-posted at http://ase.dreamwidth.org/575559.html, where there are
comments.
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge) (1992): Reread. Space opera. The only countermeasure to a threat engulfing all high FTL civilizations is carried with a handful of sapients on one ship, the Out of Band II, and two children at the bottom of the FTL zone.
As usual, memory plays tricks. The "Net of a Thousand Lies" so strongly conjures usenet, my memory recalls more of it than is actually present ("hexapodia as key insight"), overlaying my subscriptions circa 199. I also forgot the horrific deaths of the Straumer children, what a brat Johanna was (in those circumstances? It was understandable brattiness), what a prick Pham Nuwen was, and how all of this came together in a riveting space opera. The "fun space opera" bit stuck. I think I had more thoughts on this, but they have been subsumed into...
The Children of the Sky (Vernor Vinge) (2011): Sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep; Tines' World after the Straumers and Out of Band II.
This book wins on raw entertainment. It's coherently written in clear prose about a fairly black and white moral dilemma. People are good or villains or misguided, and the misguided are redeemed. This is not a subtle novel. (One could argue that Nevil's wickedness is influenced by Recent Events, but that's not particularly subtle.)
The subtlety might be in setting this up as either a fairly standalone follow-up or a middle novel on its way to trilogy. Jo Walton's review notes it's a smaller-scale story than Fire. I'd add, it's also smaller-scale than A Deepness in the Sky. So Children diverges a but from the tone of Vinge's other "Zone novels". This and several loose threads make me suspect there might be a sequel in a few years. At the end of the book, Ravna hasn't discovered Bili's Zone "temblor" (the Blight is coming! Handwave something about Lone Authority in Fiction here), and Jefri's decided on a risky mission to Best Hope. (The human schism is a giant loose end.) Jefri and Ravna's final scene feels like part of the setup, even if I'm personally not to keen on the romance.
There's other pointers. The "cuttlefish" might be a cameo, if not for the other pieces maneuvering. In that light they look like setup for Skrode interaction with humans and Tines. Joanna's musings on the intelligence of the Tropical Choir, Timor's medical issues, and Amdi's developing maturity seem to be set-ups as well. I could go either way on Pilgrim (oh Pilgrim!); I suspect some serious death there, sadly. But Tines World and the Blight fleet were left in a sufficiently unsettled state that I can say I enjoyed this, and might enjoy further adventures in a future novel.
Amdijefri was my favorite part of Fire; Joanna and Ravna got to be rock stars in Children. This is more about personal taste than writing quality, I think. I am not a fan of traveling circus troupes, but I'm a sucker for tough girls and politics.
A Deepness in the Sky (Vernor Vinge) (1999): Reread; Pham Nuwen's Adventures in the Slowness. The first time I read this I missed the setup for the translators' revolt, so this time I tried to read closely for those clues.
I don't habitually appreciate that Vinge is kind of awesome at aliens, but the unreliable narration in Deepness really sent that up: it's implied the
"spider" sections are Trixia's romantizations, but despite that gloss the spiders come across as disturbing. The Emergency (ha. Ha. Ha.) is classic space opera black-hat. I could wish their evil was more nuanced, but this is already a third-omniscient seven hundred page generation novel with a cast of dozens, give or take hundreds, so perhaps it's best Vinge didn't get even more ambitious. Also, I suspect some of the Focus stuff - and who hasn't wished for better adderol once in a while?) - would fall apart if poked much longer.
What surprised me this time were the flashing yet graphic implications of Ritser Brugel's nasty implied sadism (nasty because it's doubtful he was adhering to the GGG guidelines) and Tomas Nau's hands-on participation in Kira Lisolet's death. In some ways it reminded me of Banks's Consider Phlebas, which is also space opera and which I greatly disliked. The writing is such I was able to gloss those on the first read.
At first, I hadn't planned to reread this, since I was pretty sure the library didn't have a paperback edition, and I had no plans to stuff a 700-page hardcover into my commute bag. (The commute bag is a Timbuk2 Classic Messenger, size small, awesome as long as the train reading is trade or mass market paperback.) So I was pleased to discover that Deepness benefited from being at the end of the alphabet during the last bookcase cull, and was on my shelf in paperback.
That was November. In December I started two nonfiction books, but didn't finish them; flipped through several Union-Alliance novels, and reread Heavy Time (1991) and Hellburner (1992) cover to cover. Heavy Time, about independent asteroid miners versus a large, corrupt, and bureaucratic corporation, has a resolution that is even more out of left field than most of Cherryh's novels, which is I guess what happens when your protagonists high cards are a salvaged miner-ship and Ben Pollard, part-time hacker and full-time pain in the neck. Hellburner is comfort reading for me. The rest of my December reading time was taken up with professional journals.
Numbers game: 6 total finished. 2 new, 4 reread; 6 fiction.
This entry cross-posted at http://ase.dreamwidth.org/575559.html, where there are
comments.