Books read recently
It's been too long since my lattest review of books ^_^
so there we go :
The Phoenix Guard and Five Hundred Years After by Stephen Brust
I meant to read something by Brust for a while because I'd seen him mentionned as a good fantasy writer here and there, so I picked these books without knowing what I'd have. A few pages into the first one, I was frowning and thinking "You know, this looks pretty familiar". A dozens of pages into it I was thinking "This looks really familiar, I wonder if there'll be a yellow horse" (there wasn't). A hundred pages within the first book I was too busy being amused by the fact Brust had made Porthos into a woman. In retrospect, the titles should have sent warning bells but I was exactly expecting a big Dumas ripp off into a fantasy novel. I mean, would you?
All right, as a far as an overly blatant Three Musketeers hommage go, this one is pretty good. Beyond the fact that the cast of characters can be mapped out almost exactly to Dumas', the plot is new and well built enough to be fun. There's a lot of swashbuckling, main characters acting in ridiculous way for strict imperatives of honour, plots and counter plots by mysterious, sinister individuals, duels, stools, etc. it's all very entertaining in a no-braining, adventure story way. The writing style has a few idiosyncracies meant to sort-of copy 19th French style (in English, oh my, my head!) which will either make you throw the book in frustration or deeply amuse you (or both). On the flip side, it's not by any mean deep books. The psychology of the characters could fit on a napking and vaguely feel out of the logic of a Roleplaying game. If you're more into Cyrano than the Three Musketeers, you might want to pass this one.
Scavenger Trilogy (Shadow, Pattern, Memory) by KJ Parker
As previously mentionned, Parker is my new favourite writer. After that first good surprise, I tried to find other books by her and found this trilogy. Let me warn you here, while it is an undoubtly brillant story, well written, very well plotted and characterized, these are not books that everyone will like. It's a dark story, for one, one with a lot of cynical and gallow humour and a gritty atmosphere of "anything you try to do will not change anything to the big picture". These books make Bakker's Prince of Nothing serie look like optimistic and upbeat books. Really.
The story : Poldarn wakes up among many corpses and realizes he had no idea of who he is, why he's here, or anything about his past. As he makes his way into a rather desolate world where most landscapes have been destroyed to furnish the smith industry, where the population fear attacks by mysterious pirates came out of nowhere, and where the official goverment appears very much corrupt and possibly behind the attacks, Poldarn realizes a couple of things :
- one of thing he's very good at appears to be killing
- anytime he meets someone who looks like they know him, they either run away with an equivalent of "'oh, not you again", or they try to kill him (at which point he's forced to kill them instead)
- there's a prophecy about a amnesiac god who will bring out the end of the world, and it's possible he is this god.
- he could be the most evil man in the world, or at least, in the running shortlist.
One of the fun thing about this book is that while some of the stake can be somewhat high (involving plots and events affecting things at a continental scale), it always feel incredibly low key. All of the various factions feel equally selfish and petty regardless of their role and goals. Poldarn often find himself among the low and gritty, trying to live his life in peace (which he never quite succeeds at). Actually while he's very good at it when he tried to do something like killing and crime, every single good deeds he attempt to do engenders even worst consequences. Parker describes her world in a very realistic way, too, in terms of medieval/early renaissance crafts and economies (especially things related to smithery).
My favourite part was the magical elements. While very few and sparse, they really creared, when used, an effective atmosphere of creepiness and gloom. The themes of crows is just brillantly woven. Some of the deamscape and the way the early enigmas find their resolutions are exceedingly powerful as well.
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
I thought I ought to read a little bit of SF, so I picked last year Hugo price. I have a hard time deciding what to think of this work. While I could hardly say it's a bad book, I did feel somewhat disapointed and bored by it. There is nonetheless a few brillant ideas throughout it, and the book is overall very well structured. The story centers around a trio of characters, two are the twin brother and sister from a very posh family and their childhood much less wealthy friend who is the narrator, throughout their adolescence and adult life; as the earth is cut off from the rest of the universe by a strange barrier and the relative time on earth starts to run radically faster - to the point the sun should destroy the earth in a little 30 earth-years.
One of the thing I felt was that the story was way too diluted and strectched over the book, that it might have worked better as a novella. The SF ideas are good, but not good enough to fill the book.
There's some real work at making the psychology of the characters interesting and while some of it worked to me - I liked the friendship between the narrator and the male twin with all the acute awareness of their class difference it entailed - some didn't work at all to me - mainly the on and off again romance between the narrator and the female twin.
Another weakness felt to me to be the description of the societal changement of the world in this situation of soon-to-be appocalypse. I'm not sure why, I guess it felt too "American" to me.
Still there were some interesting ideas, and the ending was especially rewarding.
Forgotten Beast of Eld by Patricia McKillip
This is a classic and for very good reason. McKillip's writing style of fairy-tale at its best. There's little about which that I can say apart that the writing is gorgeous, the characters loveable, and the story logic deeply wonderful. I adore the way she tackled the theme of 'if you love somebody set them freedt' Nothing about it is easy but it's an enchantment to read.
Solstice Wood by Patricia McKillip
Less awe-inducing than Forgotten Beast of Eld but still a good story. This one is a rather classical story of changelings and homecoming to the country which hides secrets and magic behind the apparently boring networks of family and neighbours. I especially liked how the magic was described, feeling very real and atmospheric behind a very normal screen. A very sweet read.
A Feast of Souls by CS Friedman
While Friedman's one of my favourite writer, this is one of my least favourite story by her. On the first place it feels too classical, too much of your everyday, cookie-cutter fantasy. The world is straighout feodal without any flavour. There's an old threat of dangerous creature that people thought were extinct but might not be. The little of Friedman's good ideas went into the magical system, and even there I was disapointed. First there is witchery, which allow great power but at the dear cost of seconds, days, or even years of their own life. Then there's the powerful and paranoid (all male) Magisters, who use sorcery without any cost to themselves and become immortal in the process. The idea of magic at the cost of self-sacrifice is is interesting, as is the equivalent method of the Magisters, and there's some nice tibits in the way the Magister society functions as well. However the way the magic works itself, it's possibilities and limitations are never extremely really and feel, again, quite flavourless. While the characters are not badly made, they never fully finish to come alive to me either. I find myself caring very little for any of them.
A not-bad but disapointing book because it comes from a writer I've come to expect much, much better from.
so there we go :
The Phoenix Guard and Five Hundred Years After by Stephen Brust
I meant to read something by Brust for a while because I'd seen him mentionned as a good fantasy writer here and there, so I picked these books without knowing what I'd have. A few pages into the first one, I was frowning and thinking "You know, this looks pretty familiar". A dozens of pages into it I was thinking "This looks really familiar, I wonder if there'll be a yellow horse" (there wasn't). A hundred pages within the first book I was too busy being amused by the fact Brust had made Porthos into a woman. In retrospect, the titles should have sent warning bells but I was exactly expecting a big Dumas ripp off into a fantasy novel. I mean, would you?
All right, as a far as an overly blatant Three Musketeers hommage go, this one is pretty good. Beyond the fact that the cast of characters can be mapped out almost exactly to Dumas', the plot is new and well built enough to be fun. There's a lot of swashbuckling, main characters acting in ridiculous way for strict imperatives of honour, plots and counter plots by mysterious, sinister individuals, duels, stools, etc. it's all very entertaining in a no-braining, adventure story way. The writing style has a few idiosyncracies meant to sort-of copy 19th French style (in English, oh my, my head!) which will either make you throw the book in frustration or deeply amuse you (or both). On the flip side, it's not by any mean deep books. The psychology of the characters could fit on a napking and vaguely feel out of the logic of a Roleplaying game. If you're more into Cyrano than the Three Musketeers, you might want to pass this one.
Scavenger Trilogy (Shadow, Pattern, Memory) by KJ Parker
As previously mentionned, Parker is my new favourite writer. After that first good surprise, I tried to find other books by her and found this trilogy. Let me warn you here, while it is an undoubtly brillant story, well written, very well plotted and characterized, these are not books that everyone will like. It's a dark story, for one, one with a lot of cynical and gallow humour and a gritty atmosphere of "anything you try to do will not change anything to the big picture". These books make Bakker's Prince of Nothing serie look like optimistic and upbeat books. Really.
The story : Poldarn wakes up among many corpses and realizes he had no idea of who he is, why he's here, or anything about his past. As he makes his way into a rather desolate world where most landscapes have been destroyed to furnish the smith industry, where the population fear attacks by mysterious pirates came out of nowhere, and where the official goverment appears very much corrupt and possibly behind the attacks, Poldarn realizes a couple of things :
- one of thing he's very good at appears to be killing
- anytime he meets someone who looks like they know him, they either run away with an equivalent of "'oh, not you again", or they try to kill him (at which point he's forced to kill them instead)
- there's a prophecy about a amnesiac god who will bring out the end of the world, and it's possible he is this god.
- he could be the most evil man in the world, or at least, in the running shortlist.
One of the fun thing about this book is that while some of the stake can be somewhat high (involving plots and events affecting things at a continental scale), it always feel incredibly low key. All of the various factions feel equally selfish and petty regardless of their role and goals. Poldarn often find himself among the low and gritty, trying to live his life in peace (which he never quite succeeds at). Actually while he's very good at it when he tried to do something like killing and crime, every single good deeds he attempt to do engenders even worst consequences. Parker describes her world in a very realistic way, too, in terms of medieval/early renaissance crafts and economies (especially things related to smithery).
My favourite part was the magical elements. While very few and sparse, they really creared, when used, an effective atmosphere of creepiness and gloom. The themes of crows is just brillantly woven. Some of the deamscape and the way the early enigmas find their resolutions are exceedingly powerful as well.
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
I thought I ought to read a little bit of SF, so I picked last year Hugo price. I have a hard time deciding what to think of this work. While I could hardly say it's a bad book, I did feel somewhat disapointed and bored by it. There is nonetheless a few brillant ideas throughout it, and the book is overall very well structured. The story centers around a trio of characters, two are the twin brother and sister from a very posh family and their childhood much less wealthy friend who is the narrator, throughout their adolescence and adult life; as the earth is cut off from the rest of the universe by a strange barrier and the relative time on earth starts to run radically faster - to the point the sun should destroy the earth in a little 30 earth-years.
One of the thing I felt was that the story was way too diluted and strectched over the book, that it might have worked better as a novella. The SF ideas are good, but not good enough to fill the book.
There's some real work at making the psychology of the characters interesting and while some of it worked to me - I liked the friendship between the narrator and the male twin with all the acute awareness of their class difference it entailed - some didn't work at all to me - mainly the on and off again romance between the narrator and the female twin.
Another weakness felt to me to be the description of the societal changement of the world in this situation of soon-to-be appocalypse. I'm not sure why, I guess it felt too "American" to me.
Still there were some interesting ideas, and the ending was especially rewarding.
Forgotten Beast of Eld by Patricia McKillip
This is a classic and for very good reason. McKillip's writing style of fairy-tale at its best. There's little about which that I can say apart that the writing is gorgeous, the characters loveable, and the story logic deeply wonderful. I adore the way she tackled the theme of 'if you love somebody set them freedt' Nothing about it is easy but it's an enchantment to read.
Solstice Wood by Patricia McKillip
Less awe-inducing than Forgotten Beast of Eld but still a good story. This one is a rather classical story of changelings and homecoming to the country which hides secrets and magic behind the apparently boring networks of family and neighbours. I especially liked how the magic was described, feeling very real and atmospheric behind a very normal screen. A very sweet read.
A Feast of Souls by CS Friedman
While Friedman's one of my favourite writer, this is one of my least favourite story by her. On the first place it feels too classical, too much of your everyday, cookie-cutter fantasy. The world is straighout feodal without any flavour. There's an old threat of dangerous creature that people thought were extinct but might not be. The little of Friedman's good ideas went into the magical system, and even there I was disapointed. First there is witchery, which allow great power but at the dear cost of seconds, days, or even years of their own life. Then there's the powerful and paranoid (all male) Magisters, who use sorcery without any cost to themselves and become immortal in the process. The idea of magic at the cost of self-sacrifice is is interesting, as is the equivalent method of the Magisters, and there's some nice tibits in the way the Magister society functions as well. However the way the magic works itself, it's possibilities and limitations are never extremely really and feel, again, quite flavourless. While the characters are not badly made, they never fully finish to come alive to me either. I find myself caring very little for any of them.
A not-bad but disapointing book because it comes from a writer I've come to expect much, much better from.