Reading roundup
44. Naomi Novik, Empire of Ivory -- I'm not sure what it is about these books that first makes me thing, "Huh, this plot doesn't sound all that exciting, I wonder if I'll like it" -- and then two hours later I'm halfway through the books and having a wonderful time in spite of the fact that, in fact, I don't care that much for the plot, as anticipated. What I liked about EoI, compared to ToJ and BPW, is that Lily's formation is back in the picture. I love Maximus and Berkley and am quite fond of the other dragons and their captains, though I have to confess to being unable to tell the other men and their dragons apart, except for Sutton and his Messoria. Well, I remembered who Chenery was, finally, towards the end of the book, but that's about it. I was disappointed by the lack of Tharkay and the relative lack of Granby (though I do enjoy Iskierka in small doses -- in spite of being grown now, she is still just as much of a brat and fun comic relief). I'm also quite fond of Riley, so I was happy to see him again, and to see the quarrel between him and Laurence first heightened (after his touching welcome) and then healed. And the wedding proposal/acceptance/ceremony was pretty darn funny.
I was appropriately affected by the effects of the dragon flu on the poor dragons and especially their captains, and even after the cure is found, the flight over the dragon barrows was pretty chilling. I liked Jane as Admiral and Laurence being totally blindsided by it (oh Laurence, you will never learn, will you?), and her rational response to his proposal. I find Jane a very interesting character, actually -- she is obviously in a man's role and quite "manly" herself, but that doesn't necessarily make her "progressive" or feminist -- e.g. "So it was me or Sanderson, and he is making a cake of himself over the business; goes off into corners and weeps like a woman" (italics mine). I rather love that sentence right there, how clearly it shows the pragmatic society of the corps and how it exists within the larger sexist society of the time. Also, I loved her negotiating the livestock exchange rate with the ferals and tricking Iskierka into obedience. In conclusion: Jane = awesome.
The whole interlude in Africa I found not terribly interesting, with the exception of the idea of dragon-ancestors and dragon-rebirth, which seemed fitting to the locale and really cool, and the fact that the locals didn't think of the Western settlements as colonies until the "ancestors" (i.e. dragons) showed up. Oh, and I also liked Mrs.Erasmus, from the moment she appeared until she elected to remain behind. And Laurence's reaction to the threat of being flogged: "Brutality and further ill-usage will in no wise alter my determination, and I beg your pardon, ma'am, if you are forced to witness it" -- that is such vintage Laurence. But other than that, and the interaction between the captains of Lily's wing while they were there, I didn't much care for part 2.
The third part... boy. What I found most interesting, actually, was that while Laurence was obviously horrified and appalled by the decision to infect the French dragons with the dragon flu, the course of action was totally unthinkable to him until Temeraire suggested it. I mean, Laurence is obviously a very decent, honorable man, not in any hollow way but quite fundamentally. And yet, genocide is more endurable to him than treason, or at least, less unthinkable -- but even treason is more endurable than letting Temeraire go that route alone.
It seems that the books are ending on a progressively darker note. We got from victory snatched from the jaws of defeat and Laurence resting safely at the end of HMD, to a sort of uneasy compromise and heading towards the long road home in ToJ, to a narrow escape in the face of greater defeat in BPW, to heading into near-certainty of execution in EoI. I sure hope #5 reverses this trend, because there's nowhere to go but up, it would seem.
On a much lighter note, I liked the dragons inventing non-Euclidian geometry, and Laurence father's assumption that Emily was his natural daughter and everything that followed from that.
45. Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian -- I took this book off the shelf because of the unusual title, but decided to check it out mostly because it was blurbed by Neil Gaiman (kind of unexpectedly) and Chris Crutcher (a YA author I was recently impressed by) and a few other promising names. It was a good book, but I find it a bit difficult to say anything cohesive about it. It's about a teenage boy who grows up on a reservation and, unable to put up with the dead end that his life is meeting there, decides to attend a high school off-rez -- about the initial prejudice, at the school and on the rez that he encounters, the significant growth and the terrible tragedies that accompany his year at the new school. So, it's a poignant book, with subject matter it's pretty easy to be poignant about, but, more challengingly, it avoids being saccharin or moralizing or dull, the narration is readable and often darkly funny. So, not only is it a good book, it's an enjoyable book, and I stayed up late reading it. But for all that, it didn't quite click with me.
I think the problem with that is two-fold. I like comfortable books, and this is decidedly not a comfortable one, but that's sort of expected. The other reason, I think, is that I prefer character-driven books, and it didn't quite work for me on that level. It's narrated in first person by the teenage protagonis, with believable self-absorption, so most of the other characters exist only in relation to him, really, and are not very well developed. Arnold's parents, grandmother, and sister are there, but sort of glimpsed only in bits, so it's hard to treat them as actual characters (though the scene with Arnold's mother and the billionaire Ted at the grandmother's funeral was pretty cool from the point of view of revealing the mother's character a bit). At school, Gordy is really just a mostly-amusing stereotype; Arnold's sort-of girlfriend Penelope is a pretty, popular, caring girl who is also bulimic, and that about describes the entirety of her character (well, she also has a racist father and want to study architecture, but that's about it). The character who first appears as a racist jock and is then discovered to have a heart of gold underneath is a little more interesting, since that plays against type. But, really, the only character who I would say rises above being a foil for Arnold is Rowdy, the angry son of an abusive father, Arnold's best friend and protector from birth, turned antagonist for much of the book.
But, anyway, I thought it was a good book, and I stayed up late finishing it, so I'm not complaining. It worked.
46. Anekdoty, Anekdoty, Anekdoty -- 300+ pages of Soviet and post-Soviet jokes, most of which I've already heard/read. But, hey, at least I'm reading something in Russian?
48. Guy Gavriel Kay, The Wandering Fire -- I'm pretty sure this is a better book than The Summer Tree. The characters are quite a bit less wooden, and it reads less like a rehash of Tolkien's Greatest Hits, although there's still a fair bit of that. The sudden, seemingly random Arthuriana threw me off, especially the revelation that Jen is apparently Guinevere. And, since I don't like Arthuriana, and usually steer clear of it in fantasy, I didn't enjoy that aspect of it much. The thing I like best about this book is the concept, called up again and again, that gifts of the gods are two-edged: the improbably named flying unicorn is a great weapon -- but it causes the boy who rides it to fade away; the horn of Owein summons a band that routs the Evil Army -- and then turns to start slaughtering the good guys; the lover and mourning of a goddess can end magical winter -- but have to be paid for with the sacrifice of a life. Speaking of, I was quite saddened by Kevin's death, because he was definitely my favorite of the five, and also the only one with an apparent sense of humour, so that was too bad. I also like the relationship between Diarmuid and Sharra (why, since GGK seems apparently capable of writing romantic human relationships in this book, did the ones in Tigana suck so much?) -- there are some really nice moments, like "'Sharrra, I did not come here to bed you. [...] I realized yesterday that I don't like the passion of Maidaladan. I prefer my own. And yours.' [...] 'Could we not pretend it was not Maidaladan?'".
Now, stuff I didn't like: there is too much mysticism going on. I feel weird, saying this about a fantasy book, and I don't know if the issue is GGK's strengths as a writer (there is probably a reason he settled down to write pseud-histories with very little actual magic in them, as he matured as a writer) or my prefrences as a reader (currently, anyway), but I found the mystical part pretty boring. All the gods, Elves (sorry, lios alfar), monsters, ice queens, carrion swans, astral projections, magical Cauldrons -- it really kind of reads like GGK going through the motions, but there doesn't appear to be much depth to it, or feeling, or something, and it's pretty boring, and/or possibly not cohesive enough to feel like it comes from one solid place rather than being a bunch of fantasy tropes thrown together for no good reason. Also, all the snatches of poems and prophesies and songs -- mind, I *love* this stuff in LotR, but part of why I love it is that not all of it is plot-relevant. Actually, most of it is not, it's just there because people occasionally like to sing silly songs, or recite pretty poems. The fact that almost every bit of verse *means something* in this book kind of annoys me. I guess what I'm trying to say is... The Wandering Fire reads kind of fan-ficcy for these reasons, and not in a good sense. One of the other things that made me feel TWF was fan-ficcy was Darien. I'm sure there will be a point to him in the final book, but meanwhile he just seems tacked on and not very interesting, and the whole device of making him grow more quickly than a regular child seems like a cop-out, too -- the sort of thing a lazy fanficcer would come up with.
Also, I have a bit of the same problem with TWF that I did with Catriona's sacrifice in Tigana -- Matt is revived by deus ex machina Lancelot. Now, I rather like Matt, and I like that as a result of this, his relationship with Loren is going to invert and now Loren is going to follow him, but I feel that, thematically, he should have died, and the fact that he is revived seems especially weird (thematically) when the whole quest there was to destroy a cauldron that raises the dead. Speaking of the cauldron, the image of Mertran using the Cauldron to revive dead svarts which then get in line to power him, to be revived when they drop dead put me in mind of a kind of necromantic circuit, with the Cauldron as the Emf, and... yeah, magical E&M...
I continue to like Diarmuid (though he is less flashy in this book than in the last) and Jaelle, and the Dalrei in general. I continue to not find much to like in Aileron. I mean, the only thing he really does in this book is slaughter some wolves very efficiently, and that's not much of a basis to like a character. We are told several times that he was/is good at everything, but I'm not feeling that so much. I did like Jennifer quite a bit more this time around, because she actually seemed to have a personality this time, even if it is a profoundly damaged one at the beginning: "And all this was fine. It was not health; she was wise enought to understand that much, but it was infinitely better than what had been before. If she could not be happy and whole, at least she could be ... mild." I also liked Finn, and the weird relationship with Leila: "knowing this didn't make him any more comfortable with the images she sent him from the Temple. They kept him awake at night; it was almost as if Leila enjoyed doing so." That is a rather interesting application of a psycic link, one that I don't think I've seen explored elsewhere.
Kevin/Paul (which, as I was telling etrangere at some point, is just about the only thing I remember from Book 1) is still very much there. Kevin thinking that Paul would get his "save the baby" joke when he almost gets gored by the boar, Paul now coming to associate the song Kevin wrote with both Rachel and Kevin. And, of course, this exchange:
[Kim:] "Oh, Kev! [...] I missed you!"
"Good," said Kevin brightly.
"Me too," Paul added.
"Also good," Kevin murmured, less flippantly.
There are some nice lines, those simple words, poignant meaning, almost poetic type of lines that GGK came to be quite good at: "And finally, finally by Aideen's grave in Kevin's spring, she wept for herself and for Arthur." And then there are lines that aim for that and fall flat (there were a couple of examples, but I didn't mark them). But it's quite a bit better than The Summer Tree, and gives me hope for The Darkest Road.
47. Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) -- aome's birthday present, and totally the kind of thing I enjoy in a YA novel. The way the first-person narration is framed, with a "this is all real and you, too, could be in mortal danger" device, reminded me of the Animorphs books, which I used to steal from my kid brother's bookshelf and follow with more interest than he, probably, 10-12 years ago. And the fantasy element is Greek myths, which I grew up on as a kid and which remain some of my favorite stories (Hector was my first literary crush and contributed to a bunch of subsequent literary crushes like Boromir, I love Hermes- and Zeus-archetype characters wherever I encounter them, etc. etc.) So, reading a YA fantasy with Greek god = awesome.
It does present a little bit of the same problems that Russian-fairytale based fantasies do -- I notice little things being off, or see stuff coming farther in advance than would be optimal, or the in-world view clashes with my personal opinion, or something like that. But, of course, it means I get a lot of the allusions, too, and that's neat. And, of course, being me, I have to talk through all the instances of all that.
I liked Percy doing the Hercules thing and strangling a snake in his crib. Like the burnt offerings to the gods (I was actually wondering why they *weren't* doing something like that, pouring out libations or whatnot, when Luke led Percy to the fire. I like that Annabeth's father is a West Point professor, as that sounds exactly like the kind of guy Athena, academically and miliatrily inclined, would go for. Similarly, I like that Annabeth is afraid of spiders, because of Arachne. Oh, and Argus as head of security (winking at Percy from an eye on the back of his neck) was great, too.
But a bit of the enjoyment is lost because I saw all the surprises coming, usually way before Our Heroes figured it out. I knew Grover was a satyr pretty far in advance of when it was revealed, and thought the wheel-chair-bound Latin teacher might have been a satyr at first too, but then hypothesized he was a centaur. Of course, when it was revealed his real name was Chiron, there was no doubt left, because unlike Percy, I would never confuse Charon (ferryman of the dead) and Chiron (Hercules's centaur teacher). I figured out who Mr.D was about a page before Percy did, and have to say that a cranky Dionysus on the wagon is all kinds of hilarious and a great idea (with the glimpse of wild, savage power Percy gets underneath the petulant trailer park cherub exterior). I figured out who "Aunty M" and "Crusty" of the waterbed emporium were before Percy (or even Annabeth) did, but have to say both of those encounters were set up quite well, and remained fun even when I'd figured out the monster identity. And I guessed Kronos was the real bad guy of the piece. Oh, and of course it was blindingly obvious that Percy was Poseidon's son from his first confrontation with Clarisse. Can't believe I *didn't* guess that Percy's full name was Perseus, especially when I was puzzled by how "Percy" fit into the whole Greek theme, being typically Arthuriana.
I liked the intersections of Greek myth and modernity, too -- Luke's winged sneakers, Ares as a biker, Charon as a metrosexual sort of fellow, the entrance to Hades being in LA (*snicker*), Grover playing pop music on his pan pipes, and in general the idea of Mount Olympus moving with the "heart of the West" and thus ending up in America. Also, I totally cracked up at the naiads' underwater basketweaving. :D
Now, the things that struck me as "off". Mrs Dodds pursuing Percy -- she is a Fury, obviously, and Furies pursuing heroes is a pretty solid tradition -- BUT it's very, very well established that the Kindly Ones (and no way would I have remembered that apellation if not for Sandman -- in fact, I'm not even sure any equivalent is used in Russian, which is what I mostly read the myths in) are spirits of retribution (and in very specific cases, at that) -- they don't go chasing just anyone. The fact that they did, with Percy, bugged me a bit. Second thing: in introducing the cabins, Annabeth says, "If you are a child of Aphrodite or Demeter, you're probably not a real powerful force." Excuse me? Demeter is the sister of Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and Hades (and Hestia, but she never seems to do anything, so, OK). Anyway, she is every bit a match in power to those who are being referred to as 'the Big Three', and while her dominion over harvests and stuff may seem less prone to displays of power than Zeus's lightningbolts or Poseidon's waves -- Demeter was plenty powerful enough to cause some real trouble, like when she stopped the earth from bearing when she was upset about the Persephone incident. So, kind of not sure what you're talking about there, about her being not powerful enough. (Aphrodite is not to be discounted either -- her ability to make people fall in love with each other kind of did start the Trojan War -- but the kind of powers her demigod kids are likely to be able to display should probably not be found in a YA series, so I'll let it slide.) But anyway, I'm willing to discount this as Annabeth's prejudice against the "softer" goddesses and not an actual authorial miss. And, not strictly a Greek myth quibble, but it bugged me that the demi-gods' dyslexia was because their brains were "hardwired" for Ancient Greek. Not only does reading not work that way in reality (I believe the deal is that, before 7, you can learn to read in whatever script(s) you're exposed to, and that becomes the native symbology -- and I can confirm this as the mother of a kid who can read in three alphabets and two script directions), but Greek isn't even that different an alphabet from Latin -- unless the idea is that their brains are pre-conditioned to read boustrophedon.
So far I've primarily talked about the Greek gods aspect of this whole thing, but, of course, there's more to the story. It's almost impossible not to draw comparisons with Harry Potter -- kid hero with a difficult home life learns he is special, goes to a place for similarly special kids, teams up with a brainy girl and a comic relief but loyal sidekick, the works (though I'm pretty sure *this* series is not ending with Annabeth/Grover XP). (Also, Percy's mother and he live with his odious stepfather because, as it turns out, the stepfathers overwhelmingly human presence confers upon Percy some protection from nefarious forces who would otherwise find him a lot sooner. Familiar, no? Anyway.) So, comparisons. Annabeth is OK, and I like the fact that her and Percy's divine parents are rivals, it adds a nice dimension to their relationship. Grover ain't Ron -- in fact, I found him kind of annoying, though he was occasionally good for a laugh. And Percy... seems like an OK enough hero, but I'm not rooting for him the way I was rooting for Harry at the end of the first book. I actually liked Harry. I'm OK with Percy. Part of it may be that Percy still has his mother and his father (distant though he may be), while Harry definitely appealed to my protective impulse more. Part of it is probably personality -- Harry just comes across as more decent and lovable (except in OotP) than Percy has so far, though I did like this one line of Percy's: "Finally, brave Percy Jackson (I was beginning to like this kid) had stolen a gun, etc." Hopefully he will grow on me.
There's also something that I realized bothered me after I finished the book, and I'm not sure if it contributes to why I don't feel as much for Percy. A couple of things that may or may not be interrelated. First, the monsters. The demi-god kids kill monsters, but they don't actually die -- they dissipate and then reassemble, sometimes in a couple of days/weeks, sometimes many years later. This is convenient from a plot perspective -- there are only so many major monsters in Greek mythology, and most of them have already been taken care of by the real heroes of antiquity, and this gives Riordan the opportunity to recycle them. But it also ensures that the kids aren't actually *killing* anyone. It's not real. They don't get blood on their hands, even though they do get the glory. Continuing this even further, Percy's sword is super-magical and *cannot* kill mortals. On the one hand, a sort of limitation for an otherwise powerful echo. But, really, more than that, it ensures Percy doesn't stray off the straight and narrow, you know? Which makes it less interesting somehow. Not that I want Percy to start killing or maiming mortals, but the fact that he *can't* dodges some nasty possibilities too neatly -- the real Greek heroes certainly did not scruple to kill the occasional mortal or ten... The last thing is not necessarily related to the same train of thought, but it bothered me quite a bit when I read about it, and it's also a moral concern. Medusa's head, and what Percy wants to do with it when he finds out that Gabe used to hit his mother, and what Sally ends up doing with it herself.
The moral lesson that Percy is placed in front of seems to be letting his mother fight her own battles (the unexpected interpretation of the Oracle's seemingly dire words). But even Sally turning Gabe to stone... There doesn't seem to be any question in the book that this is a perfectly OK thing to do and Gabe's just desserts. Now, don't get me wrong -- Gabe is an absolutely terrible man, callous, greedy, hateful, violent. But I don't see that all that deserves death, necessarily. Sure, if Sally had killed/petrified him in self-defense, but the fact that the statue is of a poker player reveals that wasn't the case. Nor do I remember seeing any indication that if Sally were just to walk out on Gabe he would've come after her. Sure, he's unpleaqsant, in a mean, schlubby way, but I totally didn't get a sense that he was dangerous. So why did he need to be petrified? I guess it's not really proven that petrifaction by Medusa is fatal (though in the myth I'm pretty sure it is), so maybe it's not murder exactly, but still. (And this bugs me because you know if an abused wife just came up to her abuser sitting there at the poker table and shot him, she'd go to jail.) Perhaps this struc me as especially overkill given that nobody else in these books gets killed because the monsters are immortal. But anyway, that was kind of an odd coda, but... whatever.
I should also say, since I haven't yet, that I was sad that Luke turned out to be the bad guy. Things seemed to be pointing in that direction from the moment he gave Percy the winged shoes, but I was hoping it was some kind of misdirection -- because I liked Luke pretty well, but even more because Hermes has always been my favorite Greek god, and I was hoping there would be more of him in the books if Luke was to be part of Percy's gang. But I guess that's not to be.
49. Rick Riordan, Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 2) -- I blazed through this book, and I think it's structured a lot better than the first one, which, while a lot of fun, was kind of episodic and one thing after another. SoM hangs together much more coherently, which makes it an even more addictive read (it's shorter, too, which helps in the 'blazing through' regard.
I'm still not all that sure that I like Percy, but he seems to have toned it down somewhat, which I find an improvement on the whole. I'm wondering, actually, if the first person narration is part of the problem -- because, it's an action-packed book, and it tries to be funny a lot (often quite successfully), and between those two things there's not a whole lot of room left for internal character development or whatnot. But anyway, Percy's OK. The thing that actually impressed me more than anything, character-wise, is that there's a grudging trust developing between Clarisse and Percy -- it's definitely not friendship yet, but Clarisse doesn't seem to be an out-and-out "bad guy" either. Of course, Percy already has a nemesis his own age in Luke, so he doesn't need another, but I like the fact that Clarisse is being brought around gradually, and that her good qualities (bravery, etc.) are recognized even while she is still an often unpleasant bully. I like that it's not a Draco kind of thing, where he was through and through nasty for five books before developing any kind of moral grayness.
Also, I had a bit more trouble predicting the plot this time, although I did guess they would go off searching for the Golden Fleece and I did see "C.C." coming from the beginning (but I loved the fact that she's now turning men into guinea pigs). I was very happy to see Hermes (my favorite god, as mentioned above) and his adorable talking snakes, and the fact that he obviously cares about Luke and wants to help him find his way back (which give me a bit of hope for Luke as well). And his views on family: "Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is remind each other that we're related, for better or worse... and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum." And Hermes is so totally the patron god of the Internet, it's not even funny -- not only the fast communication, but also the commerce and spread of knowledge and potential for scams and "on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" aspects.
Also, I like the idea of hydra-generated franchises. And, heh, Eris (goddess of discord) working in customer service. And the Gray Sisters Taxi idea was hilarious, and the mad ride was way better than the Knight Bus ride it made me think of. Speaking of hilarious, I was very amused by Tyson's obsession with ponies, including his greeting of Chiron with "Pony!" and referring to the pegasi as "chicken ponies". Also, I'm probably the only person so amused by zeugmas, but I kind of loved this: "There was a set of locked double doors, which Annabeth managed to pry open with her knife and a fair amount of cursing in Ancient Greek." Also, I laughed at the hubris/hummus joke. :)
I've already put a hold on books 3 and 4 at the library and can't wait to read them, though I should be reading Doomsday Book and Dragonshadow and all those other things piled up on my shelf. These things are ridiculously addictive! :D
I was appropriately affected by the effects of the dragon flu on the poor dragons and especially their captains, and even after the cure is found, the flight over the dragon barrows was pretty chilling. I liked Jane as Admiral and Laurence being totally blindsided by it (oh Laurence, you will never learn, will you?), and her rational response to his proposal. I find Jane a very interesting character, actually -- she is obviously in a man's role and quite "manly" herself, but that doesn't necessarily make her "progressive" or feminist -- e.g. "So it was me or Sanderson, and he is making a cake of himself over the business; goes off into corners and weeps like a woman" (italics mine). I rather love that sentence right there, how clearly it shows the pragmatic society of the corps and how it exists within the larger sexist society of the time. Also, I loved her negotiating the livestock exchange rate with the ferals and tricking Iskierka into obedience. In conclusion: Jane = awesome.
The whole interlude in Africa I found not terribly interesting, with the exception of the idea of dragon-ancestors and dragon-rebirth, which seemed fitting to the locale and really cool, and the fact that the locals didn't think of the Western settlements as colonies until the "ancestors" (i.e. dragons) showed up. Oh, and I also liked Mrs.Erasmus, from the moment she appeared until she elected to remain behind. And Laurence's reaction to the threat of being flogged: "Brutality and further ill-usage will in no wise alter my determination, and I beg your pardon, ma'am, if you are forced to witness it" -- that is such vintage Laurence. But other than that, and the interaction between the captains of Lily's wing while they were there, I didn't much care for part 2.
The third part... boy. What I found most interesting, actually, was that while Laurence was obviously horrified and appalled by the decision to infect the French dragons with the dragon flu, the course of action was totally unthinkable to him until Temeraire suggested it. I mean, Laurence is obviously a very decent, honorable man, not in any hollow way but quite fundamentally. And yet, genocide is more endurable to him than treason, or at least, less unthinkable -- but even treason is more endurable than letting Temeraire go that route alone.
It seems that the books are ending on a progressively darker note. We got from victory snatched from the jaws of defeat and Laurence resting safely at the end of HMD, to a sort of uneasy compromise and heading towards the long road home in ToJ, to a narrow escape in the face of greater defeat in BPW, to heading into near-certainty of execution in EoI. I sure hope #5 reverses this trend, because there's nowhere to go but up, it would seem.
On a much lighter note, I liked the dragons inventing non-Euclidian geometry, and Laurence father's assumption that Emily was his natural daughter and everything that followed from that.
45. Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian -- I took this book off the shelf because of the unusual title, but decided to check it out mostly because it was blurbed by Neil Gaiman (kind of unexpectedly) and Chris Crutcher (a YA author I was recently impressed by) and a few other promising names. It was a good book, but I find it a bit difficult to say anything cohesive about it. It's about a teenage boy who grows up on a reservation and, unable to put up with the dead end that his life is meeting there, decides to attend a high school off-rez -- about the initial prejudice, at the school and on the rez that he encounters, the significant growth and the terrible tragedies that accompany his year at the new school. So, it's a poignant book, with subject matter it's pretty easy to be poignant about, but, more challengingly, it avoids being saccharin or moralizing or dull, the narration is readable and often darkly funny. So, not only is it a good book, it's an enjoyable book, and I stayed up late reading it. But for all that, it didn't quite click with me.
I think the problem with that is two-fold. I like comfortable books, and this is decidedly not a comfortable one, but that's sort of expected. The other reason, I think, is that I prefer character-driven books, and it didn't quite work for me on that level. It's narrated in first person by the teenage protagonis, with believable self-absorption, so most of the other characters exist only in relation to him, really, and are not very well developed. Arnold's parents, grandmother, and sister are there, but sort of glimpsed only in bits, so it's hard to treat them as actual characters (though the scene with Arnold's mother and the billionaire Ted at the grandmother's funeral was pretty cool from the point of view of revealing the mother's character a bit). At school, Gordy is really just a mostly-amusing stereotype; Arnold's sort-of girlfriend Penelope is a pretty, popular, caring girl who is also bulimic, and that about describes the entirety of her character (well, she also has a racist father and want to study architecture, but that's about it). The character who first appears as a racist jock and is then discovered to have a heart of gold underneath is a little more interesting, since that plays against type. But, really, the only character who I would say rises above being a foil for Arnold is Rowdy, the angry son of an abusive father, Arnold's best friend and protector from birth, turned antagonist for much of the book.
But, anyway, I thought it was a good book, and I stayed up late finishing it, so I'm not complaining. It worked.
46. Anekdoty, Anekdoty, Anekdoty -- 300+ pages of Soviet and post-Soviet jokes, most of which I've already heard/read. But, hey, at least I'm reading something in Russian?
48. Guy Gavriel Kay, The Wandering Fire -- I'm pretty sure this is a better book than The Summer Tree. The characters are quite a bit less wooden, and it reads less like a rehash of Tolkien's Greatest Hits, although there's still a fair bit of that. The sudden, seemingly random Arthuriana threw me off, especially the revelation that Jen is apparently Guinevere. And, since I don't like Arthuriana, and usually steer clear of it in fantasy, I didn't enjoy that aspect of it much. The thing I like best about this book is the concept, called up again and again, that gifts of the gods are two-edged: the improbably named flying unicorn is a great weapon -- but it causes the boy who rides it to fade away; the horn of Owein summons a band that routs the Evil Army -- and then turns to start slaughtering the good guys; the lover and mourning of a goddess can end magical winter -- but have to be paid for with the sacrifice of a life. Speaking of, I was quite saddened by Kevin's death, because he was definitely my favorite of the five, and also the only one with an apparent sense of humour, so that was too bad. I also like the relationship between Diarmuid and Sharra (why, since GGK seems apparently capable of writing romantic human relationships in this book, did the ones in Tigana suck so much?) -- there are some really nice moments, like "'Sharrra, I did not come here to bed you. [...] I realized yesterday that I don't like the passion of Maidaladan. I prefer my own. And yours.' [...] 'Could we not pretend it was not Maidaladan?'".
Now, stuff I didn't like: there is too much mysticism going on. I feel weird, saying this about a fantasy book, and I don't know if the issue is GGK's strengths as a writer (there is probably a reason he settled down to write pseud-histories with very little actual magic in them, as he matured as a writer) or my prefrences as a reader (currently, anyway), but I found the mystical part pretty boring. All the gods, Elves (sorry, lios alfar), monsters, ice queens, carrion swans, astral projections, magical Cauldrons -- it really kind of reads like GGK going through the motions, but there doesn't appear to be much depth to it, or feeling, or something, and it's pretty boring, and/or possibly not cohesive enough to feel like it comes from one solid place rather than being a bunch of fantasy tropes thrown together for no good reason. Also, all the snatches of poems and prophesies and songs -- mind, I *love* this stuff in LotR, but part of why I love it is that not all of it is plot-relevant. Actually, most of it is not, it's just there because people occasionally like to sing silly songs, or recite pretty poems. The fact that almost every bit of verse *means something* in this book kind of annoys me. I guess what I'm trying to say is... The Wandering Fire reads kind of fan-ficcy for these reasons, and not in a good sense. One of the other things that made me feel TWF was fan-ficcy was Darien. I'm sure there will be a point to him in the final book, but meanwhile he just seems tacked on and not very interesting, and the whole device of making him grow more quickly than a regular child seems like a cop-out, too -- the sort of thing a lazy fanficcer would come up with.
Also, I have a bit of the same problem with TWF that I did with Catriona's sacrifice in Tigana -- Matt is revived by deus ex machina Lancelot. Now, I rather like Matt, and I like that as a result of this, his relationship with Loren is going to invert and now Loren is going to follow him, but I feel that, thematically, he should have died, and the fact that he is revived seems especially weird (thematically) when the whole quest there was to destroy a cauldron that raises the dead. Speaking of the cauldron, the image of Mertran using the Cauldron to revive dead svarts which then get in line to power him, to be revived when they drop dead put me in mind of a kind of necromantic circuit, with the Cauldron as the Emf, and... yeah, magical E&M...
I continue to like Diarmuid (though he is less flashy in this book than in the last) and Jaelle, and the Dalrei in general. I continue to not find much to like in Aileron. I mean, the only thing he really does in this book is slaughter some wolves very efficiently, and that's not much of a basis to like a character. We are told several times that he was/is good at everything, but I'm not feeling that so much. I did like Jennifer quite a bit more this time around, because she actually seemed to have a personality this time, even if it is a profoundly damaged one at the beginning: "And all this was fine. It was not health; she was wise enought to understand that much, but it was infinitely better than what had been before. If she could not be happy and whole, at least she could be ... mild." I also liked Finn, and the weird relationship with Leila: "knowing this didn't make him any more comfortable with the images she sent him from the Temple. They kept him awake at night; it was almost as if Leila enjoyed doing so." That is a rather interesting application of a psycic link, one that I don't think I've seen explored elsewhere.
Kevin/Paul (which, as I was telling etrangere at some point, is just about the only thing I remember from Book 1) is still very much there. Kevin thinking that Paul would get his "save the baby" joke when he almost gets gored by the boar, Paul now coming to associate the song Kevin wrote with both Rachel and Kevin. And, of course, this exchange:
[Kim:] "Oh, Kev! [...] I missed you!"
"Good," said Kevin brightly.
"Me too," Paul added.
"Also good," Kevin murmured, less flippantly.
There are some nice lines, those simple words, poignant meaning, almost poetic type of lines that GGK came to be quite good at: "And finally, finally by Aideen's grave in Kevin's spring, she wept for herself and for Arthur." And then there are lines that aim for that and fall flat (there were a couple of examples, but I didn't mark them). But it's quite a bit better than The Summer Tree, and gives me hope for The Darkest Road.
47. Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) -- aome's birthday present, and totally the kind of thing I enjoy in a YA novel. The way the first-person narration is framed, with a "this is all real and you, too, could be in mortal danger" device, reminded me of the Animorphs books, which I used to steal from my kid brother's bookshelf and follow with more interest than he, probably, 10-12 years ago. And the fantasy element is Greek myths, which I grew up on as a kid and which remain some of my favorite stories (Hector was my first literary crush and contributed to a bunch of subsequent literary crushes like Boromir, I love Hermes- and Zeus-archetype characters wherever I encounter them, etc. etc.) So, reading a YA fantasy with Greek god = awesome.
It does present a little bit of the same problems that Russian-fairytale based fantasies do -- I notice little things being off, or see stuff coming farther in advance than would be optimal, or the in-world view clashes with my personal opinion, or something like that. But, of course, it means I get a lot of the allusions, too, and that's neat. And, of course, being me, I have to talk through all the instances of all that.
I liked Percy doing the Hercules thing and strangling a snake in his crib. Like the burnt offerings to the gods (I was actually wondering why they *weren't* doing something like that, pouring out libations or whatnot, when Luke led Percy to the fire. I like that Annabeth's father is a West Point professor, as that sounds exactly like the kind of guy Athena, academically and miliatrily inclined, would go for. Similarly, I like that Annabeth is afraid of spiders, because of Arachne. Oh, and Argus as head of security (winking at Percy from an eye on the back of his neck) was great, too.
But a bit of the enjoyment is lost because I saw all the surprises coming, usually way before Our Heroes figured it out. I knew Grover was a satyr pretty far in advance of when it was revealed, and thought the wheel-chair-bound Latin teacher might have been a satyr at first too, but then hypothesized he was a centaur. Of course, when it was revealed his real name was Chiron, there was no doubt left, because unlike Percy, I would never confuse Charon (ferryman of the dead) and Chiron (Hercules's centaur teacher). I figured out who Mr.D was about a page before Percy did, and have to say that a cranky Dionysus on the wagon is all kinds of hilarious and a great idea (with the glimpse of wild, savage power Percy gets underneath the petulant trailer park cherub exterior). I figured out who "Aunty M" and "Crusty" of the waterbed emporium were before Percy (or even Annabeth) did, but have to say both of those encounters were set up quite well, and remained fun even when I'd figured out the monster identity. And I guessed Kronos was the real bad guy of the piece. Oh, and of course it was blindingly obvious that Percy was Poseidon's son from his first confrontation with Clarisse. Can't believe I *didn't* guess that Percy's full name was Perseus, especially when I was puzzled by how "Percy" fit into the whole Greek theme, being typically Arthuriana.
I liked the intersections of Greek myth and modernity, too -- Luke's winged sneakers, Ares as a biker, Charon as a metrosexual sort of fellow, the entrance to Hades being in LA (*snicker*), Grover playing pop music on his pan pipes, and in general the idea of Mount Olympus moving with the "heart of the West" and thus ending up in America. Also, I totally cracked up at the naiads' underwater basketweaving. :D
Now, the things that struck me as "off". Mrs Dodds pursuing Percy -- she is a Fury, obviously, and Furies pursuing heroes is a pretty solid tradition -- BUT it's very, very well established that the Kindly Ones (and no way would I have remembered that apellation if not for Sandman -- in fact, I'm not even sure any equivalent is used in Russian, which is what I mostly read the myths in) are spirits of retribution (and in very specific cases, at that) -- they don't go chasing just anyone. The fact that they did, with Percy, bugged me a bit. Second thing: in introducing the cabins, Annabeth says, "If you are a child of Aphrodite or Demeter, you're probably not a real powerful force." Excuse me? Demeter is the sister of Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, and Hades (and Hestia, but she never seems to do anything, so, OK). Anyway, she is every bit a match in power to those who are being referred to as 'the Big Three', and while her dominion over harvests and stuff may seem less prone to displays of power than Zeus's lightningbolts or Poseidon's waves -- Demeter was plenty powerful enough to cause some real trouble, like when she stopped the earth from bearing when she was upset about the Persephone incident. So, kind of not sure what you're talking about there, about her being not powerful enough. (Aphrodite is not to be discounted either -- her ability to make people fall in love with each other kind of did start the Trojan War -- but the kind of powers her demigod kids are likely to be able to display should probably not be found in a YA series, so I'll let it slide.) But anyway, I'm willing to discount this as Annabeth's prejudice against the "softer" goddesses and not an actual authorial miss. And, not strictly a Greek myth quibble, but it bugged me that the demi-gods' dyslexia was because their brains were "hardwired" for Ancient Greek. Not only does reading not work that way in reality (I believe the deal is that, before 7, you can learn to read in whatever script(s) you're exposed to, and that becomes the native symbology -- and I can confirm this as the mother of a kid who can read in three alphabets and two script directions), but Greek isn't even that different an alphabet from Latin -- unless the idea is that their brains are pre-conditioned to read boustrophedon.
So far I've primarily talked about the Greek gods aspect of this whole thing, but, of course, there's more to the story. It's almost impossible not to draw comparisons with Harry Potter -- kid hero with a difficult home life learns he is special, goes to a place for similarly special kids, teams up with a brainy girl and a comic relief but loyal sidekick, the works (though I'm pretty sure *this* series is not ending with Annabeth/Grover XP). (Also, Percy's mother and he live with his odious stepfather because, as it turns out, the stepfathers overwhelmingly human presence confers upon Percy some protection from nefarious forces who would otherwise find him a lot sooner. Familiar, no? Anyway.) So, comparisons. Annabeth is OK, and I like the fact that her and Percy's divine parents are rivals, it adds a nice dimension to their relationship. Grover ain't Ron -- in fact, I found him kind of annoying, though he was occasionally good for a laugh. And Percy... seems like an OK enough hero, but I'm not rooting for him the way I was rooting for Harry at the end of the first book. I actually liked Harry. I'm OK with Percy. Part of it may be that Percy still has his mother and his father (distant though he may be), while Harry definitely appealed to my protective impulse more. Part of it is probably personality -- Harry just comes across as more decent and lovable (except in OotP) than Percy has so far, though I did like this one line of Percy's: "Finally, brave Percy Jackson (I was beginning to like this kid) had stolen a gun, etc." Hopefully he will grow on me.
There's also something that I realized bothered me after I finished the book, and I'm not sure if it contributes to why I don't feel as much for Percy. A couple of things that may or may not be interrelated. First, the monsters. The demi-god kids kill monsters, but they don't actually die -- they dissipate and then reassemble, sometimes in a couple of days/weeks, sometimes many years later. This is convenient from a plot perspective -- there are only so many major monsters in Greek mythology, and most of them have already been taken care of by the real heroes of antiquity, and this gives Riordan the opportunity to recycle them. But it also ensures that the kids aren't actually *killing* anyone. It's not real. They don't get blood on their hands, even though they do get the glory. Continuing this even further, Percy's sword is super-magical and *cannot* kill mortals. On the one hand, a sort of limitation for an otherwise powerful echo. But, really, more than that, it ensures Percy doesn't stray off the straight and narrow, you know? Which makes it less interesting somehow. Not that I want Percy to start killing or maiming mortals, but the fact that he *can't* dodges some nasty possibilities too neatly -- the real Greek heroes certainly did not scruple to kill the occasional mortal or ten... The last thing is not necessarily related to the same train of thought, but it bothered me quite a bit when I read about it, and it's also a moral concern. Medusa's head, and what Percy wants to do with it when he finds out that Gabe used to hit his mother, and what Sally ends up doing with it herself.
The moral lesson that Percy is placed in front of seems to be letting his mother fight her own battles (the unexpected interpretation of the Oracle's seemingly dire words). But even Sally turning Gabe to stone... There doesn't seem to be any question in the book that this is a perfectly OK thing to do and Gabe's just desserts. Now, don't get me wrong -- Gabe is an absolutely terrible man, callous, greedy, hateful, violent. But I don't see that all that deserves death, necessarily. Sure, if Sally had killed/petrified him in self-defense, but the fact that the statue is of a poker player reveals that wasn't the case. Nor do I remember seeing any indication that if Sally were just to walk out on Gabe he would've come after her. Sure, he's unpleaqsant, in a mean, schlubby way, but I totally didn't get a sense that he was dangerous. So why did he need to be petrified? I guess it's not really proven that petrifaction by Medusa is fatal (though in the myth I'm pretty sure it is), so maybe it's not murder exactly, but still. (And this bugs me because you know if an abused wife just came up to her abuser sitting there at the poker table and shot him, she'd go to jail.) Perhaps this struc me as especially overkill given that nobody else in these books gets killed because the monsters are immortal. But anyway, that was kind of an odd coda, but... whatever.
I should also say, since I haven't yet, that I was sad that Luke turned out to be the bad guy. Things seemed to be pointing in that direction from the moment he gave Percy the winged shoes, but I was hoping it was some kind of misdirection -- because I liked Luke pretty well, but even more because Hermes has always been my favorite Greek god, and I was hoping there would be more of him in the books if Luke was to be part of Percy's gang. But I guess that's not to be.
49. Rick Riordan, Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 2) -- I blazed through this book, and I think it's structured a lot better than the first one, which, while a lot of fun, was kind of episodic and one thing after another. SoM hangs together much more coherently, which makes it an even more addictive read (it's shorter, too, which helps in the 'blazing through' regard.
I'm still not all that sure that I like Percy, but he seems to have toned it down somewhat, which I find an improvement on the whole. I'm wondering, actually, if the first person narration is part of the problem -- because, it's an action-packed book, and it tries to be funny a lot (often quite successfully), and between those two things there's not a whole lot of room left for internal character development or whatnot. But anyway, Percy's OK. The thing that actually impressed me more than anything, character-wise, is that there's a grudging trust developing between Clarisse and Percy -- it's definitely not friendship yet, but Clarisse doesn't seem to be an out-and-out "bad guy" either. Of course, Percy already has a nemesis his own age in Luke, so he doesn't need another, but I like the fact that Clarisse is being brought around gradually, and that her good qualities (bravery, etc.) are recognized even while she is still an often unpleasant bully. I like that it's not a Draco kind of thing, where he was through and through nasty for five books before developing any kind of moral grayness.
Also, I had a bit more trouble predicting the plot this time, although I did guess they would go off searching for the Golden Fleece and I did see "C.C." coming from the beginning (but I loved the fact that she's now turning men into guinea pigs). I was very happy to see Hermes (my favorite god, as mentioned above) and his adorable talking snakes, and the fact that he obviously cares about Luke and wants to help him find his way back (which give me a bit of hope for Luke as well). And his views on family: "Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is remind each other that we're related, for better or worse... and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum." And Hermes is so totally the patron god of the Internet, it's not even funny -- not only the fast communication, but also the commerce and spread of knowledge and potential for scams and "on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" aspects.
Also, I like the idea of hydra-generated franchises. And, heh, Eris (goddess of discord) working in customer service. And the Gray Sisters Taxi idea was hilarious, and the mad ride was way better than the Knight Bus ride it made me think of. Speaking of hilarious, I was very amused by Tyson's obsession with ponies, including his greeting of Chiron with "Pony!" and referring to the pegasi as "chicken ponies". Also, I'm probably the only person so amused by zeugmas, but I kind of loved this: "There was a set of locked double doors, which Annabeth managed to pry open with her knife and a fair amount of cursing in Ancient Greek." Also, I laughed at the hubris/hummus joke. :)
I've already put a hold on books 3 and 4 at the library and can't wait to read them, though I should be reading Doomsday Book and Dragonshadow and all those other things piled up on my shelf. These things are ridiculously addictive! :D