Reading roundup
35. Lois McMaster Bujold, The Hallowed Hunt -- I have some kind of odd apprehension when it comes to LMB's fantasy books. Before I start each one, I hesitate because I'm (somewhat irrationally, at this point) afraid I won't like them. This was true with Chalion and with Paladin of Souls and with this one as well, even though I ended up enjoying each one, quite a lot. I really don't know whence comes this odd dread, especially since experience should've dissipated it by now. But, anyway, I was a bit reluctant to start Hallowed Hunt, and the first chapter did not impress me a whole lot, but once I got to the part when Ingrey was trying to kill Ijada against his own will, that's when things got interesting and I started really enjoying it. I don't find Ingrey to be a particularly interesting character, but he is a decent narrator. I did notice that the narration had a lot more sentence fragments and was more stream-of-consciousness than in previous books -- wonder if that's something the author was trying out or if that's just the way Ingrey, with his being somewhat fragmented between himself and the "wolf-within", at least in the beginning, happens to think. Ijada is a nice girl, but didn't particularly stand out to me (and it felt like not enough was done with her leopard-spirit -- I mean, it would've been difficult, since she is not a narrator, and her role as banner carrier is less active than Ingrey's or Horseriver's). Maybe this is because I read HH on the heels of Dragonsbane, which did have several characters that stood out. The characters I found the most interesting were actually the more minor ones.
Prince-marshall Biast was probably my favorite -- his prickly-but-awed/grateful attitude towards Ingrey, the way he was chastened by Ingrey's remark and admitted he had king of forgotten about his sister, but once he'd set himself to ensure her safety how committed and protective he was, the way Ingrey's comment at the hearing made him change his direction from the vague 'I wouldn't ask anyone to lie under oath' to the direct 'Tell the truth', and the despodent-hopeful "Did he [Son of Autumn] have any [...]". In fact, the only thing that bugged me was how Ingrey was apparently starting to relate to Biast and Fara as a superior -- yes, OK, shaman with wolf spirit going back to the time of the Old Weald, and some present-life experience in intrigue -- but, sorry, not getting any particular statesman vibe from Ingrey, and not seeing why he should presume to boss them around. I also liked Lerned Lewko (who reminded me quite a bit of Pterry's Lu Tze), and Prince Jokol (although I'm not buying to origin of the Skulsplitter nickname) and Fafa. I might have loved Fafa even more than I normally would have on the heels of The Golden Compass, but even without that, an ice bear as a sacred animal of the Bastard is an awesome idea! I did like Learned Hallana and her Oswin, but they are so obviously meant to be liked as this odd couple that it's not quite the same. I also liked Hettar (and would have liked to have seen more of him -- he sounds like the kind of competent, behind the scenes character I like a lot), and Gesca. Gesca/Ingrey all the way! (I especially liked that scene where Ingrey tries to prove that his weirding voice doesn't work and thinks Gesca is mocking him when he freezes.)
I haven't said anything yet about Wencel/Horseriver, and that's because it's hard to see him as an actual character -- he is more an ancient *thing*, and very, very creepy -- a father who devours his children, but doesn't even do it intentionally. Ingrey's musings that Horseriver may have killed his favorite children before they had a chance to inherit his fate, Horseriver's in-retrospect-chilling comment about burning ("Burning is a painful death. I do not recommend it"), pretty much everything about him was very, very creepy, down to the glimpses of the actual Wencel Ingrey remembered from childhood. And the way he sets himself up against the gods ("That move, I must concede to my Opponents"). Excellent "villain", well executed, but...The plot didn't really sweep me away because it didn't feel like there was enough at stake. First, it was not even clear what was at stake. Well, Ingrey not killing Ijada and not killing himself -- I was on board with that. But stopping Horseriver, or cleansing Holytree, or whatever -- that never resonated with me as something that *had* to be done, or at least not the same as in Chalion and Paladin, where the outcomes the good guys were trying to prevent were really outcomes I really didn't want to see come to pass. In this case, I was like, whatever. And Ingrey and Ijada's romance is something I didn't care terribly about. I liked the line about "she was dangerous right back at him," and I can kind of understand the appeal to him, though I'm not too terribly sure what the appeal of him to her is -- beyond maybe just the shared bond. Anyway, it was a relationship I was not at all invested in. Though I did like it that she was the one who saved him from the stream, right at the beginning. And also that the "magical kiss" they shared was not all fluffy and sparkly but fairly terrifying. And "Ingrey managed not to blurt, What else did Ijada say of me?", for the sheer highschool-ness of it.
I liked the mystical components of the story well enough -- the shamans and banner bearers, though it did feel a bit like too much new mythology and worldbuilding on top of the existing Quintarian stuff from the earlier books. I was fine with it, but I suspect it would be quite confusing/overwhelming for anyone not familiar with Chalion/Paladin. I especially liked the bit of kingship released at the king's death and borne by the banner carrier. I wasn't particularly impressed with the Son of Autumn, but I did like the mini-appearances of the Bastard, and Lewko's explanation that "It is murmured that the thumb is sacred to the Bastard because it is the part He puts on the scales of justice to tip them His way."
There was one passage that, unexpectedly, echoed something in The Pinhoe Egg: "What came back, a century and a half later, was a shadow and a mockery of the Old Weald, emptied of its essences and its beauties, stamped in the mold of Darthacan Quintarian orthodoxy. The men who re-created that parody of the ahllow kingship thought they were restoring something, but they were too ignorant even to know what had been last." SPOLERS for The Pinhoe Egg: That is really very similar to the loss of true purpose/perversion that happens with the Pinhoe and Farleigh witch clans after the massacres and the children as Christianized. So that was kind of neat. /SPOILERS
Since it's an LMB book, there were some really neat lines. In addition to some of the ones quoted above, I really liked: "His story seemed to grow smoother with repetition, as though the account were slowly coming to replace the event, even in his own mind." And: "Upon consideration, Ingrey's geography lacked a dimension, he decided. Eight square miles by four centuries".
So, overall, I enjoyed it, but of the three Chalion-verse books this one is the one I liked least.
36. Lawrence Block, A Ticket to the Boneyard -- my parents actually recommended this one to me. My mother and I share Pat Cornwell and Jonathan Kellerman and Scott Turow novels, too, but this was the first recent "find" in, like, 10 years. My parents really like him. I'm not sure I'm as impressed as they, but this book was a pretty good read. It's an oddly literary noir -- the epigraphs are an Emily Dickinson poem and a W.B.Yeats one (though I can't say that I feel they fit particularly well as epigraphs -- it feels a bit like showing off to me), and the hardboiled private detective and his call-girl friend/lover/client discuss "The Lady of Shallot" at one point (her name is Elaine, so she used to identify with the eponymous character). It's not a mystery, it's a thriller, a pretty good one, though I wasn't at the edge of my seat at any one point. The protagonist -- a divorced ex-cop, alcoholic on the bandwagon (he spends a lot of time in AA meetings), half-assed PI with a bit of an anger management problem -- is not particularly likeable but is interesting, and his first-person narration has a constant strand of humour (often kind of dark) and occasional, oddly fitting, lyricism. The writing is very solid, although some bits of dialogue veer from clever to overly cutesy on account of the cleverness, but a number of lines are genuinely funny and clever.
The characters I'm less taken with. I found Elaine, the damsel in distress + love interest boring. The decent small-town cop and Scudder's half-Irish/half-French career criminal/bartender buddy are neat, but there are no interesting minor characters. The bad guy, James Leo Motley, is quite good, as psychopaths go, but for all the people he murders I didn't feel enough tension between him and Scudder, and so their final showdown felt kind of anticlimactic. It also bugged me a bit that the trannie Scudder meets (whom he obligingly refers to as "she", even mentally) turns out to be working for the bad guy and the bouncer at the gay club whom Scudder talks to when knocking on doors is so flaming as to be a caricature and nothing more. Not that I expect every mystery series to feature a Milo Sturgis, and this book is almost 20 years old by now, but still -- kind of meh on that whole part of it.
I will continue reading in this series, because I often feel like a mystery/thriller and Kellerman doesn't write enough books a year to satisfy that jones single-handedly.
37. Jim Butcher, Small Favor -- My man Kincaid took down five Denarians. FIVE! To Harry's and the Knights' and Luccio's two apiece. Five! (And he has a "teddy Glock"!) Ahem. So, I'm a Kincaid fan. (I was pleased to discover at some point on one of the Dresden Files comms, not the only one.) So, from that point of view I definitely appreciated the book. More Kincaid = more love. (Also, not on his first name: Jared apparently means "descent", and is a Biblical name, which I never knew before). I also like Nicodemus as a villain, because he is refined and ruthless and outclasses Harry so thoroughly. And it was good to see him nonplussed (probably for real) when he heard about Hellfire at Arctis Tor. I kind of love the implication that he and Harry's gang may have to collaborate at some point against the Black Council, assuming the death of Thorned Whosits is not the end of the Denarians' participation in the Black Council.
I've gotten spoiled, in the later books, by Harry's expanding cast of allies, so I actually find it pretty boring when Harry is off on his own these days. Thus, first five chapters, with Harry on the run from the gruffs by his lonesome, were pretty dull, and then Thomas showed up and things were better from there on. I like it when Harry teams up with Thomas or Ramirez (who are also two of my favorite characters), but Harry and Michael, Harry and Murphy, Harry and Molly, Harry and Marcone (of whom I was expecting to see more in this book), Harry and Bob, heck, even Harry and Elaine, though I'm not that crazy about her, it's all good. Oh, and Harry and Lasciel -- which, come to think of it, might be why the solo!Harry moments felt duller in this book than in previous ones.
But once the war councils got going, I really enjoyed this book. More than White Night, though not quite as much as Proven Guilty. There was heavy foreshadowing for something bad to happen to Michael, but I'm glad that he pulled through -- this series is a comfort read, and I don't want characters to start dying on me in the middle of it, and other characters suffering. Plus, Harry doesn't need more angst -- all the Susan-related angst nearly ruined my interest in the books early on. Speaking of romantic entanglements -- I'm pretty OK with this thing with Luccio (and am grateful for the fade-to-black at the end -- I'm still kind of traumatized by the Susan sex scene from however many books back) -- but it is pretty clear that it's a pleasant diversion and Harry/Murphy is still the OTP of choice. ("You are so hot right now" at McAnally's made me giggle). Speaking of Murphy, I'd been waiting for Murphy to be offerred/have a reason to wield one of the Swords, so that was totally expected -- but I hadn't really expected her to turn it down, though in retrospect it makes sense that she would.
I thought I'd have more of a problem with Harry now apparently having an Archangel looking out for him, but once he put it as "Heaven has a spook. And Mab likes his style" I was kind of sold. Also, if you have to have Heaven communicate with your hero, doing it via a paperback of The Two Towers is definitely the way to go if you ask me. (See? This is a proper Tolkien homage, *not* naming your dead guy Ronald Reuel.) The janitor as an interpreter of heaven was a bit cliche, and I kept trying to figure out if the name was significant. Jake -- I'm assuming that's an allusion to the biblical Jacob/Israel? Was the angel he was wrestling with Uriel? (Wikipedia claims so...)
Also, I liked Mab, talking through Grimalkin and making Harry's ears bleed when she spoke in her own voice. Suitably scary. I kind of liked the gruffs, too, once they weren't the only thing going on anymore, even if the Elder Gruff turning out to be a tiny little goat-guy was kind of a cartoony moment.
I felt like the snark was missing a bit in White Night, but it felt back up to par in this one. The line about "holding your dislocated ass" made me snort out loud. And I think there were even more geeky references and quotes than usual (The Princess Bride, Indiana Jones, and a ton of other things I'm not recalling off the top of my head; oh, and a reference to Sir Ian, which I suppose could be either LotR or X-Men or a lot of other things). Oh, oh, and Gard coptering in to the battlefield to save the day blaring Ride of the Valkyries was awesome, too -- that scene is the kind of thing I love this series for. Oh, and I liked pirate!Thomas on the boat. And this made me giggle:
"Right," Thomas said. "Where are we headed?"
"To where they treat me like royalty," I said.
"We're going to Burger King?"
I was a bit disappointed that there was no interaction between Kincaid and Marcone -- the two pros would make for an interesting dynamic. Come to think of it, Kincaid and Gard would also be interesting (I kind of suspect they know each other). I'm not totally sold on Ivy as a character. The concept of the Archive is interesting, and the traumatic assimilation of souls has *potential* to be interesting, but if you look up above, Bujold's handled that in a much more interesting, "realistic", and sinister way, and Butcher's acknowledgement of it felt kind of pro forma and a bit of a stretch. But I would like to see a "three men and a baby" kind of setup where Harry, Kincaid, and Marcone are off with Ivy somewhere, parenting her. That would be tremendusly cute. And speaking of things I was disappointed by -- not even a cameo from Ramirez? I know he was heavily involved in the last book, but come on -- surely he could be among Luccio's reinforcements there at the end, and Harry could tease him some more about being a virgin.
Sanya still irritates me a bit. More than before, actually, because an agnostic Knight of the Cross is a nice gag, but wears thin very quickly, and we're well past that point. And, uh, please stop with the random "Da"s. He is Russian, we get it. Nobody actually code-switches or code-mixes like that, cut it out! Though I'll give you a pass for "Bozhe moi" -- assuming even an *agnostic* Knight of the Cross wouldn't yell "Chert!" or proper mat under the circumstances. At least it's recognized in this book that him being a black Russian is rather unusual, though seeing a black man over there would not be quite the freak show Butcher seems to imply (well, maybe somewhere deep in the boonies).
Like Proven Guilty, this book raises quite a few questions. Who is actually going to take up the two Swords, since Murphy turned down her shot. (Personally, I think Charity would make a kick-ass Knight, and the trope kind of appeals to me.) Who in Marcone's organization grabbed the Denarian? Unless it was Luccio, who was also in the helicopter with them. Nice reminders of the things Harry is hiding from the Council, including his relationship with Thomas and Bob the Skull's identity/continued existence.
38. Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana -- This may well be my least favorite GGK book that I've read so far. Actually, scratch that. If there's a GGK book out there that I'm likely to enjoy less than Tigana, I hope somebody stops me from reading it, becuase I really don't want to end up hating GGK. I considered giving up on it, even, but partly wanted to see if it got any better and partly to see if I could crystallize my dislike of it. I think one of my problems with it is that it reads like a fairly immature novel, but without the overt homage to LotR that made me somewhat more forgiving of the fumbles of The Summer Tree. So I was very much unsurprised when I looked up GGK's bibliography and saw that Tigana was his first novel after the Fionavar trilogy, and the first of the pseudo-historical fantasies.
Everybody is so emo, all the time. Everybody's emotions and reactions are exaggerated. Devin's singing moves people to tears, and Rovigo's fairly mild joking elicits screams of laughter, and Alais keeps blushing and flaring all over the place, and Brandin weeping and what not -- it's really quite comical, combined with the purpleness of some of the prose about Tigana and "Morian's passages" and what not.
And I didn't like almost any of these people. I'm not sure how one is supposed to feel about Devin -- that he is naively endearing or something? -- but mostly he just annoyed me because GGK kept reminding us how young and small and young-looking he was, and also apparently irresistible to every homosexual who lays eyes on him. I would've liked Rovigo better if he wasn't so over-the-top and meant-to-be-liked, and had more notes to his character than just teasing his wife and daughters -- noboby does that ALL THE TIME. Catriana started out as a raging bitch and did not improve my opinion of her any. Her prickliness is not interesting or attractive, it's off-putting, and her faulting Devin somehow for her seduction of him -- wtf? Her "unfathomable courage" is... OK, she's pretty brave, but in a kind of pathological way that makes her unhealthy, not admirable in my eyes. I hate to admit this almost, but I was kind of rooting for her to die in the grand self-sacrificing moment. If you are going to make a brave sacrifice, you should die! At least a little bit. C'mon, Harry Potter died, and that was in a kid's book! Surely we could do with a little actual sacrifice by a main character in this book? And what the hell with Sandre being willing to cut his fingers to save her, when he was not willing to do it for his son? I know he admired her and wanted to consider her family, and perhaps it's also meant to show the growth he's undergone over the course of the book, but that REALLY rubs me the wrong way.
Alessan pisses me off with his Aragorn schtick -- I'd liked him well enough as a mysterious player of shepherd pipes, and was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when it started looking like he was a Prince in Exile (TM), but lording it over Sandre's conspirators (though he turned out to be right) totally lost whatever affection I was beginning to feel for the guy. Tigana's pride is mentioned again and again, and though it's mentioned as a kind of fault, it feels like a Mary-Sue fault -- not actually a fault but something that is justified somehow.
And then there's the binding of the wizard, which actually made me hate Alessan. I am OK with ruthless characters -- more than OK, really -- it's one of the things I admire about characters like Tywin Lannister. I'm even OK with ruthless "good guys" (though I can't readily think of an example). But if you're going to be ruthless -- and binding someone to your will is pretty damn ruthless in my book, as depriving a person of free will is one of the most fundamental violations I can think of -- at least be open about it, dammit! Don't try to mask it under some kind of rhetoric about how he was never free in the first place: NOT. YOUR. CALL. Don't go on talking about how much it *grieves* you, or expecting that playing sad songs from Senzio is somehow going to make him feel better. And Devin's reaction to the wizard running away ("Why was he making this so hard for them? Why forcing Alessan to shoulder so much more pain of his own?") is just so O.o... I mean, it would work beautifully
as an indictment of cult-like hero-worship and brainwashing, but I really don't think it's meant to be taken like that? I could even understand an action like this in a moment of necessity, where there really was no other choice and there was something very specific they needed a wizard to do and this was the only way to accomplish it. But it seems to be a fairly cold-blooded, "Hey, we could probably use a wizard later, let's grab'im." I totally respect Duke Sandre for bringing it up -- *he* is not pretending to be a noble good guy, and his motivation is to test whether Alessan really can do the binding. But the rest of them? Actually, to expand on something I said up in the paragraph, I think it's not so much Alessan himself I hate, because at least he does become aware of some of the problems with what he is doing (and releases Erlein), and some of the mental dialogue when he is standing so close to Brandin and does not *do* anything was interesting -- what really bugs me is Devin's star-struck image of Alessan. That's not necessarily Alessan's fault, but it's the prevailing view for so much of the book, since most of it is Devin's POV, that it's really difficult to deconvolute.
And then the whole thing with Alessan and Catriana suddenly discovering they've been in wuv all this time... Yeah, I don't buy that sort of plot device, but what the hell, they deserve each other. And does Alais have any purpose at all beyond being a tacked-on love interest for Devin? And not a terribly convincing one at that? Ditto for Elena and Baerd. But, what Sandre and Alienor don't get together? *Major characters are not paired off sufficiently!*
I realize I haven't talked yet about Brandin and Dianora. I actually kind of liked the *idea* of what GGK was trying to do with Dianora and Brandin. Not that the whole "sleeping with the enemy" thing is new, but the tension between her wanting the kill the far-removed tyrant who caused her family's suffering and destroyed her home and falling in love with Brandin the man when she actually met him in the flesh is an interesting idea. But it's executed so melodramatically...
And Brandin himself... You know, I think this is the part that distresses me the most about this book. The whole Brandin thing is a really neat idea, in a tragic hero sort of way. Well, maybe not hero entirely, but -- he is (when you strip away the melodrama) and interesting character. I like the combination of quiet strength and mastery and fairness and dry humour with a father's terrible, obsessive, destructive grief and the need to be loved. I even like the rather unsubtle distinction set up between Brandin's passion-born tyranny and Alberico's cold, pointless ambition. But I didn't like the way he suddenly turned into a trembling wreck around Dianora. I understand the shock of what he's been through, and the realizations and everything, but that was just weird. But anyway, I like Brandin as a character, and I feel like so much more could've been done with the same initial conditions. I really liked the tragic tableau, the Hamlet ending around Brandin's death, and the way the Fool's identity was not revealed -- but I would've preferred not to have had tow ade through almost 700 pages of Alessan-worship and melodrama to get there.
My favorite character was actually Scalvaia, the lord with the cane who appeared for all of a couple of pages before almost succeeding to assassinate Alberico -- the way he was described and a little bit the way he acted reminded me of Kristobal Junta, which is always a good thing. Once he was dead, I was left to like Duke Sandre, maybe at least partly because he didn't fall all over himself to pledge allegiance to Alessan.
To be honest, the whole freedom-fighter plot left me kind of cold. I'm not an idealistic person, and I find it rather difficult to care whether a piece of land is called Tigana or Lower Corte. The death wheels are way more of an issue to me than a *name*, and the fact that they're kind of secondary to the stripping away of the name in this book is rather weird to me. Also, I find it a little difficult to believe that everyone, upon learning they're from Tigana, want to fight for its resurrection. I get Alessan, I get Baerd, who lived through the spell and the destruction of his city. But Devin? Catriana? I suppose a few *would* react this way, and it would make sense that they would be the ones in the story (any youngsters from Tigana who *don't* care wouldn't've ended up with Alessan), but I would dearly have loved to see Alessan and company tell some young person born in Tigana that that's where they were actually from and be greeted not with, "I pledge myself to you forevermore!" but "Tigana, huh? You don't say. Well, good luck with your quest there. There's this thing I've got to do back home. See ya." or "You're saying I'm from-- Where? What was that word? I could've sworn you said something but I just... couldn't... it's like magic or something. Where did you say I was supposedly from? And, can I go now?"
I also can't say I can see why Alessan ruling over the Palm is so preferrable to Brandin ruling over the Palm, once he decided to pay the price himself. Well, yes, the whole Tigana thing, but I really don't think that's that salient a point of distinction between the two. And it bugged me that supposedly our Brave Band of Heroes were fighting for Freedom when what they were fighting for was to put Alessan on a throne. How about a rule, guys: You can evoke revolutionary rhetoric OR the divine right of kings, but not both at the same time!.
The world-building didn't feel terribly conclusive to me. The Triad seem to be responsible for too many things, too many myths mixed up together in a way that didn't totally fit (IMO). I did like some of the more peripheral worldbuilding stuff, like wizards cutting off their fingers to bind themselves to the Palm, and the different relative strength of sorcery in different places. But the Carlozzini were totally and randomly tacked on. The one thing I really liked about the worldbuilding was the Fool, and how the whole thing was handled, from seeing Rhun in action continuously, to the foreshadowing with the poet conspirator barely escaping this fate, to the spell finally being broken and the ending. That was really awesome, and the foundation was well laid without me ever seeing the actual thing coming -- by far my favorite part of the book.
Oh, I should also mention somewhere that I did enjoy Brandin and Alberico bickering and making fun of each other via letters and verses and things.
This is also apparently the book in which GGK discovers homosexuality. Now, I was getting very slashy vibes from Kevin and Paul in The Summer Tree and from Blaise and Rudel in The Song for Arbonne (the other stuff I read before I knew what slash was, so I don't recall if there was anything there that would make me think of it). This is actually the book with no slashy feel whatsoever, yet tons of canon homosexuals. There's Tomasso, of course, but also everyone who hits on Devin, and the dancers from the troupe, and the singer from Ygrath who takes up with Brandin's queen, and the two random soldiers of Alberico's who had run off to live together. And of course all the innuendo in Senzio, when Alessan and Baerd are hugging each other all over the place. I guess maybe it's the pseudo-Italian setting that brought them all out? Still, it's rather weird. Also, since I'm talking about sex in this book, I just have to say that the sudden incest thing between Dianora and Baerd totally left me going WTF. I just have a hard time seeing how *that* would be the relationship that would develop out of the situation they were in, and it seems so utterly gratuitous, too... except that Brandin "abandoning" her that night brings her back to the night her brother abandoned her and thus reawakens her mission, but still -- WTF? Oh, and let's not forget BDSM. *Philosophical* BDSM. What.
I guess the last thing I have to say/complain about is the pace. This is a long book, but it feels even longer becasue the pace is glacial throughout. I had to fight my way through the last 100 pages or so -- and they were the ones with the culmination, where stuff supposedly starts happening quickly. SO many words. So little actual action. SO SLOW.
I am glad I'm done with this book. I actually started reading it before the other three on this roundup, ut every time something else came along, I gratefully took a break from Tigana and read the more enjoyable thing. Well, now I'm done. Hooray.
ETA: Having read the afterword to Tigana, I have to say that I respect GGK's *intent* more now, but still dislike the execution, which was not nearly as shades-of-gray as it was apparently supposed to be. Oh well, the subsequent books are better at that, and many other things.
*
I need not have feared that I would not like Temeraire -- I started His Majesty's Dragon this morning, and am enjoying it quite a lot. Laurence's thoughtful, pragmatic, and mild POV is a balm to my soul after the melodrama of Tigana. I will be definitely taking the book with me on our Yosemite trip.
Prince-marshall Biast was probably my favorite -- his prickly-but-awed/grateful attitude towards Ingrey, the way he was chastened by Ingrey's remark and admitted he had king of forgotten about his sister, but once he'd set himself to ensure her safety how committed and protective he was, the way Ingrey's comment at the hearing made him change his direction from the vague 'I wouldn't ask anyone to lie under oath' to the direct 'Tell the truth', and the despodent-hopeful "Did he [Son of Autumn] have any [...]". In fact, the only thing that bugged me was how Ingrey was apparently starting to relate to Biast and Fara as a superior -- yes, OK, shaman with wolf spirit going back to the time of the Old Weald, and some present-life experience in intrigue -- but, sorry, not getting any particular statesman vibe from Ingrey, and not seeing why he should presume to boss them around. I also liked Lerned Lewko (who reminded me quite a bit of Pterry's Lu Tze), and Prince Jokol (although I'm not buying to origin of the Skulsplitter nickname) and Fafa. I might have loved Fafa even more than I normally would have on the heels of The Golden Compass, but even without that, an ice bear as a sacred animal of the Bastard is an awesome idea! I did like Learned Hallana and her Oswin, but they are so obviously meant to be liked as this odd couple that it's not quite the same. I also liked Hettar (and would have liked to have seen more of him -- he sounds like the kind of competent, behind the scenes character I like a lot), and Gesca. Gesca/Ingrey all the way! (I especially liked that scene where Ingrey tries to prove that his weirding voice doesn't work and thinks Gesca is mocking him when he freezes.)
I haven't said anything yet about Wencel/Horseriver, and that's because it's hard to see him as an actual character -- he is more an ancient *thing*, and very, very creepy -- a father who devours his children, but doesn't even do it intentionally. Ingrey's musings that Horseriver may have killed his favorite children before they had a chance to inherit his fate, Horseriver's in-retrospect-chilling comment about burning ("Burning is a painful death. I do not recommend it"), pretty much everything about him was very, very creepy, down to the glimpses of the actual Wencel Ingrey remembered from childhood. And the way he sets himself up against the gods ("That move, I must concede to my Opponents"). Excellent "villain", well executed, but...The plot didn't really sweep me away because it didn't feel like there was enough at stake. First, it was not even clear what was at stake. Well, Ingrey not killing Ijada and not killing himself -- I was on board with that. But stopping Horseriver, or cleansing Holytree, or whatever -- that never resonated with me as something that *had* to be done, or at least not the same as in Chalion and Paladin, where the outcomes the good guys were trying to prevent were really outcomes I really didn't want to see come to pass. In this case, I was like, whatever. And Ingrey and Ijada's romance is something I didn't care terribly about. I liked the line about "she was dangerous right back at him," and I can kind of understand the appeal to him, though I'm not too terribly sure what the appeal of him to her is -- beyond maybe just the shared bond. Anyway, it was a relationship I was not at all invested in. Though I did like it that she was the one who saved him from the stream, right at the beginning. And also that the "magical kiss" they shared was not all fluffy and sparkly but fairly terrifying. And "Ingrey managed not to blurt, What else did Ijada say of me?", for the sheer highschool-ness of it.
I liked the mystical components of the story well enough -- the shamans and banner bearers, though it did feel a bit like too much new mythology and worldbuilding on top of the existing Quintarian stuff from the earlier books. I was fine with it, but I suspect it would be quite confusing/overwhelming for anyone not familiar with Chalion/Paladin. I especially liked the bit of kingship released at the king's death and borne by the banner carrier. I wasn't particularly impressed with the Son of Autumn, but I did like the mini-appearances of the Bastard, and Lewko's explanation that "It is murmured that the thumb is sacred to the Bastard because it is the part He puts on the scales of justice to tip them His way."
There was one passage that, unexpectedly, echoed something in The Pinhoe Egg: "What came back, a century and a half later, was a shadow and a mockery of the Old Weald, emptied of its essences and its beauties, stamped in the mold of Darthacan Quintarian orthodoxy. The men who re-created that parody of the ahllow kingship thought they were restoring something, but they were too ignorant even to know what had been last." SPOLERS for The Pinhoe Egg: That is really very similar to the loss of true purpose/perversion that happens with the Pinhoe and Farleigh witch clans after the massacres and the children as Christianized. So that was kind of neat. /SPOILERS
Since it's an LMB book, there were some really neat lines. In addition to some of the ones quoted above, I really liked: "His story seemed to grow smoother with repetition, as though the account were slowly coming to replace the event, even in his own mind." And: "Upon consideration, Ingrey's geography lacked a dimension, he decided. Eight square miles by four centuries".
So, overall, I enjoyed it, but of the three Chalion-verse books this one is the one I liked least.
36. Lawrence Block, A Ticket to the Boneyard -- my parents actually recommended this one to me. My mother and I share Pat Cornwell and Jonathan Kellerman and Scott Turow novels, too, but this was the first recent "find" in, like, 10 years. My parents really like him. I'm not sure I'm as impressed as they, but this book was a pretty good read. It's an oddly literary noir -- the epigraphs are an Emily Dickinson poem and a W.B.Yeats one (though I can't say that I feel they fit particularly well as epigraphs -- it feels a bit like showing off to me), and the hardboiled private detective and his call-girl friend/lover/client discuss "The Lady of Shallot" at one point (her name is Elaine, so she used to identify with the eponymous character). It's not a mystery, it's a thriller, a pretty good one, though I wasn't at the edge of my seat at any one point. The protagonist -- a divorced ex-cop, alcoholic on the bandwagon (he spends a lot of time in AA meetings), half-assed PI with a bit of an anger management problem -- is not particularly likeable but is interesting, and his first-person narration has a constant strand of humour (often kind of dark) and occasional, oddly fitting, lyricism. The writing is very solid, although some bits of dialogue veer from clever to overly cutesy on account of the cleverness, but a number of lines are genuinely funny and clever.
The characters I'm less taken with. I found Elaine, the damsel in distress + love interest boring. The decent small-town cop and Scudder's half-Irish/half-French career criminal/bartender buddy are neat, but there are no interesting minor characters. The bad guy, James Leo Motley, is quite good, as psychopaths go, but for all the people he murders I didn't feel enough tension between him and Scudder, and so their final showdown felt kind of anticlimactic. It also bugged me a bit that the trannie Scudder meets (whom he obligingly refers to as "she", even mentally) turns out to be working for the bad guy and the bouncer at the gay club whom Scudder talks to when knocking on doors is so flaming as to be a caricature and nothing more. Not that I expect every mystery series to feature a Milo Sturgis, and this book is almost 20 years old by now, but still -- kind of meh on that whole part of it.
I will continue reading in this series, because I often feel like a mystery/thriller and Kellerman doesn't write enough books a year to satisfy that jones single-handedly.
37. Jim Butcher, Small Favor -- My man Kincaid took down five Denarians. FIVE! To Harry's and the Knights' and Luccio's two apiece. Five! (And he has a "teddy Glock"!) Ahem. So, I'm a Kincaid fan. (I was pleased to discover at some point on one of the Dresden Files comms, not the only one.) So, from that point of view I definitely appreciated the book. More Kincaid = more love. (Also, not on his first name: Jared apparently means "descent", and is a Biblical name, which I never knew before). I also like Nicodemus as a villain, because he is refined and ruthless and outclasses Harry so thoroughly. And it was good to see him nonplussed (probably for real) when he heard about Hellfire at Arctis Tor. I kind of love the implication that he and Harry's gang may have to collaborate at some point against the Black Council, assuming the death of Thorned Whosits is not the end of the Denarians' participation in the Black Council.
I've gotten spoiled, in the later books, by Harry's expanding cast of allies, so I actually find it pretty boring when Harry is off on his own these days. Thus, first five chapters, with Harry on the run from the gruffs by his lonesome, were pretty dull, and then Thomas showed up and things were better from there on. I like it when Harry teams up with Thomas or Ramirez (who are also two of my favorite characters), but Harry and Michael, Harry and Murphy, Harry and Molly, Harry and Marcone (of whom I was expecting to see more in this book), Harry and Bob, heck, even Harry and Elaine, though I'm not that crazy about her, it's all good. Oh, and Harry and Lasciel -- which, come to think of it, might be why the solo!Harry moments felt duller in this book than in previous ones.
But once the war councils got going, I really enjoyed this book. More than White Night, though not quite as much as Proven Guilty. There was heavy foreshadowing for something bad to happen to Michael, but I'm glad that he pulled through -- this series is a comfort read, and I don't want characters to start dying on me in the middle of it, and other characters suffering. Plus, Harry doesn't need more angst -- all the Susan-related angst nearly ruined my interest in the books early on. Speaking of romantic entanglements -- I'm pretty OK with this thing with Luccio (and am grateful for the fade-to-black at the end -- I'm still kind of traumatized by the Susan sex scene from however many books back) -- but it is pretty clear that it's a pleasant diversion and Harry/Murphy is still the OTP of choice. ("You are so hot right now" at McAnally's made me giggle). Speaking of Murphy, I'd been waiting for Murphy to be offerred/have a reason to wield one of the Swords, so that was totally expected -- but I hadn't really expected her to turn it down, though in retrospect it makes sense that she would.
I thought I'd have more of a problem with Harry now apparently having an Archangel looking out for him, but once he put it as "Heaven has a spook. And Mab likes his style" I was kind of sold. Also, if you have to have Heaven communicate with your hero, doing it via a paperback of The Two Towers is definitely the way to go if you ask me. (See? This is a proper Tolkien homage, *not* naming your dead guy Ronald Reuel.) The janitor as an interpreter of heaven was a bit cliche, and I kept trying to figure out if the name was significant. Jake -- I'm assuming that's an allusion to the biblical Jacob/Israel? Was the angel he was wrestling with Uriel? (Wikipedia claims so...)
Also, I liked Mab, talking through Grimalkin and making Harry's ears bleed when she spoke in her own voice. Suitably scary. I kind of liked the gruffs, too, once they weren't the only thing going on anymore, even if the Elder Gruff turning out to be a tiny little goat-guy was kind of a cartoony moment.
I felt like the snark was missing a bit in White Night, but it felt back up to par in this one. The line about "holding your dislocated ass" made me snort out loud. And I think there were even more geeky references and quotes than usual (The Princess Bride, Indiana Jones, and a ton of other things I'm not recalling off the top of my head; oh, and a reference to Sir Ian, which I suppose could be either LotR or X-Men or a lot of other things). Oh, oh, and Gard coptering in to the battlefield to save the day blaring Ride of the Valkyries was awesome, too -- that scene is the kind of thing I love this series for. Oh, and I liked pirate!Thomas on the boat. And this made me giggle:
"Right," Thomas said. "Where are we headed?"
"To where they treat me like royalty," I said.
"We're going to Burger King?"
I was a bit disappointed that there was no interaction between Kincaid and Marcone -- the two pros would make for an interesting dynamic. Come to think of it, Kincaid and Gard would also be interesting (I kind of suspect they know each other). I'm not totally sold on Ivy as a character. The concept of the Archive is interesting, and the traumatic assimilation of souls has *potential* to be interesting, but if you look up above, Bujold's handled that in a much more interesting, "realistic", and sinister way, and Butcher's acknowledgement of it felt kind of pro forma and a bit of a stretch. But I would like to see a "three men and a baby" kind of setup where Harry, Kincaid, and Marcone are off with Ivy somewhere, parenting her. That would be tremendusly cute. And speaking of things I was disappointed by -- not even a cameo from Ramirez? I know he was heavily involved in the last book, but come on -- surely he could be among Luccio's reinforcements there at the end, and Harry could tease him some more about being a virgin.
Sanya still irritates me a bit. More than before, actually, because an agnostic Knight of the Cross is a nice gag, but wears thin very quickly, and we're well past that point. And, uh, please stop with the random "Da"s. He is Russian, we get it. Nobody actually code-switches or code-mixes like that, cut it out! Though I'll give you a pass for "Bozhe moi" -- assuming even an *agnostic* Knight of the Cross wouldn't yell "Chert!" or proper mat under the circumstances. At least it's recognized in this book that him being a black Russian is rather unusual, though seeing a black man over there would not be quite the freak show Butcher seems to imply (well, maybe somewhere deep in the boonies).
Like Proven Guilty, this book raises quite a few questions. Who is actually going to take up the two Swords, since Murphy turned down her shot. (Personally, I think Charity would make a kick-ass Knight, and the trope kind of appeals to me.) Who in Marcone's organization grabbed the Denarian? Unless it was Luccio, who was also in the helicopter with them. Nice reminders of the things Harry is hiding from the Council, including his relationship with Thomas and Bob the Skull's identity/continued existence.
38. Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana -- This may well be my least favorite GGK book that I've read so far. Actually, scratch that. If there's a GGK book out there that I'm likely to enjoy less than Tigana, I hope somebody stops me from reading it, becuase I really don't want to end up hating GGK. I considered giving up on it, even, but partly wanted to see if it got any better and partly to see if I could crystallize my dislike of it. I think one of my problems with it is that it reads like a fairly immature novel, but without the overt homage to LotR that made me somewhat more forgiving of the fumbles of The Summer Tree. So I was very much unsurprised when I looked up GGK's bibliography and saw that Tigana was his first novel after the Fionavar trilogy, and the first of the pseudo-historical fantasies.
Everybody is so emo, all the time. Everybody's emotions and reactions are exaggerated. Devin's singing moves people to tears, and Rovigo's fairly mild joking elicits screams of laughter, and Alais keeps blushing and flaring all over the place, and Brandin weeping and what not -- it's really quite comical, combined with the purpleness of some of the prose about Tigana and "Morian's passages" and what not.
And I didn't like almost any of these people. I'm not sure how one is supposed to feel about Devin -- that he is naively endearing or something? -- but mostly he just annoyed me because GGK kept reminding us how young and small and young-looking he was, and also apparently irresistible to every homosexual who lays eyes on him. I would've liked Rovigo better if he wasn't so over-the-top and meant-to-be-liked, and had more notes to his character than just teasing his wife and daughters -- noboby does that ALL THE TIME. Catriana started out as a raging bitch and did not improve my opinion of her any. Her prickliness is not interesting or attractive, it's off-putting, and her faulting Devin somehow for her seduction of him -- wtf? Her "unfathomable courage" is... OK, she's pretty brave, but in a kind of pathological way that makes her unhealthy, not admirable in my eyes. I hate to admit this almost, but I was kind of rooting for her to die in the grand self-sacrificing moment. If you are going to make a brave sacrifice, you should die! At least a little bit. C'mon, Harry Potter died, and that was in a kid's book! Surely we could do with a little actual sacrifice by a main character in this book? And what the hell with Sandre being willing to cut his fingers to save her, when he was not willing to do it for his son? I know he admired her and wanted to consider her family, and perhaps it's also meant to show the growth he's undergone over the course of the book, but that REALLY rubs me the wrong way.
Alessan pisses me off with his Aragorn schtick -- I'd liked him well enough as a mysterious player of shepherd pipes, and was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when it started looking like he was a Prince in Exile (TM), but lording it over Sandre's conspirators (though he turned out to be right) totally lost whatever affection I was beginning to feel for the guy. Tigana's pride is mentioned again and again, and though it's mentioned as a kind of fault, it feels like a Mary-Sue fault -- not actually a fault but something that is justified somehow.
And then there's the binding of the wizard, which actually made me hate Alessan. I am OK with ruthless characters -- more than OK, really -- it's one of the things I admire about characters like Tywin Lannister. I'm even OK with ruthless "good guys" (though I can't readily think of an example). But if you're going to be ruthless -- and binding someone to your will is pretty damn ruthless in my book, as depriving a person of free will is one of the most fundamental violations I can think of -- at least be open about it, dammit! Don't try to mask it under some kind of rhetoric about how he was never free in the first place: NOT. YOUR. CALL. Don't go on talking about how much it *grieves* you, or expecting that playing sad songs from Senzio is somehow going to make him feel better. And Devin's reaction to the wizard running away ("Why was he making this so hard for them? Why forcing Alessan to shoulder so much more pain of his own?") is just so O.o... I mean, it would work beautifully
as an indictment of cult-like hero-worship and brainwashing, but I really don't think it's meant to be taken like that? I could even understand an action like this in a moment of necessity, where there really was no other choice and there was something very specific they needed a wizard to do and this was the only way to accomplish it. But it seems to be a fairly cold-blooded, "Hey, we could probably use a wizard later, let's grab'im." I totally respect Duke Sandre for bringing it up -- *he* is not pretending to be a noble good guy, and his motivation is to test whether Alessan really can do the binding. But the rest of them? Actually, to expand on something I said up in the paragraph, I think it's not so much Alessan himself I hate, because at least he does become aware of some of the problems with what he is doing (and releases Erlein), and some of the mental dialogue when he is standing so close to Brandin and does not *do* anything was interesting -- what really bugs me is Devin's star-struck image of Alessan. That's not necessarily Alessan's fault, but it's the prevailing view for so much of the book, since most of it is Devin's POV, that it's really difficult to deconvolute.
And then the whole thing with Alessan and Catriana suddenly discovering they've been in wuv all this time... Yeah, I don't buy that sort of plot device, but what the hell, they deserve each other. And does Alais have any purpose at all beyond being a tacked-on love interest for Devin? And not a terribly convincing one at that? Ditto for Elena and Baerd. But, what Sandre and Alienor don't get together? *Major characters are not paired off sufficiently!*
I realize I haven't talked yet about Brandin and Dianora. I actually kind of liked the *idea* of what GGK was trying to do with Dianora and Brandin. Not that the whole "sleeping with the enemy" thing is new, but the tension between her wanting the kill the far-removed tyrant who caused her family's suffering and destroyed her home and falling in love with Brandin the man when she actually met him in the flesh is an interesting idea. But it's executed so melodramatically...
And Brandin himself... You know, I think this is the part that distresses me the most about this book. The whole Brandin thing is a really neat idea, in a tragic hero sort of way. Well, maybe not hero entirely, but -- he is (when you strip away the melodrama) and interesting character. I like the combination of quiet strength and mastery and fairness and dry humour with a father's terrible, obsessive, destructive grief and the need to be loved. I even like the rather unsubtle distinction set up between Brandin's passion-born tyranny and Alberico's cold, pointless ambition. But I didn't like the way he suddenly turned into a trembling wreck around Dianora. I understand the shock of what he's been through, and the realizations and everything, but that was just weird. But anyway, I like Brandin as a character, and I feel like so much more could've been done with the same initial conditions. I really liked the tragic tableau, the Hamlet ending around Brandin's death, and the way the Fool's identity was not revealed -- but I would've preferred not to have had tow ade through almost 700 pages of Alessan-worship and melodrama to get there.
My favorite character was actually Scalvaia, the lord with the cane who appeared for all of a couple of pages before almost succeeding to assassinate Alberico -- the way he was described and a little bit the way he acted reminded me of Kristobal Junta, which is always a good thing. Once he was dead, I was left to like Duke Sandre, maybe at least partly because he didn't fall all over himself to pledge allegiance to Alessan.
To be honest, the whole freedom-fighter plot left me kind of cold. I'm not an idealistic person, and I find it rather difficult to care whether a piece of land is called Tigana or Lower Corte. The death wheels are way more of an issue to me than a *name*, and the fact that they're kind of secondary to the stripping away of the name in this book is rather weird to me. Also, I find it a little difficult to believe that everyone, upon learning they're from Tigana, want to fight for its resurrection. I get Alessan, I get Baerd, who lived through the spell and the destruction of his city. But Devin? Catriana? I suppose a few *would* react this way, and it would make sense that they would be the ones in the story (any youngsters from Tigana who *don't* care wouldn't've ended up with Alessan), but I would dearly have loved to see Alessan and company tell some young person born in Tigana that that's where they were actually from and be greeted not with, "I pledge myself to you forevermore!" but "Tigana, huh? You don't say. Well, good luck with your quest there. There's this thing I've got to do back home. See ya." or "You're saying I'm from-- Where? What was that word? I could've sworn you said something but I just... couldn't... it's like magic or something. Where did you say I was supposedly from? And, can I go now?"
I also can't say I can see why Alessan ruling over the Palm is so preferrable to Brandin ruling over the Palm, once he decided to pay the price himself. Well, yes, the whole Tigana thing, but I really don't think that's that salient a point of distinction between the two. And it bugged me that supposedly our Brave Band of Heroes were fighting for Freedom when what they were fighting for was to put Alessan on a throne. How about a rule, guys: You can evoke revolutionary rhetoric OR the divine right of kings, but not both at the same time!.
The world-building didn't feel terribly conclusive to me. The Triad seem to be responsible for too many things, too many myths mixed up together in a way that didn't totally fit (IMO). I did like some of the more peripheral worldbuilding stuff, like wizards cutting off their fingers to bind themselves to the Palm, and the different relative strength of sorcery in different places. But the Carlozzini were totally and randomly tacked on. The one thing I really liked about the worldbuilding was the Fool, and how the whole thing was handled, from seeing Rhun in action continuously, to the foreshadowing with the poet conspirator barely escaping this fate, to the spell finally being broken and the ending. That was really awesome, and the foundation was well laid without me ever seeing the actual thing coming -- by far my favorite part of the book.
Oh, I should also mention somewhere that I did enjoy Brandin and Alberico bickering and making fun of each other via letters and verses and things.
This is also apparently the book in which GGK discovers homosexuality. Now, I was getting very slashy vibes from Kevin and Paul in The Summer Tree and from Blaise and Rudel in The Song for Arbonne (the other stuff I read before I knew what slash was, so I don't recall if there was anything there that would make me think of it). This is actually the book with no slashy feel whatsoever, yet tons of canon homosexuals. There's Tomasso, of course, but also everyone who hits on Devin, and the dancers from the troupe, and the singer from Ygrath who takes up with Brandin's queen, and the two random soldiers of Alberico's who had run off to live together. And of course all the innuendo in Senzio, when Alessan and Baerd are hugging each other all over the place. I guess maybe it's the pseudo-Italian setting that brought them all out? Still, it's rather weird. Also, since I'm talking about sex in this book, I just have to say that the sudden incest thing between Dianora and Baerd totally left me going WTF. I just have a hard time seeing how *that* would be the relationship that would develop out of the situation they were in, and it seems so utterly gratuitous, too... except that Brandin "abandoning" her that night brings her back to the night her brother abandoned her and thus reawakens her mission, but still -- WTF? Oh, and let's not forget BDSM. *Philosophical* BDSM. What.
I guess the last thing I have to say/complain about is the pace. This is a long book, but it feels even longer becasue the pace is glacial throughout. I had to fight my way through the last 100 pages or so -- and they were the ones with the culmination, where stuff supposedly starts happening quickly. SO many words. So little actual action. SO SLOW.
I am glad I'm done with this book. I actually started reading it before the other three on this roundup, ut every time something else came along, I gratefully took a break from Tigana and read the more enjoyable thing. Well, now I'm done. Hooray.
ETA: Having read the afterword to Tigana, I have to say that I respect GGK's *intent* more now, but still dislike the execution, which was not nearly as shades-of-gray as it was apparently supposed to be. Oh well, the subsequent books are better at that, and many other things.
*
I need not have feared that I would not like Temeraire -- I started His Majesty's Dragon this morning, and am enjoying it quite a lot. Laurence's thoughtful, pragmatic, and mild POV is a balm to my soul after the melodrama of Tigana. I will be definitely taking the book with me on our Yosemite trip.