Reading roundup
21. Michael A Stackpole, New World -- OMG, what a WTF-ful book! I don't even know what to make of it. It's the conclusion of a trilogy that started with The Secret Atlas and continued with Cartography. I kind of liked the first book, even though the writing was awkward and the characters dull. That is to say, I thought the worldbuilding had some promise, or at least was sufficiently non-cookie-cutter to be interesting on its own merits. In the second book, when one of the brothers turned into a god (actually, returned to godhood) and the other started developing godlike powers, and ancient historical figures started returning to life, I was a bit WTF. That's nothing to the rampant WTF-ery that is the conclusion. There's-- I can't even list it all! There is the first creator-god (except he was created by the belief of the first people) who wants to unmake creation, and his N child gods (where N is some number between, er, 10 and 12 maybe?) who want to defeat him or bind him or destroy him, and he wants to destory them, and some of them are scheming with him and against the others, except he is double-crossing them anyway. Qiro and Keles's godlike powers increase even further, to the point where it's not clear why they even bother with anyone else. There are political machinations and assassinations, but none of them are at all believable. There is a trip up through the Nine Hells, the purpose of which I really don't understand. It might be killing time, or it might be some deep philosophical significance that falls way flat. (There are a lot of these philosophical digressions that fall way flat.) Mass assassination (offscreen, conveniently) of the formidable band of evil sorcerers by the Desei Shadows, and it's not clear how this was accomplished. There is a reluctant cyborg! And mecha! There is apotheosis through superior bureacuracy! (Although I have to admit that the Cyron worship, at least, was decently set up.) Time machines! Time travel, and neanderthals hordes conscripted into the armies of darkness, and (presumably) bringing somebody who is dead in the present up from the past. And nobody ever dies! Except for Keles's love interest. Oh, and there's deicide by small furry critter. It's just kind of completely insane, and there are, ostensibly, twists on every page towards the end, except they don't really work as twists because the craziness is coming so thick at that point there's not enough time to adjust to each new layer of it, so none of it has any impact. The only explanation I can imagine for this book is that Stackpole didn't know how it was all going to end, how to bring all the strands together, and was making it up as he went along -- or possible a thousand monkeys were -- and this is the result.
I did like some individual bits of it, though they were lost in the flurry of crazy. I do like Pyrust, the warrior prince. He dies, and then is kind of resurrected, maybe, and then his sacrifice actually helps kill the bad guy, although at a delay, which was a nice touch. It's not clear what happens to him at the end of the book. Is he still in Anturasixan? Does he stay in the limbo place? It might have been mentioned and I just didn't notice it, what with everyone getting elevated to godhood, but I don't think so, and I'm not going back in there to check. I also continued to like Qiro and his essentially-godhood-fueled madness, like when he chooses to move the river instead of the wheel that's blocking it. And I kind of like Ciras, though I really couldn't tell you why, and he mopes a bit much for my taste.
22. Gail Carson Levine, Fairest -- it's a children's book from the author of Ella Enchanted (which I haven't read), and is a sort-of fairy-tale retelling of "Snow White", kinda. The heroine (named Aza which was *really* weird, because it's the name of one of the characters in my Magnum Opus, only my Aza is about as far from that one as you can get) is not at all physically fair -- in fact, she is ugly, and gets mocked for it a lot. I liked the fact that her ugliness is composed of many of the same characteristics that Snow White's traditional fairness is -- blood-red lips, black hair, snow-white skin. She is also big and has "doughy" cheeks. Her beauty is in her voice and near-magical singing talent. There's a wicked queen -- but, in a nice touch, she is not teeth-granshingly evil, but young and vain and shallow and jealous, ill at ease in a foreign country whose customs she dislikes and trying to be a "strong queen". This Queen Ivi is actually pretty well realized, as she is both pitiful and despicable, and occasionally has a sort of manic charm to her that makes it possible to understand why the kind would marry her in the first place. There are gnomes instead of dwarves, a magic mirror (which is more than a simple blameless instrument in this one), a poison apple that makes a lot of sense, and a prince who marries the heroine in the end. But not before acting like kind of an ass at one point and having to ask her forgiveness, which is a nice touch. These are all things I quite liked. And I also liked the fact that the "wicked queen" gets a sort of happy, but nonthreatening, ending of her own.
I didn't so much care for the songs that appear on every other page. The kingdom in which it takes place, Ayortha, is very musical apparently, and everything is sung, but it gets rather silly, at least for my taste. The gnomish language and bits of ogre language were also rather silly, with the random capitals and punctuation. I suppose it would look appropriately foreign for little kids, but it annoyed me.
Except for the rather unnecessary songs, it was a pretty pleasant read.
23. Sandman #5: A Game of You, by Neil Gaiman -- Eh. May be my least favorite Sandman that's one complete story. I just didn't care much for any of these characters. Barbie's boring, Thessaly is creepy, and Wanda is kind of annoying. Dead!George is marginally amusing, and I did like Hazel and Foxglove (especially the scene where Fox confornts Hazel over her pregnancy). But that was about it. Oh, yeah, I did like Wilkinson the rat, but more because he was a rat (and cutely drawn) than for any intrinsic character value. About the only other thing I feel like remarking on is that I definitely saw Barbie's actions at the grave-side coming -- crossing out Alvin with lipstick and writing Wanda -- but it was still a nice touch. Other than that -- meh.
24. Karen Russell, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves -- this is a collection of short stories, about 2/3 of them linked by the place in which they transpire (an island off the Florida Everglades or thereabouts), linked by offhand mentions of common people and places and Tropical Storm Vita, and they're probably magical realism or something like that. In any case, they're brilliant. A little odd, too -- the narrators are, as Publishers Weekly aptly noted, "articulate, emotionally precocious children from dysfunctional households. The results are more charming than you might imagine. The other weird thing is that a number of the stories end in media res, before anything is really resolved. It's sort of disconcerting, in that they feel more like the first chapters of novels than stand-alone, finished stories, but it's a neat sort of disconcerting -- it works. Because the stories form a sort of tapestry, I don't really want to talk about each one, except to remind myself for later which they were and what they were about:
"Ava Wrestles the Alligator" -- a girl and her sister (and sister's ghost boyfriend who possesses her) left alone in Swamplandia!, gator-themed amusement park. Because this was the first story, I think I noticed stuff in it more. I was struck by Ava berating herself via Ouija board after her mother's death, and loved this bit: "Her head is crowned with an unhappy hydra of geckos. We couldn't decide between Yellow-head, a gaudy meringue, or Tokay, an understated avocado, so she's worn them both."
"Haunting Olivia" -- two brothers look for the ghost of their drowned sister with the help of swimming goggles with pink flowers on them which allow them to see spirits of fish.
"Z.Z.'s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers" -- what it says on the tin, narrated by a boy who is a "prophet of the past", which turns out to be a very disconcerting concept:
It's hard to explain your symptoms to adults:
"Mom, I dreamed that fire was falling from outer space. And the fire was headed straight for these long-necked monsters. And oh, Mom, then the whole world was cratered and dark, and there were only these stooped, hairy creatures stealing eggs, and no more monsters. We have to save them!"
"Mom, I dreamed that lave came bubbling out of the ground like blood from a cut. And the townspeople below were just picking tomatoes and singing oblivious Italian folk songs, Mom. We have to warn them!"
"Mom, I dreamed that an 804-foot hydrogen dirigible full of Germans was about to burst into flames. We have to--"
It's just a dream, son, my mother would snap, turning on the scolding overhead light. Just a bad dream. We don't have to do anything. Go back to sleep.
"The Star-Gazer's Log of Summer-Time Crime" -- a retired austronaut's nerdy son falls in with a plot to kidnap some turtle hatchlings. I didn't like this one as much as most of the other stories -- the characters seemed a lot more caricature-like than elsewhere.
excerpt from "Children's Reminiscences of the Westward Migration" -- a boy remembers his family going West, in a wagon pulled by his father the Minotaur. Actually a rather neat concept, but the tone was just a bit too bleak for my taste.
"Lady Yeti and the Palace of Artifical Snows" -- kids sneak in to look at the Blizzard adult-only show where snow flurries lend adults anonymity. Didn't care for this one much.
"The City of Shells" -- a kid gets stuck in a toppled shell in a shell amusement park with the janitor. Neat line: "Legend has it -- if you can use legend to describe the booze-fueled talest hat get passed laterally within a janitorial staff of two -- that the Giant Conchs are haunted. On stormy nights, they echo with the radular skitterclatter of their extinct inhabitants."
"Out to Sea" -- one-legged old man woos his kleptomaniac juvenile delinquent "buddy" with Demerol.
"Accident Brief, Occurrence #00/422" -- troubled boys from the choir crash-land on a glacier.
"St.Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" -- pack of human girls whose parents are werewolves get civilized.
Anyway, mere descriptions don't do these stories justice -- it's all about the narration, the tone, the oddity, the weird humour. Highly recommend this.
25. Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls -- I said, after finishing Curse of Chalion, that I was not looking forward to Paladin of Souls because I didn't care much about Ista. But etrangere's glowing references for Ista in PoS encouraged me, so I picked up Paladin of Souls a lot sooner than I otherwise would have. And I really, really liked it! Better than Chalion, even.
It was a bit slow getting started -- I felt Chalion was too, but I minded that less, because the happy interlude at the beginning was happy and healing, as opposed to frustrated as in Ista's case. But I guess I'm just subconsciously expecting these books to be as fast as the Vorkosiverse ones, and normal people can't get into trouble as quickly as Miles can manage. Anyway, as soon as Ista met Arhys, I had no more problems with pace.
I still can't say that I care for Ista all that much. At first, I found her bitterness off-putting, if perfectly well justified. And once that started changing, there was so much "sainthood" (in the peculiar sense that carries in these books), and there was so much to do, that that was kind of the focus. I do like the glimpses of actual Ista in the end, after the tide of great events leaves her --
her going occasionally schoolgirl giggly over her first true love and her wonder at actually being in that position. That is to say, it was only at the end of the book that Ista became a character I wanted to spend more time with. But she was an engaging narrator and an *interesting* character throughout.
The very bitterness that makes me dislike characters as people is actually quite interesting in this sort of heroine. There are so many fantasy books where the protagonist feels he/she carries a burden of guilt for something that wasn't his/her fault or that they could have done nothing to prevent -- the death of loved ones or an entire village, failure to save someone when they had done everything humanly possible, whatever. But Ista -- who, I'm sorry, slice it whichever way you want, is guilty of *murder* (OK, maybe manlaughter, but a kind of premeditated manslaughter) does not in fact actually feel guilty about it -- or at least does not feel *responsible*, until close to the end of the book, when she is telling the story of Arvol dy Lutez's death for the third or fourth time, and realizes she probably could have saved him ("Or if I had loved him instead of hated him"). Up until that point, Ista is all too happy to blame the gods for the entire mess, and to blame dy Lutez himself for, essentially, chickening out and not being willing to finish what he started. ("Dy Lutez's many great starts [...] had not been matched by nearly as many great finishes. Fragrant in the flower, green and cankered in the fruit") She even blames him for making her believe his hype about how great he was, which is what supposedly prompted her to accept him for this role. Now, admittedly, letting Ista think herself mad for two years without telling her about the Curse is a highly crappy thing to do. And since it was dy Lutez who had gotten her to marry Ias and thus bring herself and her children under the Curse, she's got no particular reason to love him. But still -- that was pretty cold. (The half a dozen sentences about dy Lutez in Chalion made me instantly intrigued with him, so I am possibly more on his side in this than it is normal for a person to be. But still.) Ista's grudge against the gods, that bitter coldness -- all that makes for a very interesting heroine. One of my favorite Ista moment, unrelated to much of anything, is her making the Quadrene blessing over the dead Jokonan soldier ("for whatever comfort it might bring a dead boy lost in a foreign land") while she is their captive. And I also rather liked this moment, close to the end of the book: "Then she wondered whose mind was blacker, Joen's, to do such a thing, or her own, to impute such a course to Joen. It seems I'm not a nice person either. Good." I love this "not a nice person" realization -- kind of the same way I liked Magrat being "possessed" by the spirit of Queen Ynci in Lords and Ladies.
But the reason I really, really liked this book was not Ista. It was the whole "ghastly tangle" she walks into at Porifors. I have a HUGE brothers kink, and Arhys and Illvin fit the bill perfectly. Actually, Arhys was going just fine on his own before Illvin was even mentioned -- smiling, red-headed, personally reckless yet competent and admired commanders are totally my cup of tea. So, like Ista (like everyone, apparently) I was half in love with him by the time they got to the castle. And finding out he was dead later on didn't do much to hamper that. Illvin's OK too -- I especially liked his anguish at being the one to come up with ideas other people have to risk their lives (or, in Arhys's case... whatever) to execute: "in my last bad idea, I could not ride along to correct my strategy in midleap", and the way he reacted when he unthinkingly suggested the surrender ploy to Ista ("With unthinking brilliance, he replied simply, 'Surrender.' Then stared at her aghast, and clapped his hand to his mouth as if a toad had just fallen from his lips"). But really, the thing that gets me is the relationship between the two, the loving banter, the fond exasperation, Arhys saving Illvin's seat at the table, Illvin being willing to share half his life with him. The roots of the dilemma (the whole "one quarter of a fratricide" situation), the fact that the *happiest* possible outcome is the death of one of the brothers (a glorious death, but still), just makes everything in the book, all the little moments they have together, so poignant. And it was neat that it was pointed out that it was Illvin the bastard who had an actual, loving father, and not the truebon Arhys -- a neat reversal of the usual expectations, and something that makes a lot of sense with their resulting characters and relationships.
I even liked Catti's frantic, shrill, obsessed part in the overall tangle -- it's another odd sort of reversal. I think, classically, you have the living man reviving/bringing back from the underworld his lost love. But in this case, Catti is the Orpheus figure, not willing to surrender her husband, her great victory, to death. Wanting to still have a child by him (and if that were possible, now *that* would be a creepy outcome.) Her distrust of Ista, her blaming of Illvin, all that makes sense, works perfectly with her character. I did have trouble buying her final about-face -- not that she would let Arhys go -- he was lost anyway at that point, she had nothing to lose from lending him her strength. But that after his death she rallied and organized the women in the defense of Porifors. (And why weren't the women's bowstrings snapped? why weren't they ill also? seems like it would be more work for the Roknari sorcerers to *limit* their magic to the men, since diseases and rot and stuff seemed to strike indiscriminantly. But anyway.) I liked the other supporting characters, too. Liss was a bit too... stock fantasy heroine, but she seemed a nice girl. Foix and Ferda, whom I couldn't distinguish in Chalion grew on me, especially Foix and his fly-marching experiments. The one I *really* liked was dy Cabon. He makes me want to give him a hug -- triggering the same reflex Mark Vorkosigan does, and I don't think it's due entirely to them being the same physical type.
I'm still not really that sold on gods directly interacting with the protagonists, but it annoyed me less here than in Chalion -- partly because of Ista's attitude (combatative rather than reverent), and partly because it was the Bastard here (mostly), and trickster gods to which he seems to be somewhat related are definitely my favorite kind of deity. I definitely called that he was "hiding" and hadn't abandoned Ista during the walk into enemy camp, but the reasoning there made sense. And having Ista's gift be eating demons was appropriately quirky. And, "I am the Mouth of Hell" is a really neat tag line. :)
The thing that did continue to bug me a bit, as in Chalion -- but maybe it's just the effect of immersing myself in ASOIAF and skewing my perceptions -- is that LMB is pretty sparing with her good guys (more so than in Vorkosiverse, I'm thinking...). Arhys is a casualty... but he was dead to begin with, and so his death ends up being more of a triumph than a loss, since he's no longer sundered. Obviously Ista and Illvin were destined to survive, and I would've been most put out if dy Cabon had died. But I was almost expecting one of the dy Gura brothers to be lost -- instead, the named casualty is a spear carrier. Or Liss, or someone. But no, they all live through it, and Foix has quite easily assimilated his demon, it seems. And they're all going to hang out together in Ista's mobile court. Which is all very nice, but a bit *too* rosy, I'm thinking. But that's a relatively minor complaint.
To finish off with some great lines: "An enemy might drop his guard, weary of his task, turn his back; love would never falter." I've seen this one on icons here and there, and now I know where it's from. I have to say, the meaning is quite different, in context, from what I had imagined without it, and considerably more awesome. And this might just be my favorite: (Ista, thinking about Arhys's "I love this land" remark) "How like a man, to change from mask to mask like a player, concealing all intention, yet leave his heart out on the table, carelessly, unreguarded, for all to behold." It's actually this tendency of Arhys's that makes me like him so very much, or one of the many things that do, at least. I also liked all of Ista's musings concluding with, "So... how many different ways might three people kill two of each other with one knife?" It's like a mad game of Clue. I did also enjoy the 'reverse Snow White' scene, and the one that mirrored it at the end, and after: "Illvin was staring down into her face, looking like a man whose kisses had just brought his beloved back from the dead and was now too terrified to move least he shed unexpected miracles in all directions."
26. Georgette Heyer, Cotillion -- so, I don't read romance. Like, to the point where if I were trapped in a house with nothing to read except a phone book and an average romance novel, I would probably end up reading the phonebook. But people whose taste I respect keep mentioning Heyer and say they love her books, so I decided to give it a shot. It was pretty good, actually -- not my cup of tea, but fairly amusing and definitely more interesting than a phone book. I didn't really get into it until the last ~75 pages, and I care about none of these characters (which is generally my motivator in reading) but it was a pleasant read throughout. I liked snarky Lord Legerwood (Freddy's father), and generally liked Camille, Freddy grew on me, once I managed to get most of the way past the weird diction (which at first was well-nigh incomprehensible), and I do like the side of Hugh (the Rector) he shows at the very end. It's a romance novel, so my favorite couple was actually Dolphinton and Hannah -- definitely the most unconventional one, but also the one where I could see why they were good for each other best -- Olivia/Camille was just so floofy and scatterbrained and not very interesting, and Kitty/Freddy was cute (loved the "proposal" at the end) but not something that struck me as particularly "right", and of course Fish/old guy was kind of random (even though I did see it coming). Oh, and I actually giggled aloud when Kitty was tring to decipher Fish's letter.
27. Black Thorn, White Rose, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling -- I read these stories a long time ago, around the same time I read the first collection, Snow White, Blood Red, and remember liking both books quite a bit, and this one more than the other one, but I didn't remember any of the actual stories. But since aome was reading this book, I decided to reread myself, too. And write down individual reactions because I do remember them better this way.
"Words Like Pale Stones" by Nancy Kress -- it's a "gritty" and interesting twist on the Rumplestiltskin story, and I liked the idea of it well enough, but it was so bleak and dreary that I couldn't really like the story as much as I liked many of the others.
"Stronger Than Time" by Patricia C. Wrede -- a lovely retelling of Sleeping Beauty with a most interesting twist (though I did see it coming -- but it's so neatly foreshadowed that seeing it doesn't destroy the enjoyment of the twist).
"Somnus's Fair Maid" by Ann Elizabeth Downer -- another Sleeping Beauty retelling, considerably less well crafted (the transitions between Persephone's and Hyppo's passages, and Hyppo's passages on the whole, were rather abrupt and jerky and I just didn't think it flowed very well), but! I actually didn't see the twist coming in this one (SPOILER) sleeping sickness he picked up in Egypt and the gender reversal, which made me like the story quite a bit more than I would have otherwise.
"The Frog King, or Iron Henry" by Daniel Quinn -- OK, so this is a story I didn't *enjoy* at all, but it's quite disturbingly effective at what it tries to do, which is to create this sense of an endless loop and memories constantly slipping away and going a bit mad. So, intriguing idea, effective execution, but the overall effect I just didn't care for.
"Near-Beauty" by M.E.Beckett -- this is the one story in the collection that I didn't feel I got *anything* out off. The dialogue in the beginning was a bit cute, but overall it was just kind of unmitigated meh.
"Ogre" by Michael Kandel -- that was kind of... random. I get the premise (the man-meat eating brute being the more human one than the sadistic director), and I really enjoyed the narration, but I'm not sure I actually *got* much out of the story.
"Can't Catch Me" by Michael Cadnum -- I actually talked about before, here
"Journeybread Recipe" by Lawrence Schimel -- I'm actually not a big fan of mixing poetry and fiction -- I read them very differently, and find it difficult to switch between the modes, but it was an enjoyable "arrangement" of Little Red Riding Hood, and I like the fact that the version of the story it draws on is the older one, where the wolf doesn't (just) eat LRRH.
"The Brown Bear of Norway" by Isabel Cole -- I liked the beginning of this story quite a lot (it helps that the animal bridegroom motif is one of my favorites), but it ran a little long for my taste. But I do like some of the lyrical descriptions, like, "I kept the dry, light corpses of the letters under my pillow."
"The Goose Girl" by Tim Wynne-Jones -- I really, really liked the narration in this story, the details and the twists that emrege, from the children-snake at the very beginning to the queen going off with her tipsy attendant. I'm intrigued to the point that I'll probably check out this guy's books.
"Tattercoats" by Midori Snyder -- I very much liked the premise, which is basically a married couple weathering a mid-life crisis with the aid of some magical accoutrements. I like the fact that this extends fairy tales into the area that would typically be the blank "happily ever after", and tackles a theme not very common in fantasy at all. That said, the narration was almost-but-not-quite too purple for my taste, which detracted from my enjoyment of the story somewhat, but I still liked the whole thing a lot.
"Granny Rumple" by Jane Yolen -- not the subtlest take on the suffering of Jews in Russia ever, but a good story, and a very original reimaging of the Rumplestiltskin story. I liked the Yiddish-infused narration, all the references to Yolen family history, all the framing of the story, like, "It is a family joke: What the Cossacks and Hitler only began, Chernobyl finished." (Only, you know, Yekaterinoslav = Dniepropetrovsk, and while there are probably not that many Jews left there, it's not so much because of Chernobyl and more just because they finall were allowed to leave. But anyway.) I'm forced to note that Tana is not a name that rings Russian to me at all, not even as a nickname (there's Tanya, which is short for Tatiana, but Tasha would be short for Natasha, and the two don't go together, so... that was a bit distracting). It almost erases the bad taste left after Yolen's Slipping Sideways Through Eternity story in Wizards, which also dealt with Jewish themes and protagonists and which I strongly disliked.
"The Sawing Boys" by Howard Waldrop -- this is such an odd story. It's like, there is one half-story that leaves off rather abruptly but is rather cleverly narrated while it lasts (the gangsters half) and interspersed with it is one clever gag that ties it to the actual Bremen Town Musicians story. It's a neat gag, but it's drawn out beyond cuteness, with the names, and how they're dressed, and Felix the cat guy eating sardines, and so forth. And the resolution is, I don't know -- neat on the one hand, not terribly believable on the other, kind of oddly set up on the third... I enjoyed reading the story while it lasted, at least the half of it that was narrated by Charlie (except that occasionally he and his buddies sound like House Elves...), but I can't say that it was one of my favorites overall because of how it hangs together, or doesn't.
"Godson" by Roger Zelazny -- it's not surprising that I would like the Zelazny story, and so I did. (SPOILER) Morrie made me think of Pratchett's death, although considerably less fluffy, and his enduring football obsession was great, as was his gift of the Heat of Hell microwave as a wedding present. In general, I'm a sucker for self-assembled, non-traditional families, and this certainly fits.
"Ashputtle" by Peter Straub -- OK, that? Was profoundly disturbing, and I could easily have done without the smearing self with feces bit, but. For all that it's definitely not my usual fare, I have to concede that it's a well crafted tale, and all the seemingly disparate bits of it work together rather nicely and yet are still all jagged edges as they should be. The narration of eating through her midnight feast is really neat, and (MAJOR SPOILER) the serial killer implications are really masterfully done. So, on the one hand, ick and brr, but on the other hand, I'm kind of glad I read it, because it is quite good.
"Silver and Gold" by Ellen Steiber -- another Red Riding Hood poem, and I liked this one quite a bit less than the one above -- less interesting, unusual. But it still had some nice lines.
"Sweet Bruising Skin" by Storm Constantine -- this is another one where I really liked the narration (and kept mentally comparing the Dowager Queen to Cersei -- well, she's quite a bit more competent than Cersei, but still not quite as clever as she thinks she is, but at least she realized it in retrospect). I like her cold musings that "Husbands, like horses or dogs, should be admired for their conformation and, when they have it, their kind nature. As with domestic beast, they should be cared for with consideration and gentleness, but one should not become too attached to them because then they are likely to take advantage of the situation. Also, you never know when they might die unexpectedly." (SPOILER) I do like the fact that the Queen and her indirect creation do come to be allies eventually, but I do think I would've preferred some kind of different ending, something that felt more fitting than this one does, though I'm not quite sure what that would be.
"The Black Swan" by Susan Wade -- this one really does feel like a fairy tale, especially reminiscent to me of the Slovakian tales I loved as a kid in Bratislavskij Kolokol. The plot may not be my favorite ever, but it is deftly told (I especially liked the contrasting images of Ylianna and when she turns herself beautiful and fey), and the ending is just so perfectly fairy-tale. But it didn't really have the same impact on me that some of the other ones did.
So, to sum up: really liked "The Goose Girl", "Granny Rumple", and "Godson". Liked a lot: "Stornger than Time", "Tattercoats", "Sweet Bruising Skin", and "The Black Swan". Next tier: "Somnus's Fair Maid", "The Sawing Boys", and "The Brown Bear of Norway". And then everything else, with "Silver and Gold" penultimate and "Near-Beauty" dead last.
I did like some individual bits of it, though they were lost in the flurry of crazy. I do like Pyrust, the warrior prince. He dies, and then is kind of resurrected, maybe, and then his sacrifice actually helps kill the bad guy, although at a delay, which was a nice touch. It's not clear what happens to him at the end of the book. Is he still in Anturasixan? Does he stay in the limbo place? It might have been mentioned and I just didn't notice it, what with everyone getting elevated to godhood, but I don't think so, and I'm not going back in there to check. I also continued to like Qiro and his essentially-godhood-fueled madness, like when he chooses to move the river instead of the wheel that's blocking it. And I kind of like Ciras, though I really couldn't tell you why, and he mopes a bit much for my taste.
22. Gail Carson Levine, Fairest -- it's a children's book from the author of Ella Enchanted (which I haven't read), and is a sort-of fairy-tale retelling of "Snow White", kinda. The heroine (named Aza which was *really* weird, because it's the name of one of the characters in my Magnum Opus, only my Aza is about as far from that one as you can get) is not at all physically fair -- in fact, she is ugly, and gets mocked for it a lot. I liked the fact that her ugliness is composed of many of the same characteristics that Snow White's traditional fairness is -- blood-red lips, black hair, snow-white skin. She is also big and has "doughy" cheeks. Her beauty is in her voice and near-magical singing talent. There's a wicked queen -- but, in a nice touch, she is not teeth-granshingly evil, but young and vain and shallow and jealous, ill at ease in a foreign country whose customs she dislikes and trying to be a "strong queen". This Queen Ivi is actually pretty well realized, as she is both pitiful and despicable, and occasionally has a sort of manic charm to her that makes it possible to understand why the kind would marry her in the first place. There are gnomes instead of dwarves, a magic mirror (which is more than a simple blameless instrument in this one), a poison apple that makes a lot of sense, and a prince who marries the heroine in the end. But not before acting like kind of an ass at one point and having to ask her forgiveness, which is a nice touch. These are all things I quite liked. And I also liked the fact that the "wicked queen" gets a sort of happy, but nonthreatening, ending of her own.
I didn't so much care for the songs that appear on every other page. The kingdom in which it takes place, Ayortha, is very musical apparently, and everything is sung, but it gets rather silly, at least for my taste. The gnomish language and bits of ogre language were also rather silly, with the random capitals and punctuation. I suppose it would look appropriately foreign for little kids, but it annoyed me.
Except for the rather unnecessary songs, it was a pretty pleasant read.
23. Sandman #5: A Game of You, by Neil Gaiman -- Eh. May be my least favorite Sandman that's one complete story. I just didn't care much for any of these characters. Barbie's boring, Thessaly is creepy, and Wanda is kind of annoying. Dead!George is marginally amusing, and I did like Hazel and Foxglove (especially the scene where Fox confornts Hazel over her pregnancy). But that was about it. Oh, yeah, I did like Wilkinson the rat, but more because he was a rat (and cutely drawn) than for any intrinsic character value. About the only other thing I feel like remarking on is that I definitely saw Barbie's actions at the grave-side coming -- crossing out Alvin with lipstick and writing Wanda -- but it was still a nice touch. Other than that -- meh.
24. Karen Russell, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves -- this is a collection of short stories, about 2/3 of them linked by the place in which they transpire (an island off the Florida Everglades or thereabouts), linked by offhand mentions of common people and places and Tropical Storm Vita, and they're probably magical realism or something like that. In any case, they're brilliant. A little odd, too -- the narrators are, as Publishers Weekly aptly noted, "articulate, emotionally precocious children from dysfunctional households. The results are more charming than you might imagine. The other weird thing is that a number of the stories end in media res, before anything is really resolved. It's sort of disconcerting, in that they feel more like the first chapters of novels than stand-alone, finished stories, but it's a neat sort of disconcerting -- it works. Because the stories form a sort of tapestry, I don't really want to talk about each one, except to remind myself for later which they were and what they were about:
"Ava Wrestles the Alligator" -- a girl and her sister (and sister's ghost boyfriend who possesses her) left alone in Swamplandia!, gator-themed amusement park. Because this was the first story, I think I noticed stuff in it more. I was struck by Ava berating herself via Ouija board after her mother's death, and loved this bit: "Her head is crowned with an unhappy hydra of geckos. We couldn't decide between Yellow-head, a gaudy meringue, or Tokay, an understated avocado, so she's worn them both."
"Haunting Olivia" -- two brothers look for the ghost of their drowned sister with the help of swimming goggles with pink flowers on them which allow them to see spirits of fish.
"Z.Z.'s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers" -- what it says on the tin, narrated by a boy who is a "prophet of the past", which turns out to be a very disconcerting concept:
It's hard to explain your symptoms to adults:
"Mom, I dreamed that fire was falling from outer space. And the fire was headed straight for these long-necked monsters. And oh, Mom, then the whole world was cratered and dark, and there were only these stooped, hairy creatures stealing eggs, and no more monsters. We have to save them!"
"Mom, I dreamed that lave came bubbling out of the ground like blood from a cut. And the townspeople below were just picking tomatoes and singing oblivious Italian folk songs, Mom. We have to warn them!"
"Mom, I dreamed that an 804-foot hydrogen dirigible full of Germans was about to burst into flames. We have to--"
It's just a dream, son, my mother would snap, turning on the scolding overhead light. Just a bad dream. We don't have to do anything. Go back to sleep.
"The Star-Gazer's Log of Summer-Time Crime" -- a retired austronaut's nerdy son falls in with a plot to kidnap some turtle hatchlings. I didn't like this one as much as most of the other stories -- the characters seemed a lot more caricature-like than elsewhere.
excerpt from "Children's Reminiscences of the Westward Migration" -- a boy remembers his family going West, in a wagon pulled by his father the Minotaur. Actually a rather neat concept, but the tone was just a bit too bleak for my taste.
"Lady Yeti and the Palace of Artifical Snows" -- kids sneak in to look at the Blizzard adult-only show where snow flurries lend adults anonymity. Didn't care for this one much.
"The City of Shells" -- a kid gets stuck in a toppled shell in a shell amusement park with the janitor. Neat line: "Legend has it -- if you can use legend to describe the booze-fueled talest hat get passed laterally within a janitorial staff of two -- that the Giant Conchs are haunted. On stormy nights, they echo with the radular skitterclatter of their extinct inhabitants."
"Out to Sea" -- one-legged old man woos his kleptomaniac juvenile delinquent "buddy" with Demerol.
"Accident Brief, Occurrence #00/422" -- troubled boys from the choir crash-land on a glacier.
"St.Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" -- pack of human girls whose parents are werewolves get civilized.
Anyway, mere descriptions don't do these stories justice -- it's all about the narration, the tone, the oddity, the weird humour. Highly recommend this.
25. Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls -- I said, after finishing Curse of Chalion, that I was not looking forward to Paladin of Souls because I didn't care much about Ista. But etrangere's glowing references for Ista in PoS encouraged me, so I picked up Paladin of Souls a lot sooner than I otherwise would have. And I really, really liked it! Better than Chalion, even.
It was a bit slow getting started -- I felt Chalion was too, but I minded that less, because the happy interlude at the beginning was happy and healing, as opposed to frustrated as in Ista's case. But I guess I'm just subconsciously expecting these books to be as fast as the Vorkosiverse ones, and normal people can't get into trouble as quickly as Miles can manage. Anyway, as soon as Ista met Arhys, I had no more problems with pace.
I still can't say that I care for Ista all that much. At first, I found her bitterness off-putting, if perfectly well justified. And once that started changing, there was so much "sainthood" (in the peculiar sense that carries in these books), and there was so much to do, that that was kind of the focus. I do like the glimpses of actual Ista in the end, after the tide of great events leaves her --
her going occasionally schoolgirl giggly over her first true love and her wonder at actually being in that position. That is to say, it was only at the end of the book that Ista became a character I wanted to spend more time with. But she was an engaging narrator and an *interesting* character throughout.
The very bitterness that makes me dislike characters as people is actually quite interesting in this sort of heroine. There are so many fantasy books where the protagonist feels he/she carries a burden of guilt for something that wasn't his/her fault or that they could have done nothing to prevent -- the death of loved ones or an entire village, failure to save someone when they had done everything humanly possible, whatever. But Ista -- who, I'm sorry, slice it whichever way you want, is guilty of *murder* (OK, maybe manlaughter, but a kind of premeditated manslaughter) does not in fact actually feel guilty about it -- or at least does not feel *responsible*, until close to the end of the book, when she is telling the story of Arvol dy Lutez's death for the third or fourth time, and realizes she probably could have saved him ("Or if I had loved him instead of hated him"). Up until that point, Ista is all too happy to blame the gods for the entire mess, and to blame dy Lutez himself for, essentially, chickening out and not being willing to finish what he started. ("Dy Lutez's many great starts [...] had not been matched by nearly as many great finishes. Fragrant in the flower, green and cankered in the fruit") She even blames him for making her believe his hype about how great he was, which is what supposedly prompted her to accept him for this role. Now, admittedly, letting Ista think herself mad for two years without telling her about the Curse is a highly crappy thing to do. And since it was dy Lutez who had gotten her to marry Ias and thus bring herself and her children under the Curse, she's got no particular reason to love him. But still -- that was pretty cold. (The half a dozen sentences about dy Lutez in Chalion made me instantly intrigued with him, so I am possibly more on his side in this than it is normal for a person to be. But still.) Ista's grudge against the gods, that bitter coldness -- all that makes for a very interesting heroine. One of my favorite Ista moment, unrelated to much of anything, is her making the Quadrene blessing over the dead Jokonan soldier ("for whatever comfort it might bring a dead boy lost in a foreign land") while she is their captive. And I also rather liked this moment, close to the end of the book: "Then she wondered whose mind was blacker, Joen's, to do such a thing, or her own, to impute such a course to Joen. It seems I'm not a nice person either. Good." I love this "not a nice person" realization -- kind of the same way I liked Magrat being "possessed" by the spirit of Queen Ynci in Lords and Ladies.
But the reason I really, really liked this book was not Ista. It was the whole "ghastly tangle" she walks into at Porifors. I have a HUGE brothers kink, and Arhys and Illvin fit the bill perfectly. Actually, Arhys was going just fine on his own before Illvin was even mentioned -- smiling, red-headed, personally reckless yet competent and admired commanders are totally my cup of tea. So, like Ista (like everyone, apparently) I was half in love with him by the time they got to the castle. And finding out he was dead later on didn't do much to hamper that. Illvin's OK too -- I especially liked his anguish at being the one to come up with ideas other people have to risk their lives (or, in Arhys's case... whatever) to execute: "in my last bad idea, I could not ride along to correct my strategy in midleap", and the way he reacted when he unthinkingly suggested the surrender ploy to Ista ("With unthinking brilliance, he replied simply, 'Surrender.' Then stared at her aghast, and clapped his hand to his mouth as if a toad had just fallen from his lips"). But really, the thing that gets me is the relationship between the two, the loving banter, the fond exasperation, Arhys saving Illvin's seat at the table, Illvin being willing to share half his life with him. The roots of the dilemma (the whole "one quarter of a fratricide" situation), the fact that the *happiest* possible outcome is the death of one of the brothers (a glorious death, but still), just makes everything in the book, all the little moments they have together, so poignant. And it was neat that it was pointed out that it was Illvin the bastard who had an actual, loving father, and not the truebon Arhys -- a neat reversal of the usual expectations, and something that makes a lot of sense with their resulting characters and relationships.
I even liked Catti's frantic, shrill, obsessed part in the overall tangle -- it's another odd sort of reversal. I think, classically, you have the living man reviving/bringing back from the underworld his lost love. But in this case, Catti is the Orpheus figure, not willing to surrender her husband, her great victory, to death. Wanting to still have a child by him (and if that were possible, now *that* would be a creepy outcome.) Her distrust of Ista, her blaming of Illvin, all that makes sense, works perfectly with her character. I did have trouble buying her final about-face -- not that she would let Arhys go -- he was lost anyway at that point, she had nothing to lose from lending him her strength. But that after his death she rallied and organized the women in the defense of Porifors. (And why weren't the women's bowstrings snapped? why weren't they ill also? seems like it would be more work for the Roknari sorcerers to *limit* their magic to the men, since diseases and rot and stuff seemed to strike indiscriminantly. But anyway.) I liked the other supporting characters, too. Liss was a bit too... stock fantasy heroine, but she seemed a nice girl. Foix and Ferda, whom I couldn't distinguish in Chalion grew on me, especially Foix and his fly-marching experiments. The one I *really* liked was dy Cabon. He makes me want to give him a hug -- triggering the same reflex Mark Vorkosigan does, and I don't think it's due entirely to them being the same physical type.
I'm still not really that sold on gods directly interacting with the protagonists, but it annoyed me less here than in Chalion -- partly because of Ista's attitude (combatative rather than reverent), and partly because it was the Bastard here (mostly), and trickster gods to which he seems to be somewhat related are definitely my favorite kind of deity. I definitely called that he was "hiding" and hadn't abandoned Ista during the walk into enemy camp, but the reasoning there made sense. And having Ista's gift be eating demons was appropriately quirky. And, "I am the Mouth of Hell" is a really neat tag line. :)
The thing that did continue to bug me a bit, as in Chalion -- but maybe it's just the effect of immersing myself in ASOIAF and skewing my perceptions -- is that LMB is pretty sparing with her good guys (more so than in Vorkosiverse, I'm thinking...). Arhys is a casualty... but he was dead to begin with, and so his death ends up being more of a triumph than a loss, since he's no longer sundered. Obviously Ista and Illvin were destined to survive, and I would've been most put out if dy Cabon had died. But I was almost expecting one of the dy Gura brothers to be lost -- instead, the named casualty is a spear carrier. Or Liss, or someone. But no, they all live through it, and Foix has quite easily assimilated his demon, it seems. And they're all going to hang out together in Ista's mobile court. Which is all very nice, but a bit *too* rosy, I'm thinking. But that's a relatively minor complaint.
To finish off with some great lines: "An enemy might drop his guard, weary of his task, turn his back; love would never falter." I've seen this one on icons here and there, and now I know where it's from. I have to say, the meaning is quite different, in context, from what I had imagined without it, and considerably more awesome. And this might just be my favorite: (Ista, thinking about Arhys's "I love this land" remark) "How like a man, to change from mask to mask like a player, concealing all intention, yet leave his heart out on the table, carelessly, unreguarded, for all to behold." It's actually this tendency of Arhys's that makes me like him so very much, or one of the many things that do, at least. I also liked all of Ista's musings concluding with, "So... how many different ways might three people kill two of each other with one knife?" It's like a mad game of Clue. I did also enjoy the 'reverse Snow White' scene, and the one that mirrored it at the end, and after: "Illvin was staring down into her face, looking like a man whose kisses had just brought his beloved back from the dead and was now too terrified to move least he shed unexpected miracles in all directions."
26. Georgette Heyer, Cotillion -- so, I don't read romance. Like, to the point where if I were trapped in a house with nothing to read except a phone book and an average romance novel, I would probably end up reading the phonebook. But people whose taste I respect keep mentioning Heyer and say they love her books, so I decided to give it a shot. It was pretty good, actually -- not my cup of tea, but fairly amusing and definitely more interesting than a phone book. I didn't really get into it until the last ~75 pages, and I care about none of these characters (which is generally my motivator in reading) but it was a pleasant read throughout. I liked snarky Lord Legerwood (Freddy's father), and generally liked Camille, Freddy grew on me, once I managed to get most of the way past the weird diction (which at first was well-nigh incomprehensible), and I do like the side of Hugh (the Rector) he shows at the very end. It's a romance novel, so my favorite couple was actually Dolphinton and Hannah -- definitely the most unconventional one, but also the one where I could see why they were good for each other best -- Olivia/Camille was just so floofy and scatterbrained and not very interesting, and Kitty/Freddy was cute (loved the "proposal" at the end) but not something that struck me as particularly "right", and of course Fish/old guy was kind of random (even though I did see it coming). Oh, and I actually giggled aloud when Kitty was tring to decipher Fish's letter.
27. Black Thorn, White Rose, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling -- I read these stories a long time ago, around the same time I read the first collection, Snow White, Blood Red, and remember liking both books quite a bit, and this one more than the other one, but I didn't remember any of the actual stories. But since aome was reading this book, I decided to reread myself, too. And write down individual reactions because I do remember them better this way.
"Words Like Pale Stones" by Nancy Kress -- it's a "gritty" and interesting twist on the Rumplestiltskin story, and I liked the idea of it well enough, but it was so bleak and dreary that I couldn't really like the story as much as I liked many of the others.
"Stronger Than Time" by Patricia C. Wrede -- a lovely retelling of Sleeping Beauty with a most interesting twist (though I did see it coming -- but it's so neatly foreshadowed that seeing it doesn't destroy the enjoyment of the twist).
"Somnus's Fair Maid" by Ann Elizabeth Downer -- another Sleeping Beauty retelling, considerably less well crafted (the transitions between Persephone's and Hyppo's passages, and Hyppo's passages on the whole, were rather abrupt and jerky and I just didn't think it flowed very well), but! I actually didn't see the twist coming in this one (SPOILER) sleeping sickness he picked up in Egypt and the gender reversal, which made me like the story quite a bit more than I would have otherwise.
"The Frog King, or Iron Henry" by Daniel Quinn -- OK, so this is a story I didn't *enjoy* at all, but it's quite disturbingly effective at what it tries to do, which is to create this sense of an endless loop and memories constantly slipping away and going a bit mad. So, intriguing idea, effective execution, but the overall effect I just didn't care for.
"Near-Beauty" by M.E.Beckett -- this is the one story in the collection that I didn't feel I got *anything* out off. The dialogue in the beginning was a bit cute, but overall it was just kind of unmitigated meh.
"Ogre" by Michael Kandel -- that was kind of... random. I get the premise (the man-meat eating brute being the more human one than the sadistic director), and I really enjoyed the narration, but I'm not sure I actually *got* much out of the story.
"Can't Catch Me" by Michael Cadnum -- I actually talked about before, here
"Journeybread Recipe" by Lawrence Schimel -- I'm actually not a big fan of mixing poetry and fiction -- I read them very differently, and find it difficult to switch between the modes, but it was an enjoyable "arrangement" of Little Red Riding Hood, and I like the fact that the version of the story it draws on is the older one, where the wolf doesn't (just) eat LRRH.
"The Brown Bear of Norway" by Isabel Cole -- I liked the beginning of this story quite a lot (it helps that the animal bridegroom motif is one of my favorites), but it ran a little long for my taste. But I do like some of the lyrical descriptions, like, "I kept the dry, light corpses of the letters under my pillow."
"The Goose Girl" by Tim Wynne-Jones -- I really, really liked the narration in this story, the details and the twists that emrege, from the children-snake at the very beginning to the queen going off with her tipsy attendant. I'm intrigued to the point that I'll probably check out this guy's books.
"Tattercoats" by Midori Snyder -- I very much liked the premise, which is basically a married couple weathering a mid-life crisis with the aid of some magical accoutrements. I like the fact that this extends fairy tales into the area that would typically be the blank "happily ever after", and tackles a theme not very common in fantasy at all. That said, the narration was almost-but-not-quite too purple for my taste, which detracted from my enjoyment of the story somewhat, but I still liked the whole thing a lot.
"Granny Rumple" by Jane Yolen -- not the subtlest take on the suffering of Jews in Russia ever, but a good story, and a very original reimaging of the Rumplestiltskin story. I liked the Yiddish-infused narration, all the references to Yolen family history, all the framing of the story, like, "It is a family joke: What the Cossacks and Hitler only began, Chernobyl finished." (Only, you know, Yekaterinoslav = Dniepropetrovsk, and while there are probably not that many Jews left there, it's not so much because of Chernobyl and more just because they finall were allowed to leave. But anyway.) I'm forced to note that Tana is not a name that rings Russian to me at all, not even as a nickname (there's Tanya, which is short for Tatiana, but Tasha would be short for Natasha, and the two don't go together, so... that was a bit distracting). It almost erases the bad taste left after Yolen's Slipping Sideways Through Eternity story in Wizards, which also dealt with Jewish themes and protagonists and which I strongly disliked.
"The Sawing Boys" by Howard Waldrop -- this is such an odd story. It's like, there is one half-story that leaves off rather abruptly but is rather cleverly narrated while it lasts (the gangsters half) and interspersed with it is one clever gag that ties it to the actual Bremen Town Musicians story. It's a neat gag, but it's drawn out beyond cuteness, with the names, and how they're dressed, and Felix the cat guy eating sardines, and so forth. And the resolution is, I don't know -- neat on the one hand, not terribly believable on the other, kind of oddly set up on the third... I enjoyed reading the story while it lasted, at least the half of it that was narrated by Charlie (except that occasionally he and his buddies sound like House Elves...), but I can't say that it was one of my favorites overall because of how it hangs together, or doesn't.
"Godson" by Roger Zelazny -- it's not surprising that I would like the Zelazny story, and so I did. (SPOILER) Morrie made me think of Pratchett's death, although considerably less fluffy, and his enduring football obsession was great, as was his gift of the Heat of Hell microwave as a wedding present. In general, I'm a sucker for self-assembled, non-traditional families, and this certainly fits.
"Ashputtle" by Peter Straub -- OK, that? Was profoundly disturbing, and I could easily have done without the smearing self with feces bit, but. For all that it's definitely not my usual fare, I have to concede that it's a well crafted tale, and all the seemingly disparate bits of it work together rather nicely and yet are still all jagged edges as they should be. The narration of eating through her midnight feast is really neat, and (MAJOR SPOILER) the serial killer implications are really masterfully done. So, on the one hand, ick and brr, but on the other hand, I'm kind of glad I read it, because it is quite good.
"Silver and Gold" by Ellen Steiber -- another Red Riding Hood poem, and I liked this one quite a bit less than the one above -- less interesting, unusual. But it still had some nice lines.
"Sweet Bruising Skin" by Storm Constantine -- this is another one where I really liked the narration (and kept mentally comparing the Dowager Queen to Cersei -- well, she's quite a bit more competent than Cersei, but still not quite as clever as she thinks she is, but at least she realized it in retrospect). I like her cold musings that "Husbands, like horses or dogs, should be admired for their conformation and, when they have it, their kind nature. As with domestic beast, they should be cared for with consideration and gentleness, but one should not become too attached to them because then they are likely to take advantage of the situation. Also, you never know when they might die unexpectedly." (SPOILER) I do like the fact that the Queen and her indirect creation do come to be allies eventually, but I do think I would've preferred some kind of different ending, something that felt more fitting than this one does, though I'm not quite sure what that would be.
"The Black Swan" by Susan Wade -- this one really does feel like a fairy tale, especially reminiscent to me of the Slovakian tales I loved as a kid in Bratislavskij Kolokol. The plot may not be my favorite ever, but it is deftly told (I especially liked the contrasting images of Ylianna and when she turns herself beautiful and fey), and the ending is just so perfectly fairy-tale. But it didn't really have the same impact on me that some of the other ones did.
So, to sum up: really liked "The Goose Girl", "Granny Rumple", and "Godson". Liked a lot: "Stornger than Time", "Tattercoats", "Sweet Bruising Skin", and "The Black Swan". Next tier: "Somnus's Fair Maid", "The Sawing Boys", and "The Brown Bear of Norway". And then everything else, with "Silver and Gold" penultimate and "Near-Beauty" dead last.