Reading roundup
I forgot to mention with the previous post, but, as is obvious from the numbering, I've bypassed my goal of 52 books for the year (which is pretty far above where I got last year), and even my previous record of 54, although that's not really fair, probably, as back then I wasn't keeping track of every book I read and was trying to reconstruct the number later. But, anyway, that's pretty cool that I'm at over 60 with over a month to go before the end of the year.
57. Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere -- I did not realize Neverwhere was as recently written as 1996. For some reason, I thought it had been around for much longer than that, definitely predating Good Omens. But... huh. I guess not. I also didn't realize the book was the novelization of a TV series (co-written by Gaiman). Huh once again. It didn't blow me away the way American Gods did -- not quite the scope and spread of that one -- but I did see in it many of the things that I loved about American Gods -- the glimpsed, unexplained bits of wonder, permeating everyday life, the sense of enormous things hiding in the darkness, unexpected reveals and double-crosses. (I totally didn't see Hunter's betrayal coming, for instance, and was rather crushed by it, because, Hunter!)
I liked Richard as a protagonist -- he's ordinary enough to be comical, but a decent guy, and his victories were for the most part as believable as his fears and fumbling. I think he was drawn as too broadly comic in a few spots (like when Door sends him off to get curry), but I loved the other comic touches, like his trolls and his hapless relationship with Jessica, and pretty much everything else. I can't say that I was particularly taken by any of the other major characters -- Door is too busy running and doing and occasionally being a cipher to be a full-blown character (though I have a feeling I would've liked to meet her father), and the Marquis de Carabas doesn't hold a whole lot of interest for me, and Hunter... I really liked Hunter (from the moment she appeared and Richard pegged her as a hooker -- I had a pretty good hunch she was going to turn out to be the legendary Hunter), but the way it all played out left all that sort of in jumbles. I like the *idea* of the angel Islington, but I think the final scene with the reveal was something treading a very fine line and fell on just the wrong side of that line for it to be effective for me. It kind of lost me when the angel screamed (though I very much like the resolution). Mister Croup and Vandemar... are very much not the sort of characters I want to read about, so while I think objectively their scenes were probably very well done, they made me cringe and that's not the sort of reaction I seek out from a book. I did like Old Bailey and Lamia (with her pop culture references: "I do not eat... curry" and the Wizard of Oz ref) and foxglove eyes. And also, I have a totally inexplicable fondness for Clarence, Jessica's assistant. Possibly it's due to him being associated with quoting "Charge of the Light Brigade"). Also, I just really like the general idea of rat-speakers, which I think no-one will be surprised by.
Just before I started reading Neverwhere, officialgaiman commented on the whole "Dumbledore is gay" thing, which included this bit:
Neverwhere has two gay characters who are Out, as far as the book is concerned, and one major character who is gay but it isn't mentioned, simply because that character was one of many people in that book who don't have any sexual or romantic entanglements during the story. So it's irrelevant.
I'm assuming that the two who are out are Hunter and Serpentine of the Seven Sisters, as they clearly seem to have had a thing going on in the past, and there are more references for Hunter. There was also someone who said that Clarence (jessica's assistant) was described as gay... but I can't find that in the book. Either I'm not looking in the right place, or they were misremembering, or it was in the TV show and not the book?
Most people responding to the RSS feed on LJ seem to think that the "major character who is gay but it isn't mentioned" is the Marquis de Carabas, which I tend to agree with, because there are not that many major characters beyond Richard and Door (who do end up in a romantic situation, or more than one), Hunter (who is presumably Out), Islington (who is presumably aesexual, on account of being an angel and apparently sexless), and Mr Croup and Vandemar about whom I don't even want to think in this context.
(And, not related to Neverwhere or Gaiman, but since I still think of Gaiman and Pterry together, I have to have Pterry's reaction to the "Dumbledore is gay" revelation here, too (courtesy of yoodi):
Rincewind would like to annouce that he is gay. Since he never gets any, it really doesn't make much difference which any he doesn't get, and at least he might get a brief reputation for social awareness:-)
- from here
Moving on.)
Knowing that Neverwhere is Gaiman's first solo novel I noticed a couple of things that I might not have noticed otherwise, and that I might be imagining anyway -- a couple of turns of phrase that looked Pratchettian (especially around Old Bailey), and also some weird uses of colons that either disappeared later in the book or I just stopped noticing them. There is also this thing he does where the narration seems to be tight-third-person and then suddenly has a little fillip of omniscient in the end, like: "He tried talking to a pretty fair-haired girl, who laughed, and shook her head, and said something in a language Richard thought might have been Italian, but was actually Finnish."
And I found this line which I know I saw quoted somewhere, possibly by Neil himself, in comparison with an older metaphor that referenced the black-and-white snow on old television sets: "The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel."
I'm greatly amused by the garbage hawker's cry at the first market: "Rubbish! Junk! Garbage! Trash! Offal! Debris! Come and get it! Nothing whole or undamaged! Crap, tripe, and useless piles of shit. You know you want it. And by the Abbot of the Black Friars: "'You are all very stupid people,' he told them graciously, 'and you do not know anything at all.'" (I rather like the abbot in general, actually.) Also, greatly amused by the thing living in the Gap on the Underground.
I thought Marquis de Carabas coming to market (as a corpse) was rather neat, but all the subsequent mentions of how Richard and Hunter were just feet away from his body and didn't notice it were more heavy-handed than necessary.
58. Cassandra Clare, City of Bones (Book 1 of The Mortal Instruments Trilogy) -- it is really weird to read a fist novel by an author I "know" (not personally, certainly, but through her LJ and fic). (cassandraclaire is actually how I discovered LJ -- somebody on TheOneRing.net linked to the LotR Very Secret Diaries in her LJ, and once I ran out of VSD's I followed the trail back to epicyclical and FA and read the Draco Trilogy, what there was of it at the time, and then followed it along as it was updated through to the end. Though I must say that the later chapters and the ending didn't really captivate me as much as the earlier ones.) Mostly it was weird because I kept coming across bits of the book that felt familiar -- scenes, characters, quips -- and there was this whole sense of slightly smudged deja vu. All that aside, though: the book is not a work of genius or anything, not even a "hey, that's a fresh new idea!" kind of book -- but for it's still an exciting story engagingly told. I read the ~500 page hardcover (though it must be said that the font's really big and the spacing's really wide) in 2.5 days, which pretty much meant that I spent all my free time reading it, and stayed up late on a work night to finish. The last book I stayed up late to finish was Deathly Hallows, so that's pretty good.
The things that I liked about the Draco Trilogy are the things that I like here, too -- cool characters (and since they're her own now, I guess no one can cry OOC) and neat banter and funny moments that crop up during even the darkest stretches of plot.
Clary is OK as a heroine, somebody I did feel like rooting for -- but I felt like her inner voice was sort of bimodal. Some of the things she thought I could see a 15-year-old girl with artistic interests actually thinking -- but others felt like just a neat simile the author didn't feel like giving up even though it threw me out of the story a bit to wonder whether/why Clary would think of something that way. Maybe it's a first novel thing, trying to fit everything in. I really kind of adore Simon, have no strong feelings on Isabelle, though I'm curious to see how her relationship with Clary develops in later books. Jace... well, the surface is attractively shiny, and the "don't care if I live or die" streak could be interesting, but I have no actual interest in Jace. Too smooth, too celebrated, too beloved by everyone except Simon who is, probably, just jealous. The part at the end, where he briefly appears as less of a golden boy, was intriguing, but too brief, and he was too passive throughout it for it to actually amount to anything. Also, I have to say that I find enigmatic Alec a more interesting character than Jace or even, possibly, adorable Simon -- and I find his romantic troubles more interesting than the Clary love triangle. I certainly hope we get to see more of him in subsequent books.
As for grown-ups, I do find myself rather liking Luke, and am intrigued by the character of Hodge -- traitors who have something interesting, and possibly justified, behind their betrayal are quite interesting characters, and the fact that he tried to save Alec's life and kept Clary hidden -- I really do wonder where his character arc leads. Magnus Bane (and how could that be anything other than a name?) was quite over-the-top, but still entertaining, and how can one not like a character who quotes Oscar Wilde? I must say, Valentine is an interesting character, or has got the potential to be one -- especially with the "lets his children bathe in spaghetti" bit -- but I'm not really seeing the bits and pieces of him we glimpse through Clary and through other characters' memories fit together. It makes a kind of sense, since we are talking about a person who was changed by several massive events -- the death of his father and the "desertion" of his wife -- as well as being, in all likelihood, a psychopath. But I still don't have a fix on him, which is annoying, because he could be interesting if done right. Also, I'm looking forward to meeting the adult Lightwoods in the next book, and hope they turn out to be as morally questionable as Luke and others seem to believe them to be.
The plot... I know Eragon was panned for ripping off Star Wars, and I haven't read anything about how City of Bones was received, but, hah... I haven't actually seen the "Luke, I'm your father" plot done any *closer* to actual Star Wars. I mean, the protagonist turns out to be the bad guy's child -- that crops up a lot. But, the protagonist turns out to be the bad guy's child, has a sibling they didn't know about, and has meanwhile accidentally managed to get involved romantically with said sibling -- that's rather... more rare. The thing I can't get over is the Star Wars reference in relation to the Simon/Clary/Jace love triangle: Simon says something like that he always wanted when he said "I love you" to a girl for her to answer "I know" like Leia did to Han Solo. Is that meant to be some really audacious foreshadowing... or what?
Speaking of foreshadowing, and the plot: there were quite a few twists, though of course I saw most of them coming either way from the beginning or at least a couple of pages ahead of Clary. That Clary was actually Valentine's daughter? Pretty much from the moment the timeframe of Valentine's disapperance was mentiong (15 years ago). The Luke was telling Clary to stay away and pretending indifference to Valentine's men? Yeah. That Clary's mother was a Shadowhunter? As soon as Simon (rather incongruously)
mentioned the scars. Simon's interrupted declaration of love back in the beginning? Um, yes. (And I was getting an Alec/Jace vibe before Clary came to that conclusion, but I figure that was just fandom, and echoes of DT.) I saw the "Raphael is a vampire" revelation coming when Clary saw his scar. Just about the only things I hadn't seen were: Hodge's betrayal (which I do find quite plausible and thought that bit, at least, was rather nicely foreshadowed), that the werewolves were on Clary's side in the raid on the vampire hotel, and the survival of Valentine's son, though I clued on to the fact that Jace was it when one of Valentine's henchmen started saying something at Clary's mother's bedside. What I totally hadn't expected -- and still don't fully buy -- was that Valentine had been hiding in plain sight for 10 years as Michael Wayland. Surely someone would have noticed? Or how was it accomplished? With magic? Oh, and of course the hiding place of the cup -- I missed that too, but I think it was nicely done with the Tarot deck. But generally, seeing all this coming didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the book, and also (which is stranger) didn't make me think of Clary as an idiot for missing all these things. I guess I was willing to cut her some slack, because she was going through a pretty tough time and also wasn't super-perceptive about other things, so it didn't really feel incongruous. Also, I totally called that Hodge's raven was named Hugo because of Hugin, one of Odin's ravens, and was exceptionally pleased with that. Because I like ravens and I like Odin. And also, I like how pretentious it makes Valentine in retrospect.
I have to comment on world-building separately. It didn't really feel cohesive, and I think that's because there was too much piled on top of each other. Shadowhunters vs demons, with the Clave, the Covenant, the Cup, the suitably creepy Silent Brothers, all that stuff -- OK, that feels like a sufficiently cohesive world structure. But when you throw in the Downworlders -- fairies and werewolves and vampires and warlocks, and various permutations thereof -- now you're just getting weird. (Also, I don't quite understand how demons and humans are supposed to breed, given that demons are mostly non-corporeal? Are we talking actual reproduction, or the mingling of blood like what produced the Shadowhunters?) The Downworlder-set scenes -- Magnus's party, Taki's -- were quite a lot of fun, but felt like they had been tacked on from a different urban fantasy. You can have your own magical demon police system AND vampires AND faeries -- but I think you have to build up to it gradually -- and *purposefully* -- say, the way Butcher does it in The Dresden Files, where the first several books focus sequentially on different "Downworlder" creatures against a constant framework of the main characters' magical background. In City of Bones, though, it just feels like "oh, urban fantasy -- needs more werewolves."
Another kind of minor bit of worldbuilding that bothered me for some reason: Valentine's last name is Morgenstern, which is Germanic, but everybody else's lastnames in Idris seem to be made up of English words -- Lightwood, Wayland, Starkweather, Fairchild, Blackwell, Graymark, even Pangborn, I guess. Leaving aside for the moment the question of why a country that was nestled between Germany and France would have English surnames, it's rather weird to have Valentine's last name be one that really doesn't belong. I mean, it makes sense to give your villain an unusual name, but... culturally, how is it justified? Also, unrelated to the above, it felt weird to me that the teen Shadowhunters would be ignorant of things like Dungeons & Dragons and other pop culture references while using slang like "Awesome!"
Also, and I guess this belongs under worldbuilding more than anywhere else, there were patches that felt infodumpy in that "as you know Bob" way. Not *really* bad or anything, but noticeable. I don't know where it fits in, really, but I just wanted to say somewhere that while City of Bones really didn't break any new ground thematically, I liked the tried-and-true theme of longing for Idris, that shows up in different ways with Clary's mother, Luke, Jace, Hodge, and even Clary, in her dreams.
I saw a couple of things that looked like shout-outs to cassandraclaire friends -- the positively-mentioned-in-passing girl at St Xavier's named Jaida, the sighting of "a girl about [Clary's] age with a smoothly shaved bald head leaning against a brown-skinned boy with dreadlocks, his face adorned with a dozen piercings" who also has a "clouded" eye -- i.e. Val and Luis from Holly Black's Valiant, and the VSD-fans shout-out button "Still not king" (which was also featured in Valiant), and also the use of "asshat" as an insult. That's all quite neat!
And then there was the whole hawk story which seemed very... familiar. Actually, the first mention of falcon by Jace, several chapters before he tells the story, made me think of the hawk story on DT. The story itself seemed to come rather out of nowhere -- surely nobody in their right mind would actually try to tell this to someone as a bedtime story, no matter what messages they were tyring to impart. But it was weird, too, because here Jace's father was supposed to be this wonderful person and all of a sudden he was Lucius Malfoy... which didn't compute, though I guess it could be seen as a kind of foreshadowing for the final reveal. It was still rather weird. And I was definitely thinking "Oh, look, the hawk story from DT" rather than "How profound!" or "Oh, poor Jace!" (And also the whole "Mortal Instruments" concept itself, which I think is a pretty good echo of the "Four Worthy Objects" in DT, though I only vaguely remember that whole plot. But then again, that's like every Grail story ever, and Deathly Hallows, so, not quite the same thing as repeating a whole scene.)
So, all in all, I'm definitely looking forward to the next book, because I like the characters, and it's bound to be an exciting read, and also we're pretty much out of [redacted for spoilers] plot by now, so it's got to be something new.
59. Jim Butcher, Cursor's Fury, Book 3 of the Codex Alera -- sequel to Academ's Fury and Furies of Calderon. It took me a long time to get into this book. I think at least partially to blame is the fact that about half if not more of the early chapters action has to do with Ehren and the spy, whom I never liked, and Amara, who's always irritated me. Once Max joined Tavi, and especially once they were with the Legion, things really picked up. And there was an added step up in enjoyment once Kitai made her appearance. I really do like Kitai.
First of all, let me say that I totally called Tavi being the son of the Princeps and Isana around the middle of Book 1, and was right about Tavi being a nickname for Octavian -- well, sort of right, I thought it was "Octavius", but, of course it would be Octavian. The thing I still don't understand, though, in the wake of this "revelation" is what Isana's problem with Gaius is. Is she just afraid that Gaius would take Tavi away from her? Or does she actually have something against him?
I have two big problems with these books, and I think they have been increasing, actually. The first is the narration. The loose third/kinda omniscient POV with flowery language isn't doing it for me. The "Tavi realized he was not a child any longer, would never be a child again" moments are much too tell rather than show, and thus extremely annoying. I strongly suspect I would like these books a lot more if they were written in the same sort of casual first-person narration (adjusted for a different world and era) as the Dresden Files. After all, I do enjoy the bits of dialogue quite a bit. It's all the overly descriptive, overly dramatic stuff in between that bugs me.
The second problem is that the real bad guys (Kalara, Max's stepmother, Sarl) are ridiculously, teeth-gnashingly evil. The real good guys (Amara, Bernard, Lady Placida) are disgustingly good and pure and brimming with integrity. Tavi and Max narrowly avoid this by being young and occasionally still stupid, but the adults. Dear god, what a bunch of Starks. And the thing is, apparently they're in the right. I applaud Butcher for having morally gray characters in the books -- the formidable Invidia Aquitane, Fidelias the turncoat, Aldrick ex Gladius, my favorite, even Gaius himself. But it does no good if the sweet and pure morality is shown to continuously triumph over the moral gray, because if all the ills of the world can be cured with "sunshine and puppies" (to borrow a phrase from House), then the morally gray are *stupid* for not realizing that. There is this conversation between Invidia Aquitane and Amara, where Amara is being all idealistic and says, "You are very wrong" -- to which Invidia respons, "You are very young." I'm totally siding with Invidia here, and the fact that the plot seems to support Amara's worldview comes across as irritatingly naive.
Those are my favorite characters, the mercenaries, the turncoats. I really want to know what happened between Araris and Aldrick to drive the latter off. I'm sure things are headed for another confrontation between them, so presumably we'll find out. (Also... why does Aldrick think he killed Araris, if Araris was supposed to have died in First Calderon, presumably? I find it hard to believe that Aldrick would've been fighting on the side of the Marat. Or had someone been watercrafted up to look like Araris so it wouldn't seem suspicious Septimus didn't have his singulare, and Aldrick actually killed that guy, whoever it was? Or is this all simply explained by a continuity error?) Meanwhile, I was glad to see Aldrick have more of a role in this book than in the second one, and that he and Bernard have established a kind of mutual respect. I still think I like the Lady Aquitane best of the assorted High Lords, though Ceres and his family were nice, too. And I was glad to see Fidelias (and though I wondered where he was, it didn't occur to me where he was hiding. So does that mean him being in the tent was not a coincidence? And does that mean he was spying on the Lady Antillus? Aware of the impending attack? I guess it raises a bunch of questions and I'm not sure if there are answers in the text or inconsistencies.) I also developed a fondness for Demos the pirate/mercenary.
From the designated good guys, I still like Max, and Ehren has grown on me, in the standard bearer role. I really like Kitai ("I wanted a horse...."). I continue to like Bernard just fine, and I liked all the assorted legionaires and Knights Pisces (hee!), which is to be expected because I like army guys in general. I still dislike Isana very strongly. Tying herself up with dying Araris/Fade for days when Ceres was in need of every healer and refusing to let him go when he asked her to let him die -- how is this a positive action? Yes it has a positive outcome because they realize they have loved each other (*bleargh!*), but, god! woman -- have some common sense! Seems almost like treason to me, in wartime. Also, I totally suspected that Isana had done something to Tavi to hide his furies (well done! cripple your child for his own perceived good!), but I'm glad that it wasn't really permanent. Speaking of Tavi's emerging furycrafting abilities -- so is the deal that both he and Kitai are able to work furies when they're together? Or even when they're apart? Or what? Moving on, Amara still irritates me with her unbelievable idealism. Causing the accidents -- and deaths -- of the Knights Aeris who were in pursuit of the coach was not a fight, it was murder? Bzuh?! What kind of spy and battle veteran would really think that way? And it took me a while to figure out what my problem with Lady Placida was (though given that she appears and immediately starts extolling Isana (see above) didn't help), and I think I know what it is now -- if there is a High Lord and Lady who are so good, so noble, so self-sacrificing (Placidus backed off from helping Gaius not because Kalarus had his wife as a hostage, but because if Kalarus killed, furies would be set loose and kill lots of his people) -- that rather undermines the atmosphere of squabbling High Lords, all of whom are at best a "lesser evil" if weighed against the still-quite-unscrupulous reign of Gaius.
The plot was exciting enough once it got going, and had enough surprising reversals, and switching between three storylines, two of which (Tavi's stand at the bridge and the hostage rescue) were interesting worked pretty well to keep me wanting to read. I do have some problems with the action, though. Nobody dies. None of the good guys, even the "fish" who have names, like Schultz. I really enjoyed all the description of furycrafting used in training and combat, but the limitations that are supposed to apply didn't seem to apply to the good guys. Like Amara venturing into the red clouds -- she should've DIED, given how quickly those tentacle things had struck before, and the deadly effect of them even after contact. And the fact that she continued to be able to fly when the Knights Aeris in pursuit were all exhausted. Really hard to suspend disbelief when things like that keep happening. The other thing that totally had me going "You've got to be kidding me!" was the lightning strike that left Tavi in command. Um, yeah. It kind of almost rivals Merlin's sudden advancement in the Courts of Chaos for the "well, isn't *that* convenient" factor. And, Tavi has shown a gift for strategy before, but the way he was super-brilliant at Legion command having never done it... was a bit suspicious. I'm afraid he is kind of turning into a Gary-Stu, which is annoying.
I didn't see the double switch at the end coming, though I do think it was neatly done, because I can see someone being able to deduce the strategem from Odiana's presence. I didn't quite believe Tavi deducing Kitai's presence, but they're linked in some mystical way, so I'm willing to hand it to him. Some of Tavi's battle ruses were quite neat -- at least, while they worked not-quite-perfectly. The furycrafted lens at the end was rather cool... but the sheer power and devastation it caused taxed my disbelief quite a lot. I liked Tavi enlisting the Madam as Tribune Logistica and her dancers for earthcrafting power (And the following conversation between Max and the madam: "But she's just--" "She's just a... what? Which word did you have in mind? Whore, perhaps? Madam? Woman?" Max met her eyes. "Civilian," he said quietly.")
I liked the way the Canim were handled. They are dangerous and frightening and alien but not really inhuman, and they have enough of dogs/wolves in them that, monsters as they are, they are still kind of sympathetic. I like the fractional baring of the throat as a bow substitute, for example. And I am definitely curious to see what chased them over the sea. The vord? Or some new, even more dire threat?
I miss Harry Dresden's clever narration and memorable one-lines. There are a few cool lines in this, one when Bernard insults the Senator and one that, oddly enough, is delivered by Isana, re: Max: "I don't deny his willingness to lay down his life. It is his aptitude for it that concerns me." But on the whole, it's much less snappy narration.
I'll continue with the series, which I wasn't sure about at first, when I was floundering in the early chapters of the book. But I hope Tavi doesn't become any more Stu-ified, and I hope the moral grayness is reasserted rather than being weakened, as I felt it was considerably in this latest book.
60. Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent -- Definitely not one of my favorite Discworld novels, alas. I'd thought I'd read this before, but I definitely haven't. It felt way too long for the amount of plot it actually contained. Way too much Rincewind, and the Wizards were in sufficient concentration to star wearing on me, even though I still enjoyed Ponder Stibbons and Ridcully (especially his proposed "student exchange program"). Maybe I would've gotten more of a kick out of it if I had actually been to Australia, even though I think I did get a lot of the references/jokes. I was amused by the Crocodile Dundee reference and the drag queens and actually giggled at the Bursar surfing and concluding with "Hooray. My feet are wet. What a nice forest. Time for tea." I adored the concept of a god of evolution (and his creations, especially the cockroach as pinnacle of creation -- which I totally saw coming), but much of the other stuff wasn't as funny/incisive as usual, and the "deep" stuff didn't feel as profound as it usually does. Other stuff I found interesting/amusing: the mention of Archchancellor Weatherwax (do we know how he's related to Granny? Ancestor? Distant cousin?). And the following quotes: "A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy and suddenly thousands of people who haven't even read it are dying because the ones who did haven't got the joke." and "Once upon a time, the plural of 'wizard' was 'war'". Not much of a haul for a PTerry book, really.
61. Sandman: Season of Mists (Neil Gaiman) -- This is only the second graphic novel I've ever read, and the only one I read voluntarily. (The other one was Maus, which we read for my dystopian lit class -- it of Richard III, A Handmaid's Tale, The Waste Land, Tank Girl, and Pink Floyd's The Wall -- and while I enjoyed it, in a slightly disturbed way, it didn't really sell me on the genre.) It's... really difficult for me. The visual component doesn't do much for me, to be honest. There were a few images I liked, and a number more that I appreciated, and I liked the various graphic frills -- different fonts, the graphical representations of Chaos and Order, stuff like that. But it felt like the medium was constraining a number of other things. There is certainly some memorable dialogue in there. But the angel's monologue falls short, because it has to be represented in speech bubbles. And the plot... I guess maybe I shouldn't measure it by the standards of a novel's plot, but the things that happen happen so *quickly*, after such a lot of build-up. The pacing's totally different, and feels really weird to me. Also, except for those with very memorable speech bubbles (i.e. Dream and Delirium), I have a hard time remembering who said what, because the images and the speech bubbles aren't really integrated in my brain, I guess.
There were a couple of sequences I really, really liked. Loki, his wife, and the snake -- I've known that story since childhood, and it made a hell of a lasting impression on me, but the touches Gaiman adds are very, very impressive. Again, the art of that section I could take or leave. The snake was nice, but I rather hate Loki's appearance (he reminds me of Hades in that terrible Disney hercules movie), and the woman, also not something I particularly like. The other one was Lucifer and Breschau ("I heard. You have killed a number of people who by now would be long-since dead anyway. So what?") Again, not so much the art, though it was suitably gruesome, but the dialogue is impressive. As is Lucifer's whole speech while renouncing Hell. I also liked him quoting Milton, but more for the reference than the punch of the actual line. (And speaking of references, I loved seeing a Tolkien book in the Library of Dreams.)
Which is not to say that I didn't like the art at all. I actually thought the demons were very well done, for the most part. What I think was Night (the one with mouths all over her body), and Azazel, and the half-faced demon girl (Mazikeen). Also, dewinged!Lucifer, and the angels in general. I was, frankly, unprepared for the level of darkness, and violence in these. Yeah, demons in hell, OK, that's rather over the top, so OK. The episode that really shook me was the one with the dead boys at school, both graphically and verbally. Torture, murder, pus, rape... it's got a rather cheery ending for what actually happens, but, dude...
I liked the characters too, on the whole. I liked Lucifer (especially once he stopped talking in the royal we), and the Faerie guy, and I kind of adore Jemmy of Chaos (such an awesome idea! She reminds me a little bit of Ivy the Archive in The Dresden Files, only the opposite). And I have a soft spot for Thor, and do still like Loki and Odin, but I've always liked them, in all of their incarnations, so it's more residual than stand-alone.
I didn't particularly care for Dream. Actually, of all the Endless, I think I find Desire the most interesting. Do the different volumes of Sandman focus on one Endless at a time, like this one does with Dream? And if so, would anyone care to rec me some Desire-centric ones? Also, an unrelated question: What's with Dream's weird helm? What is that even supposed to be?
Also, the little blurbs about the inkers, editors, etc. at the end, written by Gaiman, I guess, were very nearly as much fun as the rest of it.
62. Justine Larbalestier, Magic or Madness -- I have to say, that's got to be the least enticing fantasy title I've ever encountered. I couldn't even say what about it feels so dull to me, but it just does. It sounds like the title of some third-rate TV special, rather than one of a not-bad YA novel. I first heard of Justine Larbalestier via either epicyclical or Holly Black's journals, and when I saw the book at the library I decided to check it out (in spite of the lame title. Ok, I'm done talking about that, promise.) The blurbs laud it for an original system of magic, but... that felt pretty ordinary to me. I don't think there's anything particularly special about the "use it or lose it" (in that other sense) thing it's got going. The "use it up and then you die" part has more potential, but it looks like Rain will probably "fix" that somehow, which feels somewhat of a cheat.
The plot felt very slow to get going. You get to a third of the book, at least, without anything really *happening*, other than Rain's general dread of Esmeralda (nod to Granny Weatherwax? anybody know if Larbalestier is a Pratchett fan?) Even once it got going it was fairly slow. I didn't mind the diversions and snowball fights and trooping around New York, that was all fun -- but the amount of stuff that actually *happens* in this book could be described in five sentences or less. As far as characters: I don't know that Reason's first-person narration adds a lot to the story, and I generally dislike mixing first-person chapters with tight third chapters, but I got used to it pretty quickly and it didn't bother me. But I just don't find Reason's inner voice very interesting. Her obsessions with the "Fibs" struck me as kind of fake. I mean, it's great having a math savant for a protagonist, but it seemed rather disconnected from the rest of her personality, from the way she thinks overall... Pastede on yey, you know? I didn't find Jay-Tee particularly likeable or sympathetic, though I feel for her *situation* of course. Sarafina sounds like she would've been a really cool character, but of course she spends the book mostly catatonic. Jason Blake is too tranparently and unredeemably evil, Esmeralda is a cipher, and Danny wasn't onscreen long enough to form any opinions. Really, the only character I connected with at all was Tom. I love his dorky, bubbly speech, his obsession with clothes and fabric (for a straight guy, no less!), his doomed battle against diner order choices (funniest and best part of the book, IMO), his crush on Reason, painful blushing -- everything about him, really. I want to adopt him.
I thought Reason's Fahrenheit/Celsius confusion over temperature was cute, and not particularly belabored, but I quickly got tired of Jay-Tee's "You said 'mum', you talk funny!" confusion over dialect differences. Surely somebody who grew up in New York would be familiar with the concept of different slang and would be able to, you know, deduce things from context? I mean, the American Harry Potter readers managed, eventually, right? Also, why does Reason suddenly know what snowballs are? Or does she just decide to call them that because it's a fairly intuitive name for it?
On a totally random note, this book made me crave pizza very much (and why couldn't Reason get pineapple on her pizza? Doesn't the joint serve Hawaiian? Or is that a California thing, and you can't find it in New York?). But the description of Reason eating caviar, and the little bubbles popping in her mouth -- ewwww! I hate caviar, and really didn't need to read a graphic description of its consumption in a book... :Q
I do like that the book ends with a number of questions still not clear -- the feathers under Reason's pillow, the missing letters -- on a rather ambiguous note. This gives me hope for the next book, which I will certainly check out if the opportunity presents itself, and hope that more stuff happens in that one.
57. Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere -- I did not realize Neverwhere was as recently written as 1996. For some reason, I thought it had been around for much longer than that, definitely predating Good Omens. But... huh. I guess not. I also didn't realize the book was the novelization of a TV series (co-written by Gaiman). Huh once again. It didn't blow me away the way American Gods did -- not quite the scope and spread of that one -- but I did see in it many of the things that I loved about American Gods -- the glimpsed, unexplained bits of wonder, permeating everyday life, the sense of enormous things hiding in the darkness, unexpected reveals and double-crosses. (I totally didn't see Hunter's betrayal coming, for instance, and was rather crushed by it, because, Hunter!)
I liked Richard as a protagonist -- he's ordinary enough to be comical, but a decent guy, and his victories were for the most part as believable as his fears and fumbling. I think he was drawn as too broadly comic in a few spots (like when Door sends him off to get curry), but I loved the other comic touches, like his trolls and his hapless relationship with Jessica, and pretty much everything else. I can't say that I was particularly taken by any of the other major characters -- Door is too busy running and doing and occasionally being a cipher to be a full-blown character (though I have a feeling I would've liked to meet her father), and the Marquis de Carabas doesn't hold a whole lot of interest for me, and Hunter... I really liked Hunter (from the moment she appeared and Richard pegged her as a hooker -- I had a pretty good hunch she was going to turn out to be the legendary Hunter), but the way it all played out left all that sort of in jumbles. I like the *idea* of the angel Islington, but I think the final scene with the reveal was something treading a very fine line and fell on just the wrong side of that line for it to be effective for me. It kind of lost me when the angel screamed (though I very much like the resolution). Mister Croup and Vandemar... are very much not the sort of characters I want to read about, so while I think objectively their scenes were probably very well done, they made me cringe and that's not the sort of reaction I seek out from a book. I did like Old Bailey and Lamia (with her pop culture references: "I do not eat... curry" and the Wizard of Oz ref) and foxglove eyes. And also, I have a totally inexplicable fondness for Clarence, Jessica's assistant. Possibly it's due to him being associated with quoting "Charge of the Light Brigade"). Also, I just really like the general idea of rat-speakers, which I think no-one will be surprised by.
Just before I started reading Neverwhere, officialgaiman commented on the whole "Dumbledore is gay" thing, which included this bit:
Neverwhere has two gay characters who are Out, as far as the book is concerned, and one major character who is gay but it isn't mentioned, simply because that character was one of many people in that book who don't have any sexual or romantic entanglements during the story. So it's irrelevant.
I'm assuming that the two who are out are Hunter and Serpentine of the Seven Sisters, as they clearly seem to have had a thing going on in the past, and there are more references for Hunter. There was also someone who said that Clarence (jessica's assistant) was described as gay... but I can't find that in the book. Either I'm not looking in the right place, or they were misremembering, or it was in the TV show and not the book?
Most people responding to the RSS feed on LJ seem to think that the "major character who is gay but it isn't mentioned" is the Marquis de Carabas, which I tend to agree with, because there are not that many major characters beyond Richard and Door (who do end up in a romantic situation, or more than one), Hunter (who is presumably Out), Islington (who is presumably aesexual, on account of being an angel and apparently sexless), and Mr Croup and Vandemar about whom I don't even want to think in this context.
(And, not related to Neverwhere or Gaiman, but since I still think of Gaiman and Pterry together, I have to have Pterry's reaction to the "Dumbledore is gay" revelation here, too (courtesy of yoodi):
Rincewind would like to annouce that he is gay. Since he never gets any, it really doesn't make much difference which any he doesn't get, and at least he might get a brief reputation for social awareness:-)
- from here
Moving on.)
Knowing that Neverwhere is Gaiman's first solo novel I noticed a couple of things that I might not have noticed otherwise, and that I might be imagining anyway -- a couple of turns of phrase that looked Pratchettian (especially around Old Bailey), and also some weird uses of colons that either disappeared later in the book or I just stopped noticing them. There is also this thing he does where the narration seems to be tight-third-person and then suddenly has a little fillip of omniscient in the end, like: "He tried talking to a pretty fair-haired girl, who laughed, and shook her head, and said something in a language Richard thought might have been Italian, but was actually Finnish."
And I found this line which I know I saw quoted somewhere, possibly by Neil himself, in comparison with an older metaphor that referenced the black-and-white snow on old television sets: "The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel."
I'm greatly amused by the garbage hawker's cry at the first market: "Rubbish! Junk! Garbage! Trash! Offal! Debris! Come and get it! Nothing whole or undamaged! Crap, tripe, and useless piles of shit. You know you want it. And by the Abbot of the Black Friars: "'You are all very stupid people,' he told them graciously, 'and you do not know anything at all.'" (I rather like the abbot in general, actually.) Also, greatly amused by the thing living in the Gap on the Underground.
I thought Marquis de Carabas coming to market (as a corpse) was rather neat, but all the subsequent mentions of how Richard and Hunter were just feet away from his body and didn't notice it were more heavy-handed than necessary.
58. Cassandra Clare, City of Bones (Book 1 of The Mortal Instruments Trilogy) -- it is really weird to read a fist novel by an author I "know" (not personally, certainly, but through her LJ and fic). (cassandraclaire is actually how I discovered LJ -- somebody on TheOneRing.net linked to the LotR Very Secret Diaries in her LJ, and once I ran out of VSD's I followed the trail back to epicyclical and FA and read the Draco Trilogy, what there was of it at the time, and then followed it along as it was updated through to the end. Though I must say that the later chapters and the ending didn't really captivate me as much as the earlier ones.) Mostly it was weird because I kept coming across bits of the book that felt familiar -- scenes, characters, quips -- and there was this whole sense of slightly smudged deja vu. All that aside, though: the book is not a work of genius or anything, not even a "hey, that's a fresh new idea!" kind of book -- but for it's still an exciting story engagingly told. I read the ~500 page hardcover (though it must be said that the font's really big and the spacing's really wide) in 2.5 days, which pretty much meant that I spent all my free time reading it, and stayed up late on a work night to finish. The last book I stayed up late to finish was Deathly Hallows, so that's pretty good.
The things that I liked about the Draco Trilogy are the things that I like here, too -- cool characters (and since they're her own now, I guess no one can cry OOC) and neat banter and funny moments that crop up during even the darkest stretches of plot.
Clary is OK as a heroine, somebody I did feel like rooting for -- but I felt like her inner voice was sort of bimodal. Some of the things she thought I could see a 15-year-old girl with artistic interests actually thinking -- but others felt like just a neat simile the author didn't feel like giving up even though it threw me out of the story a bit to wonder whether/why Clary would think of something that way. Maybe it's a first novel thing, trying to fit everything in. I really kind of adore Simon, have no strong feelings on Isabelle, though I'm curious to see how her relationship with Clary develops in later books. Jace... well, the surface is attractively shiny, and the "don't care if I live or die" streak could be interesting, but I have no actual interest in Jace. Too smooth, too celebrated, too beloved by everyone except Simon who is, probably, just jealous. The part at the end, where he briefly appears as less of a golden boy, was intriguing, but too brief, and he was too passive throughout it for it to actually amount to anything. Also, I have to say that I find enigmatic Alec a more interesting character than Jace or even, possibly, adorable Simon -- and I find his romantic troubles more interesting than the Clary love triangle. I certainly hope we get to see more of him in subsequent books.
As for grown-ups, I do find myself rather liking Luke, and am intrigued by the character of Hodge -- traitors who have something interesting, and possibly justified, behind their betrayal are quite interesting characters, and the fact that he tried to save Alec's life and kept Clary hidden -- I really do wonder where his character arc leads. Magnus Bane (and how could that be anything other than a name?) was quite over-the-top, but still entertaining, and how can one not like a character who quotes Oscar Wilde? I must say, Valentine is an interesting character, or has got the potential to be one -- especially with the "lets his children bathe in spaghetti" bit -- but I'm not really seeing the bits and pieces of him we glimpse through Clary and through other characters' memories fit together. It makes a kind of sense, since we are talking about a person who was changed by several massive events -- the death of his father and the "desertion" of his wife -- as well as being, in all likelihood, a psychopath. But I still don't have a fix on him, which is annoying, because he could be interesting if done right. Also, I'm looking forward to meeting the adult Lightwoods in the next book, and hope they turn out to be as morally questionable as Luke and others seem to believe them to be.
The plot... I know Eragon was panned for ripping off Star Wars, and I haven't read anything about how City of Bones was received, but, hah... I haven't actually seen the "Luke, I'm your father" plot done any *closer* to actual Star Wars. I mean, the protagonist turns out to be the bad guy's child -- that crops up a lot. But, the protagonist turns out to be the bad guy's child, has a sibling they didn't know about, and has meanwhile accidentally managed to get involved romantically with said sibling -- that's rather... more rare. The thing I can't get over is the Star Wars reference in relation to the Simon/Clary/Jace love triangle: Simon says something like that he always wanted when he said "I love you" to a girl for her to answer "I know" like Leia did to Han Solo. Is that meant to be some really audacious foreshadowing... or what?
Speaking of foreshadowing, and the plot: there were quite a few twists, though of course I saw most of them coming either way from the beginning or at least a couple of pages ahead of Clary. That Clary was actually Valentine's daughter? Pretty much from the moment the timeframe of Valentine's disapperance was mentiong (15 years ago). The Luke was telling Clary to stay away and pretending indifference to Valentine's men? Yeah. That Clary's mother was a Shadowhunter? As soon as Simon (rather incongruously)
mentioned the scars. Simon's interrupted declaration of love back in the beginning? Um, yes. (And I was getting an Alec/Jace vibe before Clary came to that conclusion, but I figure that was just fandom, and echoes of DT.) I saw the "Raphael is a vampire" revelation coming when Clary saw his scar. Just about the only things I hadn't seen were: Hodge's betrayal (which I do find quite plausible and thought that bit, at least, was rather nicely foreshadowed), that the werewolves were on Clary's side in the raid on the vampire hotel, and the survival of Valentine's son, though I clued on to the fact that Jace was it when one of Valentine's henchmen started saying something at Clary's mother's bedside. What I totally hadn't expected -- and still don't fully buy -- was that Valentine had been hiding in plain sight for 10 years as Michael Wayland. Surely someone would have noticed? Or how was it accomplished? With magic? Oh, and of course the hiding place of the cup -- I missed that too, but I think it was nicely done with the Tarot deck. But generally, seeing all this coming didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the book, and also (which is stranger) didn't make me think of Clary as an idiot for missing all these things. I guess I was willing to cut her some slack, because she was going through a pretty tough time and also wasn't super-perceptive about other things, so it didn't really feel incongruous. Also, I totally called that Hodge's raven was named Hugo because of Hugin, one of Odin's ravens, and was exceptionally pleased with that. Because I like ravens and I like Odin. And also, I like how pretentious it makes Valentine in retrospect.
I have to comment on world-building separately. It didn't really feel cohesive, and I think that's because there was too much piled on top of each other. Shadowhunters vs demons, with the Clave, the Covenant, the Cup, the suitably creepy Silent Brothers, all that stuff -- OK, that feels like a sufficiently cohesive world structure. But when you throw in the Downworlders -- fairies and werewolves and vampires and warlocks, and various permutations thereof -- now you're just getting weird. (Also, I don't quite understand how demons and humans are supposed to breed, given that demons are mostly non-corporeal? Are we talking actual reproduction, or the mingling of blood like what produced the Shadowhunters?) The Downworlder-set scenes -- Magnus's party, Taki's -- were quite a lot of fun, but felt like they had been tacked on from a different urban fantasy. You can have your own magical demon police system AND vampires AND faeries -- but I think you have to build up to it gradually -- and *purposefully* -- say, the way Butcher does it in The Dresden Files, where the first several books focus sequentially on different "Downworlder" creatures against a constant framework of the main characters' magical background. In City of Bones, though, it just feels like "oh, urban fantasy -- needs more werewolves."
Another kind of minor bit of worldbuilding that bothered me for some reason: Valentine's last name is Morgenstern, which is Germanic, but everybody else's lastnames in Idris seem to be made up of English words -- Lightwood, Wayland, Starkweather, Fairchild, Blackwell, Graymark, even Pangborn, I guess. Leaving aside for the moment the question of why a country that was nestled between Germany and France would have English surnames, it's rather weird to have Valentine's last name be one that really doesn't belong. I mean, it makes sense to give your villain an unusual name, but... culturally, how is it justified? Also, unrelated to the above, it felt weird to me that the teen Shadowhunters would be ignorant of things like Dungeons & Dragons and other pop culture references while using slang like "Awesome!"
Also, and I guess this belongs under worldbuilding more than anywhere else, there were patches that felt infodumpy in that "as you know Bob" way. Not *really* bad or anything, but noticeable. I don't know where it fits in, really, but I just wanted to say somewhere that while City of Bones really didn't break any new ground thematically, I liked the tried-and-true theme of longing for Idris, that shows up in different ways with Clary's mother, Luke, Jace, Hodge, and even Clary, in her dreams.
I saw a couple of things that looked like shout-outs to cassandraclaire friends -- the positively-mentioned-in-passing girl at St Xavier's named Jaida, the sighting of "a girl about [Clary's] age with a smoothly shaved bald head leaning against a brown-skinned boy with dreadlocks, his face adorned with a dozen piercings" who also has a "clouded" eye -- i.e. Val and Luis from Holly Black's Valiant, and the VSD-fans shout-out button "Still not king" (which was also featured in Valiant), and also the use of "asshat" as an insult. That's all quite neat!
And then there was the whole hawk story which seemed very... familiar. Actually, the first mention of falcon by Jace, several chapters before he tells the story, made me think of the hawk story on DT. The story itself seemed to come rather out of nowhere -- surely nobody in their right mind would actually try to tell this to someone as a bedtime story, no matter what messages they were tyring to impart. But it was weird, too, because here Jace's father was supposed to be this wonderful person and all of a sudden he was Lucius Malfoy... which didn't compute, though I guess it could be seen as a kind of foreshadowing for the final reveal. It was still rather weird. And I was definitely thinking "Oh, look, the hawk story from DT" rather than "How profound!" or "Oh, poor Jace!" (And also the whole "Mortal Instruments" concept itself, which I think is a pretty good echo of the "Four Worthy Objects" in DT, though I only vaguely remember that whole plot. But then again, that's like every Grail story ever, and Deathly Hallows, so, not quite the same thing as repeating a whole scene.)
So, all in all, I'm definitely looking forward to the next book, because I like the characters, and it's bound to be an exciting read, and also we're pretty much out of [redacted for spoilers] plot by now, so it's got to be something new.
59. Jim Butcher, Cursor's Fury, Book 3 of the Codex Alera -- sequel to Academ's Fury and Furies of Calderon. It took me a long time to get into this book. I think at least partially to blame is the fact that about half if not more of the early chapters action has to do with Ehren and the spy, whom I never liked, and Amara, who's always irritated me. Once Max joined Tavi, and especially once they were with the Legion, things really picked up. And there was an added step up in enjoyment once Kitai made her appearance. I really do like Kitai.
First of all, let me say that I totally called Tavi being the son of the Princeps and Isana around the middle of Book 1, and was right about Tavi being a nickname for Octavian -- well, sort of right, I thought it was "Octavius", but, of course it would be Octavian. The thing I still don't understand, though, in the wake of this "revelation" is what Isana's problem with Gaius is. Is she just afraid that Gaius would take Tavi away from her? Or does she actually have something against him?
I have two big problems with these books, and I think they have been increasing, actually. The first is the narration. The loose third/kinda omniscient POV with flowery language isn't doing it for me. The "Tavi realized he was not a child any longer, would never be a child again" moments are much too tell rather than show, and thus extremely annoying. I strongly suspect I would like these books a lot more if they were written in the same sort of casual first-person narration (adjusted for a different world and era) as the Dresden Files. After all, I do enjoy the bits of dialogue quite a bit. It's all the overly descriptive, overly dramatic stuff in between that bugs me.
The second problem is that the real bad guys (Kalara, Max's stepmother, Sarl) are ridiculously, teeth-gnashingly evil. The real good guys (Amara, Bernard, Lady Placida) are disgustingly good and pure and brimming with integrity. Tavi and Max narrowly avoid this by being young and occasionally still stupid, but the adults. Dear god, what a bunch of Starks. And the thing is, apparently they're in the right. I applaud Butcher for having morally gray characters in the books -- the formidable Invidia Aquitane, Fidelias the turncoat, Aldrick ex Gladius, my favorite, even Gaius himself. But it does no good if the sweet and pure morality is shown to continuously triumph over the moral gray, because if all the ills of the world can be cured with "sunshine and puppies" (to borrow a phrase from House), then the morally gray are *stupid* for not realizing that. There is this conversation between Invidia Aquitane and Amara, where Amara is being all idealistic and says, "You are very wrong" -- to which Invidia respons, "You are very young." I'm totally siding with Invidia here, and the fact that the plot seems to support Amara's worldview comes across as irritatingly naive.
Those are my favorite characters, the mercenaries, the turncoats. I really want to know what happened between Araris and Aldrick to drive the latter off. I'm sure things are headed for another confrontation between them, so presumably we'll find out. (Also... why does Aldrick think he killed Araris, if Araris was supposed to have died in First Calderon, presumably? I find it hard to believe that Aldrick would've been fighting on the side of the Marat. Or had someone been watercrafted up to look like Araris so it wouldn't seem suspicious Septimus didn't have his singulare, and Aldrick actually killed that guy, whoever it was? Or is this all simply explained by a continuity error?) Meanwhile, I was glad to see Aldrick have more of a role in this book than in the second one, and that he and Bernard have established a kind of mutual respect. I still think I like the Lady Aquitane best of the assorted High Lords, though Ceres and his family were nice, too. And I was glad to see Fidelias (and though I wondered where he was, it didn't occur to me where he was hiding. So does that mean him being in the tent was not a coincidence? And does that mean he was spying on the Lady Antillus? Aware of the impending attack? I guess it raises a bunch of questions and I'm not sure if there are answers in the text or inconsistencies.) I also developed a fondness for Demos the pirate/mercenary.
From the designated good guys, I still like Max, and Ehren has grown on me, in the standard bearer role. I really like Kitai ("I wanted a horse...."). I continue to like Bernard just fine, and I liked all the assorted legionaires and Knights Pisces (hee!), which is to be expected because I like army guys in general. I still dislike Isana very strongly. Tying herself up with dying Araris/Fade for days when Ceres was in need of every healer and refusing to let him go when he asked her to let him die -- how is this a positive action? Yes it has a positive outcome because they realize they have loved each other (*bleargh!*), but, god! woman -- have some common sense! Seems almost like treason to me, in wartime. Also, I totally suspected that Isana had done something to Tavi to hide his furies (well done! cripple your child for his own perceived good!), but I'm glad that it wasn't really permanent. Speaking of Tavi's emerging furycrafting abilities -- so is the deal that both he and Kitai are able to work furies when they're together? Or even when they're apart? Or what? Moving on, Amara still irritates me with her unbelievable idealism. Causing the accidents -- and deaths -- of the Knights Aeris who were in pursuit of the coach was not a fight, it was murder? Bzuh?! What kind of spy and battle veteran would really think that way? And it took me a while to figure out what my problem with Lady Placida was (though given that she appears and immediately starts extolling Isana (see above) didn't help), and I think I know what it is now -- if there is a High Lord and Lady who are so good, so noble, so self-sacrificing (Placidus backed off from helping Gaius not because Kalarus had his wife as a hostage, but because if Kalarus killed, furies would be set loose and kill lots of his people) -- that rather undermines the atmosphere of squabbling High Lords, all of whom are at best a "lesser evil" if weighed against the still-quite-unscrupulous reign of Gaius.
The plot was exciting enough once it got going, and had enough surprising reversals, and switching between three storylines, two of which (Tavi's stand at the bridge and the hostage rescue) were interesting worked pretty well to keep me wanting to read. I do have some problems with the action, though. Nobody dies. None of the good guys, even the "fish" who have names, like Schultz. I really enjoyed all the description of furycrafting used in training and combat, but the limitations that are supposed to apply didn't seem to apply to the good guys. Like Amara venturing into the red clouds -- she should've DIED, given how quickly those tentacle things had struck before, and the deadly effect of them even after contact. And the fact that she continued to be able to fly when the Knights Aeris in pursuit were all exhausted. Really hard to suspend disbelief when things like that keep happening. The other thing that totally had me going "You've got to be kidding me!" was the lightning strike that left Tavi in command. Um, yeah. It kind of almost rivals Merlin's sudden advancement in the Courts of Chaos for the "well, isn't *that* convenient" factor. And, Tavi has shown a gift for strategy before, but the way he was super-brilliant at Legion command having never done it... was a bit suspicious. I'm afraid he is kind of turning into a Gary-Stu, which is annoying.
I didn't see the double switch at the end coming, though I do think it was neatly done, because I can see someone being able to deduce the strategem from Odiana's presence. I didn't quite believe Tavi deducing Kitai's presence, but they're linked in some mystical way, so I'm willing to hand it to him. Some of Tavi's battle ruses were quite neat -- at least, while they worked not-quite-perfectly. The furycrafted lens at the end was rather cool... but the sheer power and devastation it caused taxed my disbelief quite a lot. I liked Tavi enlisting the Madam as Tribune Logistica and her dancers for earthcrafting power (And the following conversation between Max and the madam: "But she's just--" "She's just a... what? Which word did you have in mind? Whore, perhaps? Madam? Woman?" Max met her eyes. "Civilian," he said quietly.")
I liked the way the Canim were handled. They are dangerous and frightening and alien but not really inhuman, and they have enough of dogs/wolves in them that, monsters as they are, they are still kind of sympathetic. I like the fractional baring of the throat as a bow substitute, for example. And I am definitely curious to see what chased them over the sea. The vord? Or some new, even more dire threat?
I miss Harry Dresden's clever narration and memorable one-lines. There are a few cool lines in this, one when Bernard insults the Senator and one that, oddly enough, is delivered by Isana, re: Max: "I don't deny his willingness to lay down his life. It is his aptitude for it that concerns me." But on the whole, it's much less snappy narration.
I'll continue with the series, which I wasn't sure about at first, when I was floundering in the early chapters of the book. But I hope Tavi doesn't become any more Stu-ified, and I hope the moral grayness is reasserted rather than being weakened, as I felt it was considerably in this latest book.
60. Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent -- Definitely not one of my favorite Discworld novels, alas. I'd thought I'd read this before, but I definitely haven't. It felt way too long for the amount of plot it actually contained. Way too much Rincewind, and the Wizards were in sufficient concentration to star wearing on me, even though I still enjoyed Ponder Stibbons and Ridcully (especially his proposed "student exchange program"). Maybe I would've gotten more of a kick out of it if I had actually been to Australia, even though I think I did get a lot of the references/jokes. I was amused by the Crocodile Dundee reference and the drag queens and actually giggled at the Bursar surfing and concluding with "Hooray. My feet are wet. What a nice forest. Time for tea." I adored the concept of a god of evolution (and his creations, especially the cockroach as pinnacle of creation -- which I totally saw coming), but much of the other stuff wasn't as funny/incisive as usual, and the "deep" stuff didn't feel as profound as it usually does. Other stuff I found interesting/amusing: the mention of Archchancellor Weatherwax (do we know how he's related to Granny? Ancestor? Distant cousin?). And the following quotes: "A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy and suddenly thousands of people who haven't even read it are dying because the ones who did haven't got the joke." and "Once upon a time, the plural of 'wizard' was 'war'". Not much of a haul for a PTerry book, really.
61. Sandman: Season of Mists (Neil Gaiman) -- This is only the second graphic novel I've ever read, and the only one I read voluntarily. (The other one was Maus, which we read for my dystopian lit class -- it of Richard III, A Handmaid's Tale, The Waste Land, Tank Girl, and Pink Floyd's The Wall -- and while I enjoyed it, in a slightly disturbed way, it didn't really sell me on the genre.) It's... really difficult for me. The visual component doesn't do much for me, to be honest. There were a few images I liked, and a number more that I appreciated, and I liked the various graphic frills -- different fonts, the graphical representations of Chaos and Order, stuff like that. But it felt like the medium was constraining a number of other things. There is certainly some memorable dialogue in there. But the angel's monologue falls short, because it has to be represented in speech bubbles. And the plot... I guess maybe I shouldn't measure it by the standards of a novel's plot, but the things that happen happen so *quickly*, after such a lot of build-up. The pacing's totally different, and feels really weird to me. Also, except for those with very memorable speech bubbles (i.e. Dream and Delirium), I have a hard time remembering who said what, because the images and the speech bubbles aren't really integrated in my brain, I guess.
There were a couple of sequences I really, really liked. Loki, his wife, and the snake -- I've known that story since childhood, and it made a hell of a lasting impression on me, but the touches Gaiman adds are very, very impressive. Again, the art of that section I could take or leave. The snake was nice, but I rather hate Loki's appearance (he reminds me of Hades in that terrible Disney hercules movie), and the woman, also not something I particularly like. The other one was Lucifer and Breschau ("I heard. You have killed a number of people who by now would be long-since dead anyway. So what?") Again, not so much the art, though it was suitably gruesome, but the dialogue is impressive. As is Lucifer's whole speech while renouncing Hell. I also liked him quoting Milton, but more for the reference than the punch of the actual line. (And speaking of references, I loved seeing a Tolkien book in the Library of Dreams.)
Which is not to say that I didn't like the art at all. I actually thought the demons were very well done, for the most part. What I think was Night (the one with mouths all over her body), and Azazel, and the half-faced demon girl (Mazikeen). Also, dewinged!Lucifer, and the angels in general. I was, frankly, unprepared for the level of darkness, and violence in these. Yeah, demons in hell, OK, that's rather over the top, so OK. The episode that really shook me was the one with the dead boys at school, both graphically and verbally. Torture, murder, pus, rape... it's got a rather cheery ending for what actually happens, but, dude...
I liked the characters too, on the whole. I liked Lucifer (especially once he stopped talking in the royal we), and the Faerie guy, and I kind of adore Jemmy of Chaos (such an awesome idea! She reminds me a little bit of Ivy the Archive in The Dresden Files, only the opposite). And I have a soft spot for Thor, and do still like Loki and Odin, but I've always liked them, in all of their incarnations, so it's more residual than stand-alone.
I didn't particularly care for Dream. Actually, of all the Endless, I think I find Desire the most interesting. Do the different volumes of Sandman focus on one Endless at a time, like this one does with Dream? And if so, would anyone care to rec me some Desire-centric ones? Also, an unrelated question: What's with Dream's weird helm? What is that even supposed to be?
Also, the little blurbs about the inkers, editors, etc. at the end, written by Gaiman, I guess, were very nearly as much fun as the rest of it.
62. Justine Larbalestier, Magic or Madness -- I have to say, that's got to be the least enticing fantasy title I've ever encountered. I couldn't even say what about it feels so dull to me, but it just does. It sounds like the title of some third-rate TV special, rather than one of a not-bad YA novel. I first heard of Justine Larbalestier via either epicyclical or Holly Black's journals, and when I saw the book at the library I decided to check it out (in spite of the lame title. Ok, I'm done talking about that, promise.) The blurbs laud it for an original system of magic, but... that felt pretty ordinary to me. I don't think there's anything particularly special about the "use it or lose it" (in that other sense) thing it's got going. The "use it up and then you die" part has more potential, but it looks like Rain will probably "fix" that somehow, which feels somewhat of a cheat.
The plot felt very slow to get going. You get to a third of the book, at least, without anything really *happening*, other than Rain's general dread of Esmeralda (nod to Granny Weatherwax? anybody know if Larbalestier is a Pratchett fan?) Even once it got going it was fairly slow. I didn't mind the diversions and snowball fights and trooping around New York, that was all fun -- but the amount of stuff that actually *happens* in this book could be described in five sentences or less. As far as characters: I don't know that Reason's first-person narration adds a lot to the story, and I generally dislike mixing first-person chapters with tight third chapters, but I got used to it pretty quickly and it didn't bother me. But I just don't find Reason's inner voice very interesting. Her obsessions with the "Fibs" struck me as kind of fake. I mean, it's great having a math savant for a protagonist, but it seemed rather disconnected from the rest of her personality, from the way she thinks overall... Pastede on yey, you know? I didn't find Jay-Tee particularly likeable or sympathetic, though I feel for her *situation* of course. Sarafina sounds like she would've been a really cool character, but of course she spends the book mostly catatonic. Jason Blake is too tranparently and unredeemably evil, Esmeralda is a cipher, and Danny wasn't onscreen long enough to form any opinions. Really, the only character I connected with at all was Tom. I love his dorky, bubbly speech, his obsession with clothes and fabric (for a straight guy, no less!), his doomed battle against diner order choices (funniest and best part of the book, IMO), his crush on Reason, painful blushing -- everything about him, really. I want to adopt him.
I thought Reason's Fahrenheit/Celsius confusion over temperature was cute, and not particularly belabored, but I quickly got tired of Jay-Tee's "You said 'mum', you talk funny!" confusion over dialect differences. Surely somebody who grew up in New York would be familiar with the concept of different slang and would be able to, you know, deduce things from context? I mean, the American Harry Potter readers managed, eventually, right? Also, why does Reason suddenly know what snowballs are? Or does she just decide to call them that because it's a fairly intuitive name for it?
On a totally random note, this book made me crave pizza very much (and why couldn't Reason get pineapple on her pizza? Doesn't the joint serve Hawaiian? Or is that a California thing, and you can't find it in New York?). But the description of Reason eating caviar, and the little bubbles popping in her mouth -- ewwww! I hate caviar, and really didn't need to read a graphic description of its consumption in a book... :Q
I do like that the book ends with a number of questions still not clear -- the feathers under Reason's pillow, the missing letters -- on a rather ambiguous note. This gives me hope for the next book, which I will certainly check out if the opportunity presents itself, and hope that more stuff happens in that one.