Reading roundup
Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes! I think I've thanked everyone individually, but if I've missed you accidentally -- THANK YOU! :D I will do a post about the birthday later (it was fun!), but for now:
33. Justine Larbalestier, Liar -- back when this book first came out and the various YA authors whose blogs I follow were talking about how mild-blowing and perfect it is, I was rather skeptical. I'd read one and a half of the Magic or Madness books and was rather underwhelmed by the execution of what was a promising premise and some interesting character ideas. And Liar sounded like a much more ambitious, difficult to pull off idea, so I was a bit leery of it. But I did find the book exactly as good and as mind-blowing as I'd heard from others. (This also makes me much less reluctant to try other Larbalestier books, though I don't know that I'll be going out of my way to track down the rest of Magic or Madness). Spoilers from here on, and in this case I do think they'll kill the full experience of the book, so if you are at all planning to read it or think you might, don't read on.
SPOILERS Liar takes the unreliable narrator thing to an extreme, but it does so in a way that did not (for me) detract from the freshness and detail of narration, or the initial likeability of the narrator's character. She admits she's a liar but opens the book with a promise to tell nothing but the truth. The first section (which contains said promise) is called "Telling the Truth", and the Micah you meet in there is sympathetic but flawed; by the end of the section I really liked Micah and even her often-ineffectual parents. By the end of this section it's also rather clear that there's a supernatural twist Micah's narrative is leading up to, and sure enough, the second part, "Telling the True Truth" opens with that supernatural twist, and the revelations therein make Micah even more sympathetic. Then we get to part three, "The Actual Real Truth", where Micah explains that some lies still slipped through, and proceeds to intercut the developing action with an explanation of those lies, some larger, some smaller. The biggest impact for me here was "Lie Number Five" ("I don't have a brother. I made Jordan up.") and then, while I was still reeling from trying to assimilate that (but... all those details of her interaction with him that helped build her identity? what about him smelling wrong? and the psychologists thinking part of her problem is she's jealous of Jordan -- surely they would've asked her parents? it must be a very thorough lie...) then came "Lie Number Nine" ("I do have a brother. I did have a brother. [...] He died. I was twelve. He was ten. It was an accident.")
At this point, the lies within a section are not even mutually consistent anymore, and there are bits of information that are clear lies (or inconsistencies) that aren't even called out as such, such as Micah explaining in "Lie Number Three" that her birth control pills come from her mother's perscription and then in her conversation with the science teacher them apparently coming from Yayeko, the whole thing basically starting to unravel. Towards the end, the lies are not called out anymore, there are different versions presented so it's not clear anymore which Micah is preseting as truth at any given time. Micah's tone with the audience changes, too, from trust-building and conspiratorial to occasionally confrontational. The book ends by revealing a huge lie of omission, presenting a rosy coda, and then having Micah play-act her audience and challenge that rosy code and present (while trying to debunk) an alternate ending. Which brings into focus a line from the middle of the book that didn't seem to fit in the narrative this was then and I had sort of skimmed over as metaphorical ("Bars surround me. Prison guards bind my arms, bring me pills several times a day. They ask me -- beg me -- to tell them the truth" -- but she was just talking about how her school is a converted prison and they kept the bars, so this line doesn't stand out as much as it would otherwise in context). When the cover copy says the book with "have readers seesawing truths and lies right up to the end" -- yeah, it totally delivers that.
And it does it well. My faith in Micah as a narrator I could rely on was naturally eroded throughout the book, but it didn't crumble completely until mid-way through the third section. Having finished it, I don't know what I think happened (this is a good thing), and yet I don't feel cheated by the book, because the unreliable narrator thing is so well done and also because it's actually telling a very interesting story at all points, even though the story may change drastically depending on where you are.
When I started reading, I had some attachment to certain characters. Like, I liked Tayshawn for example, because he is so unselfconscious and clearly a good guy. I liked Micah's French mother. But once my faith in Micah's story crumbled, all that fell by the wayside, so it's even weird to talk about these things now. I do still like Micah, in a reeling sort of way. I found it interesting that she thinks of herself as black as opposed to bi-racial, for instance (and the way that whole theme is played around with in the class's DNA test results). I like the way her interest in biology is tied to wanting to understand who/what she is, the way she thinks of werewolves in a scientific way.
Actually, the whole werewolf thing kind of fell by the wayside for me as well, because the big things she could be lying about are sort of independent of whether or not she's a werewolf or lying/delusional about that, too. But until that point, I liked the details with which the werewolf thing was executed, like the way "Wilkins" may well be an anglicized form of something like "volk", and the little sayings of the Greats, like "You may feed the wolf as much as you like; it will always glance toward the forest" (which may exist in Polish, too, but definitely exists in Russian). The way Micah wonders about the transformation and whether she is still herself on a cellular level, and the way her werewolf species is unusual too. And the way she explicitly puts in the unromantic aspects of werewolf life, ticks, mites, tapeworms, etc. The way epithets like "bitch" and "the girl who cried wolf" are tied to the werewolf aspect of the story.
Spoiler thread at Larbalestier's blog has a lot of possibilities / connections I hadn't even considered or picked up on, like the pills being antipsychotics, Jordan and Pete being each other's shadows, the farm "upstate" as the mental institution or jail, the Micah *was* Jordan interpretation.
I don't know what I believe the "true" story is, and I don't think it really matters. I do think I'm leaning towards the darker explanation, but, really, the whole thing could be fiction anyway.
So, basically: this book delivers exactly what the cover copy promises and what I heard from the people who'd blogged about it, which is really very impressive.
34. Warriors, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois -- It's a neat idea, and anthology tied together not by genre but by (a rather broad) theme. It definitely did introduce me to stories and authors I probably wouldn't have encountered otherwise (and which I enjoyed, at least in some cases), and it also seemed to have encouraged authors to write outside of their "normal" field in some cases -- e.g. sci-fi stories from Naomi Novik and Tad Williams, for example. The book's a brick and took me forever to get through, but it's an interesting and worthwhile undertaking.
Cecelia Holland, "The King of Norway" -- this is the second story I've read by this author, and although I didn't dislike it as much as the one in the Dragon book, I didn't actually like it, either. There is some amusing dialogue, and the Viking battle was pretty exciting, but the story on the whole didn't do anything for me.
Joe Haldeman, "Forever Bound" -- this was an interesting one, in that I can't say I like the way the story ended (it felt very abrupt), but I did like the writing on the whole, the way even characters who did not appear in the story for more than a few lines felt quite real. This may be an author I'd give a shot to that I wouldn't have before, which is always a good thing for me to happen in an anthology.
Robin Hobb, "The Triumph" -- a rather grim story about a Roman soldier dying post-torture in a cage exposed to the public, and his childhood friend/comrade who is an escaped slave in Carthage finding a way to deliver the mercy stroke. I liked it a lot as the character study of the two men. (It also works interestingly in counterpoint to "The Eagle and the Rabbit", which I wonder if it's intentional.) Not the best thing by Hobb I've ever read, but it was interesting to see her take on a (mostly) historical story rather than a second-world fantasy one.
Lawrence Block, "Clean Slate" -- I've read one mystery by Block and liked it but was not blown away. Same with this story. I do like the way the depths of the protagonist's pathology and plan are slowly revealed, and the way this story works within the context of the book's theme.
Tad Williams, "And Ministers of Grace" -- this one proved to be one of my favorites in the collection. It's the kind of premise that's really easy to screw up badly -- the POV is a supersoldier/assassin of god named Lamentation Kane, sent to a "godless" planet to assassinate the female prime minister of a "godless" world. The POV is... respectful and empathetic, I guess, to the man if not the ideals he serves, while also presenting a character who is doing really, really horrible things (the most drastic, for me, was the moment when he resorts to cannibalism because his supersoldier metabolism requires immediate fuel). It helps that the planet his planet is campaigning against is far from perfect, too, though his ideals and methods are never presented as OK. Anyway, I was impressed with this one on all levels -- the premise, the writing which pulled it off and pulled no punches.
Joe R. Lansdale, "Soldierin'" -- an entertainingly-narrated story about black soldiers fighting American Indians with the US Army. Not something I thought would be entertained reading about, but the narrative voice was just a lot of fun.
Peter S. Beagle, "Dirae" -- weird, weird story -- the beginning anyway -- and I'm glad the intro before the story said to persevere (well, I would've trusted Beagle to pull it off regardless, but it was weird). I did find it quite effective, which was kind of surprising, actually, given how the main character pretty much literally constructs herself throughout the story, and the ending was very depressing but fitting.
Diana Gabaldon, "The Custom of the Army" -- I got to this story just as the Gabaldon fanfic thing was happening, and I actually skipped this story because I was so annoyed with her, but then I went back and found it quite readable, actually. Sort of pointless, but fairly entertaining. This is actually the second or third Lord John story I've read (all in anthologies), but I don't feel anything for this character. I did like his brother in this (even though he appears only in cameo) and his interaction with his baby daughter.
Naomi Novik, "Seven Years from Home" -- not nearly as much fun as the dragon stories, but it was good. The world-building was pretty impressive, including the implied world-building of the worlds other than the main one being explored, like Ruth's homeworld.
Steven Saylor, "The Eagle and the Rabbit" -- a story about newly enslaved Carthiginians being transported to Rome and the mindgames the sadistic slavedriver. I saw the twist coming a long way off, but the story was still interesting enough, I suppose, and I do like the open-ended but not dismissive of hope ending.
James Rollins, "The Pit" -- this is an interesting one, in that the warrior in question is a pit bull, stolen from his loving home as a pup and is now used in dogfighting. It's a pretty brutal story, and while plenty of other stories in the book feature death and torture, this one actually was the one that felt too graphic for me, though I don't know how much of that is the writing and how much is that maybe I'm more inured to cruelty to people in writing than cruelty to animals. The happy-ish ending felt kind of unrealistic to me, but it's not like I wanted this story to end on a dark note...
David Weber, "Out of the Dark" -- I got a few pages into it and just didn't feel like continuing. I did skip ahead to see if anything more interesting happened, but didn't encounter anything that caught my attention. So this was the one story I didn't read -- it was too long to plow through just because. I doubt I want to read more Weber's stuff either.
Carrie Vaughan, "The Girls from Avenger" -- this is a story I wouldn't have encountered if not for an anthology like this, because it was a straight realistic/historical/military story about female pilots, with a mystery bent, but I quite liked it. I liked the characterization of the female pilots, and that the story got its point across without preaching, and also learning a piece of history I had not known about. Also, I really liked this line: "She wasn't sure she believed the stories about someone putting sugar in the fuel tank of a WASP's plane at Camp Davis, causin it to crash -- mostly because she didn't think anyone would do that to a plane."
S.M.Stirling, "Ancient Ways" -- this story was quite a lot of fun! The plot was swashbuckly and all, and the characters were fun, but mostly I liked the setting, a sort of post-apocalyptic USSR which has reverted back to Cossack stannitsas and warring Easter tribes, with remnants of old technology and old vocabulary sprinkled in. (Most of the Russian was decent, too, except that in some cases the second instance of the word was misspelled when the first one had been correct, the author or the editor getting sloppy, I guess.) This premise worked really well for me as a backdrop for some adventure. In fact, I'd kind of like to read a novel set in this world. If I understand correctly, his Emberverse series *is* set in this world, although on the American side. This is less interesting to me, except it apparently features an organization based on Tolkien's Rangers, which may be a reason to give it a shot.
Howard Waldorp, "Ninieslando" -- a story set during WWI where there's an advanced society flourishing underneath the ground of No Man's Land, dedicated to building a better world and talking in Esperanto. Some interesting ideas here, but the story felt rather flat, though I did like the "reset" ending as the most realistic.
Gardner Dozois, "Recidivist" -- huh. I liked some of the weirdness of this story, just, crazy things going on for reasons that aren't supposed to make sense, with creepy wonderful lines like this: "he passed [flew] over a conjoined being, several different people that had been fused together into a multilobed single body, which had probably been trudging west for months now [...] It looked, looked, looked up at him as he passed." But other than the atmosphere of weirdness, and the Human World meeting where they remember glass milk bottles and Britney Spears songs in the same set of affirmations, the story didn't do much for me, in terms of plot, chararacter or whatever.
David Morrell, "My Name Is Legion" -- gripping premise (legionaires of the Free Foreign Legion fighting for the Allies and legionaires of the Foreign Legion being commanded by the Vichy government and fighting for the Axis Powers fighting each other in Damascus during WWII), but the character and the writing were not very interesting to me. From the author of Rambo, incidentally...
Robert Silverberg, "Defenders of the Frontier" -- I think this might be the first Silverberg story I actually enjoyed. It's about a diwndling group of soldiers holding down a fort on the outskirts of a vast Empire years after everybody, commanders and enemies, have forgotten about them. There are slight fantasy or sci-fi elements, though they are not particularly important. The forgotten defenders made for a neat little microcosm, and I actually came to like or sympathize with a number of these characters, even though none of the men get names.
David Ball, "The Scroll" -- this is basically a story of psychological torture, from beginning to end, centering around a French engineer taken prisoner of the brilliant but psychotic Emperor of Morocco. I liked the engineer as he is first introduced: "Baptiste loved battlements and fortifications and all the tools of war, but found the noise and the smell of battle itself terrifying. He did not like the bodies and blood that fouled his neat ditches, did not like the ravages of shells that tore his pristine walls, did not, in fact, like the killing. It offended the laws of God and the order of his own life. Yes, his work allowed others to kill with speed and efficiency, but his own hands were clean." It's fascinating to see him essentially taken apart, psychologically, by the emperor's extreme psychological manipulation, and then the ending is super-depressing. So, I found this to be a very interesting story, but very grim.
George R.R. Martin, "The Mystery Knight" -- the third Dunk and Egg story. I really like Egg, and Dunk is also sort of adorable (and I like the foreshadowing of him becoming Lord Commander of the Kingsguard in this one). westerosorting has also made me fond of Bloodraven, so it was cool to see him, too. Also neat: references to Leo Longthorn, and Tywin's grandfather, and assorted Freys, and all the varius ancestors of the ASOIAF gang. The plot was interesting, and the twists pretty twisty, and the various characters and their backstories very well done (Glendon "Ball", especially, grew on me) and Ser Uthor Underleaf, who was great in his below-the-radar unprincipled way -- and it's pretty cool to see how a tourney knight would go about making a steady living for himself. Basically, it's really great to have new Westeros stuff to read.
So, I liked a lot of the stories from this book. Of course, Dunk & Egg is the one I read it for, but I also really enjoyed "And Ministries of Grace" and "The Scroll" and "Ancient Ways", and liked "The Girls from Avenger", "Defenders of the Frontier", and, heck, most of the others, really.
35. China Mieville, The City and the City -- I've been wanting to give reading China Mieville a try for ages, but for all of his books I heard things that made me suspect they wouldn't work well for me (horror elements, narratives that went nowhere, etc.) So when I saw TCatC was a mystery, I was quite pleased, 'cos I figured it had to have an actual point/plot, and it didn't sound like there were any horror elements present. And it was a premise that really intrigued me, so even if the book turned out to be mostly premise and world-building, I'd be good with that, too. I think I picked the right book, because I really enjoyed it.
It had a sort of Borgesian feel to it, and, yeah, I guess Kafkaesque, too. The premise, as I said, was fascinating to me, and so I enjoyed all the ways in which it was explored, from neologisms (unseeing, grosstopically, breaching) to the stories, to the various minor incidents described, to the progression of Borlu's perception as he moves first in Beszel, then in Ul Qoma ("I had unseen it as we took the KarnStrasz, at least ostensibly, but of course grosstopically present near us were the lines of Ul Qomans entering, the trickle of visitor-badge-wearing Besz emerging into the same physical space they may have walked an hour previously, but now looking around in astonishment at the architecture of Ul Qoma it would have been breach to see before"), then in both ("We stepped through, and that, when the light ate me up, was when I realized I did not know which city we were in."), to the way the climactic scenes work in a way that wouldn't make any sense outside this particular worldbuilding -- the shock of Borlu breaching to shoot Yolanda's killer when he thinks he is safe, protected by being in a different city, the no-man's land Bowden occuppies, stalemating the Besz and UQ police (and, technically, Breach too, since he isn't breaching).
The characters aren't really that important in this book, but I ended up sort of respecting Borlu, his very occasional and exasperated sense of humour, his professionalism. And I ended up downright liking Dhatt, who I'm glad made it out of the book alive, if not uninjured. I also liked Borlu's commissar, in his one scene.
I was relieved to see that the resolution to the mystery was "mundane" -- i.e. there was no secret Orciny, it was all resolved within the parameters of the world established from the beginning, Beszel, UQ, Breach. I really liked the way a lot of the complications of the mystery were intrinsic to the split city thing, like, the fact that the vehicle transporting the body from UQ to Beszel was pretty much invisible: "A visiting Besz van, one might assume, would be memorable in Ul Qoma, as an Ul qoman one would be in Beszel. The truth is that unless someone saw the sign in the windscreen, people's assumption would be that such a foreign vehicle was no in their home city, and accordingly it would remain unseen. Potential witnesses would generally not know there was anything to witness." And: "Bowden would not likely attack either Dhatt or Corwi: do so and he would declare himself a criminal, in Beszel or Ul Qoma. Attack both and he would be in Breach, which, unbelievably, he was not yet. He walked with equipoise, possibly in either city. Shroedinger's pedestrian." I did have a slightly difficult time believing that Bowden, a foreigner, could manipulate the mannerisms of both cities so skillfully, but whatever -- it was a really cool idea.
The resolution for Borlu felt fitting (and well hinted at during his incarceration with Breach), although not something I could particularly cheer, as I never really warmed up to Breach.
I liked, predictably, the linguistic geekery, from the description of the two alphabets, to the multi-lingual pun in the name of the street drug, to the pun in Mahalia's alias in Beszel, to the referenced mangled translation of "The public has a right to know", to "We had stolen gudcop and badcop from English, verbed them", to the fact that, not knowing Ul Qoman police jargon, Borlu has to resort to English to explain to Dhatt what he means at one point ("'Can you make a... I don't know it in Illitan. Put an APB on him.' I said it in English, copying the films. 'Yeah, we call it "send the halo."'"). Basically, I eat this stuff up with a spoon, and also it contributes to the sense of versimilitude in Beszel and also the mutual alienness (except maybe not) of Beszel and UQ. Also, I don't know that this counts as linguistic geekery, but I still liked it -- when Borlu tells Yolanda (who is Canadian) "I'll be back" in English, and Aikam (who doesn't speak English) recognizes it, and Borlu repeats it with an Austrian accent (which Yolanda doesn't pick up on). I just like things like that. \easily amused by languages and accent hijinks.
I hadn't realized, then I picked up the book, that the city-scape on the cover is Prague. But maybe it had filtered down into my subconsciousness somehow, because I randomly took it out in Prague, while I was in the middle of another book, and started reading it there. It was a good fit, because Beszel does have that generic Central-Eastern-European feel, and it fit my real-time environment very nicely.
Quotes (not related to linguistic geekery or inter-citiness, which are all above):
"Few citizens realize that our tradition of jokes about the foolishness of the middle child derives from a centuries-old humorous dialogue between Beszel's head rabbi and its chief imam about the intemperance of the Beszel Orthodox Church." [Although the rosy view of Jewish and Muslim relations seems a tad improbably...]
"Is it more foolish and childish to assume there is a conspirace, or that there is not?"
"'Would you mind putting it on plain?' I asked. I winked. 'Just in case it's intercepted.' She smiled, not sure what intimacy it was she was privy to."
36. Charlaine Harris, Club Dead (book 3) -- I liked this one better than the first one I read, and I think a lot of that had to do with a) Bill being relatively scarce, except at the very beginning and end, and b) Sookie seeming to be less starry-eyed about Bill. I don't like Bill very much, you see. Sookie is still a weird narrator for me -- the delicate/euphemistic expressions she seems to prefer, the way she worries about her appearance when in a situation where I, personally, would never think about it, like after just getting beaten up, her Word-A-Day calendars and romance novels -- but now that I know not to expect her to be a narrator I can identify with just about at all, I'm starting to find these features amusing rather than distancing. Also, I like the fact that Sookie's showing some balls in her relations with Bill (rescinding his invitation, not instantly forgiving him) and Eric (challenging him when it's clear he thinks there's something wrong with the idea of her rescuing him and the shop clerk).
She still seems a little blase for my taste about men taking advantage of her -- Eric rubbing up against her while giving her blood while she's both injured and strung out, Bill actually raping her (he legitimately didn't have any control over himself and did seem shocked when he came to and realized she wasn't a willing participant... but then it's never mentioned again), even Alcide kissing and groping her (he may not have known she was hurt as badly as she was, but he could see she'd been through a lot, and he knew about the situation with Bill). I do like that, in addition to her infatuation with Bill, Sookie also thinks of him much more coolly: "Bill was the only insurance I had against being annexed by another vampire against my will." I also like that Sookie is better at using a shotgun than Eric is, and Pam wanting to take shotgun lessons from her (having seen a little more of her, I'm starting to like Pam).
I like Alcide (although the whole "manly man who is manly, and also manly" introduction was over the top enough to be funny), and it looks like he could be a serious contender for Sookie's affections if he can get over Debbie for real. He certainly makes a nice counterpoint to Bill, being thoughtful, fairly forthcoming, and, you know, alive, and also to Eric, by mostly not being a jerk, and also by being gentlemanly and somewhat hesitant around Sookie (like when he gives her the shawl). So, Alcide was very nice and I'm looking forward to more of him.
But Eric's still my favorite by far. Powerful charismatic assholes with a sense of humour -- I'm all over that in fiction. Some favorite Eric moments: And of course he fixes up her driveway. And that his only objection to flirting with the king of Mississippi is that it would be suspicious (of course, Eric's willingness to embrace that sort of thing is not new in this book, but I still find it amusing).
OK, so there was plot. I guessed it was Bubba who'd killed the werewolf Sookie and Alcide found in the closet (and, hee, I find Bubba quite amusing... though it's probably fortunate he only showed up in small doses). Getting to Bill and especially getting him out was quite exciting (I especially liked Sookie and Eric working as a team on hostile turf). I liked the King of Mississippi and his entourage. I wonder if there will be more about Lorena in subsequent books, as while that plot line is closed with her death, it seems like there's a lot of backstory still missing. Oh, and the thing everybody was apparently after -- Bill's sekrit project -- was kind of ludicrous... Facebook, the Vampire Edition. I don't really understand why it had to be kept secret from Eric or why everybody wanted a piece of it that much, but... OK.
Random other things I liked: Eric's "This Blood's For You" brewery T-shirt (I'm a sucker for a bad pun). Eric taking offense on Sookie's behalf by saying "You are speaking of my future lover. Be more respectful." This quote: "I'm through with you all. I'm tired of seeing all this sick stuff. I'm tired of having to be brave, and having to do things that scare me, and having to hang out with the bizarre and the supernatural. I am just a regular person, and I just want to date regular people. Or at least people who are breathing." Go Sookie! You tell'em! And this exchange:
Bill: "My Sookie hid a corpse?"
Eric: "I don't think you can be too sure about that possessive pronoun."
B: "Where did you learn that term, Northman?"
E: "I took 'English as a Second Language' at a community college in the seventies."
37. Charlaine Harris, Dead to the World (book 4) -- huh, I thought I'd enjoy a book with so much Eric in it more than I actually did. I still enjoyed it, but amnesiac Eric is no substitute for real Eric, even though he's done pretty well. I did like the fact that you could still see he was smart and proud and ruthless if needed. And Eric the lost puppy was funny for a while. I *didn't* like his relationship with Sookie, especially all the "lover" stuff (eyerollworthy to the extreme for me). But his ~proposal actually was adorable ("His nostrils flared and he looked suddenly proud. 'I could work. You would not be poor. I would help you.'") I liked that he paid her the original $50k reward promised in the poster and not the $35k bargained down price. I liked that he got all gleeful about the prospect of snow. And I liked that, with Eric in hiding, Pam got to take charge, and say things like, "We need you to bring Eric. He can fight even if he doesn't know who he is. He will be useless to us if we can't brak the spell, anyway". I like Pam now. :) And on a final vampire note, I liked the relative absence of Bill.
The were goings-on are a lot less interesting to me (although I liked Hotshot and find myself intrigued by Calvin). I didn't really see the need for Debbie to be a multi-book antagonist, even a minor one. And the witches I found pretty boring, both the good and the bad, and their motivation a tad far-fetched. I also liked Jason more in this book than in book 2, even though he is still not exactly what I would call likeable.
Quotes:
"Oddly, my first feeling was one of embarrassment, when I heard Holly tell me that she was a non-Christian. I'd never met anyone who didn't at least pretend to be a Christian."
38. Charlaine Harris, Definitely Dead (book 6) -- it seems that fannish reaction towards this book was not as positive, and I can't say it's a favorite of mine (that would be book 3, I think, at least so far) but this was the book that made me sort of sit back and say, hey, these can actually be good as well as fun. What I mean is -- and maybe it's because I jumped over a book to get to this one -- I'm really seeing Sookie's growth here, and a much more palatable perspective on some of the stuff that bugged me in the earlier books, which makes me think that the earlier irksome stuff was a feature rather than a bug.
I actually respect this Sookie. She finally seems to have learned not to let love interests du jour just paw her -- I was greatly cheered when she stopped Quinn's heavy petting in the parking lot, and later when she was determined not to just jump into bed with him. I also cheered when she didn't call Bill for help when she was spooked by something outside her house, and that she told him off in the end, heartbroken as she was, that his words were not enough to fix anything after the big reveal. I like the way she is wistful but realistic about her relationship with amnesiac Eric from book 4, and excited but not without suspicion about the new relationship with Quinn. I also really liked the explanation for why she came across as so naive and easily led in the first books -- that for the first time she was dealing with creatures whose minds were not open books to her, which, of course, had to make it much more difficult to know whom to trust. And, on a random note, I was tickled by how she got to play the D'Artagnan role for the Queen of Louisiana, retrieving a missing piece of jewelry to save the Queen from exposure before her king. I don't know if that was intentional, but I loved it either way.
I liked the way the fairy blood reveal was handled. It *could* be the epitome of Mary-Sue-ness, but it's not treated that way. It does explain why Bill, Eric, Alcide, Calvin (whom I still like, btw, and hope he'll continue to appear even though he's no longer courting Sookie), and Quinn are all panting after her -- but it's not seen as a good thing by Sookie, and with good reason. I also like the way Eric takes that reveal. (There wasn't enough Eric in this book for my taste, but he did steal every scene he appeared in, as per usual.)
Quinn... Quinn is boring when he is not being a tiger. Tigers are awesome -- I love tigers! But there doesn't seem to be anything to Quinn beyond that. He is strong, resilient, and sort of blandly gentlemanly, I suppose, but I didn't get any sense of his interests or personality traits beyond wanting to get into Sookie's pants and being all macho protective of her (which is boring, and also there are plenty of candidates for that role). I did get a snicker out of tiger!Quinn marking his teritory on their trek through the swamp.
I like Amelia the witch, though the fact that she was coming back to Bon Temps with Sookie was kind of surprising to me. I was impressed by the queen (my first time meeting her) and intrigued by Andre. Oh, and I also liked the demon lawyer and Rasul the vampire guard.
I looked through some reviews, and sounds like people found Hadley's murder (which is explored in a short story) confusing. Maybe it's because I'd skipped a book and so was expecting to have missed stuff, but I just rolled with it and it wasn't confusing at all. I did find it a bit difficult to believe that the ancient vampire queen would be so attached to a brand new vampire that she hadn't known for very long, presumably partly on the strength of both of them having survived childhood abuse. (I was also quite surprised by the revelation that the funny uncle that Sookie had mentioned earlier had done more than just think about getting her alone, and that she knew about what he was doing to Hadley. I don't know if that's dealt with in the short story or not, but it was sort of thrown out there without going any deeper, and that seemed weird.)
Randomly: LOL, Bill doesn't get jokes in the funnies XP (why am I not surprised).
Now that I've read a bunch of these, I also have to note that the titles all run together and it's very difficult for me to remember which order they go in because they all sound so similar, on account of all having "Dead" in them. I have to say, as far as series books naming conventions go, I far prefer the approach of the other urban fantasy mystery series -- Dresden Files' two words with matched length thing, The Hollows' Clint Eastwood movies allusions, or October Daye's Shakespearean allusions. But oh well.
I do want to go back and read book 5 and read on from book 7, although I do imagine I'll get sick of it at some point, possibly before I run out of books in the series. But so far so good.
39. Vacations from Hell -- an OK YA paranormal anthology, with stories by Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Claudia Gray, Maureen Johnson, and Sarah Mlynowski. Most of the stories are nothing special but readable, and it did introduce me to a couple of authors I hadn't read before.
"Cruisin'" by Sarah Mlynowski -- frothy but cute. It's built around a twist reveal. I accidentally glimpsed ahead and saw enough to guess said twist around the middle of the story, but it may have only made it more fun. Author I haven't read before, and I won't run out and buy her books, but I'll pick'em up if I come across them on the strength of this.
"I Don't Like Your Girlfriend" by Claudia Gray -- teenage witch antagonists, also fun, although the "bad girl" is improbably bad and another character becomes similarly improbably flat. But I liked the protagonist, who makes lists, wishes she could keep an Excel spreadsheet for magical ingredients, and tries to be nice to her little brother -- and does so believably.
"The Law of Suspects" by Maureen Johnson -- eh, not my thing. It's a horror story, I guess, built around a sort of urban legend/chain letter idea. It's narrated cutely, the central characters are fun to hang around with, but the plot left me cold, the twist bored me, and I basically couldn't see what the point was.
"The Mirror House" by Cassandra Claire -- eh. It's very Claire-y, and nicely atmospheric, I suppose, but I didn't care about any of these characters at all, so it was hard to get worked up over one of them being in peril or getting rescued. Meh.
"Nowhere is Safe" by Libba Bray -- this one I actually liked best, although, even though it's a longish story, I felt like it maybe wanted to be a full-length book. The twist I found both surprising and believable (well, as believable as the alternative). The characters, if not particularly realistic, were interesting. It's a very multicultural batch (the bi-racial narrator Poe whose grandmother went through the Japanese internment camps in WWII; his female BFF Isabel, an immigrant from Haiti; his Jewish friend Baz; and Baz's rich cousin John who doesn't really feel like a full-fledged character), but the multiculturalness is not anvilicious and introduced and reinforced in fairly natural ways throughout the story, and their conversations about racism and the Holocaust feel both believable and not totally divorced from what's going on in the story, even if the introduction may not be totally smooth. I also like the modernity of the story, the internet life references. Like, the framing device is that this story, narrated by Poe, is being streamed on YouTube (although the framing ends up kind of divorced from the main story, actually, which was a tad confusing), and there's a scene when the four teens, bored without internet, start talking at each other in netspeak, which could've been awful but was actually quite funny. The supernatural aspect is a bit more horror than I like, but there was some nice creepy imagery and action, and yet some humour throughout, from the protagonists trying not to freak out too badly, and it worked for me, and, unlike most horror stories, felt like it had a point, too. Anyway, worth reading and felt deeper than the other stories in the collection.
33. Justine Larbalestier, Liar -- back when this book first came out and the various YA authors whose blogs I follow were talking about how mild-blowing and perfect it is, I was rather skeptical. I'd read one and a half of the Magic or Madness books and was rather underwhelmed by the execution of what was a promising premise and some interesting character ideas. And Liar sounded like a much more ambitious, difficult to pull off idea, so I was a bit leery of it. But I did find the book exactly as good and as mind-blowing as I'd heard from others. (This also makes me much less reluctant to try other Larbalestier books, though I don't know that I'll be going out of my way to track down the rest of Magic or Madness). Spoilers from here on, and in this case I do think they'll kill the full experience of the book, so if you are at all planning to read it or think you might, don't read on.
SPOILERS Liar takes the unreliable narrator thing to an extreme, but it does so in a way that did not (for me) detract from the freshness and detail of narration, or the initial likeability of the narrator's character. She admits she's a liar but opens the book with a promise to tell nothing but the truth. The first section (which contains said promise) is called "Telling the Truth", and the Micah you meet in there is sympathetic but flawed; by the end of the section I really liked Micah and even her often-ineffectual parents. By the end of this section it's also rather clear that there's a supernatural twist Micah's narrative is leading up to, and sure enough, the second part, "Telling the True Truth" opens with that supernatural twist, and the revelations therein make Micah even more sympathetic. Then we get to part three, "The Actual Real Truth", where Micah explains that some lies still slipped through, and proceeds to intercut the developing action with an explanation of those lies, some larger, some smaller. The biggest impact for me here was "Lie Number Five" ("I don't have a brother. I made Jordan up.") and then, while I was still reeling from trying to assimilate that (but... all those details of her interaction with him that helped build her identity? what about him smelling wrong? and the psychologists thinking part of her problem is she's jealous of Jordan -- surely they would've asked her parents? it must be a very thorough lie...) then came "Lie Number Nine" ("I do have a brother. I did have a brother. [...] He died. I was twelve. He was ten. It was an accident.")
At this point, the lies within a section are not even mutually consistent anymore, and there are bits of information that are clear lies (or inconsistencies) that aren't even called out as such, such as Micah explaining in "Lie Number Three" that her birth control pills come from her mother's perscription and then in her conversation with the science teacher them apparently coming from Yayeko, the whole thing basically starting to unravel. Towards the end, the lies are not called out anymore, there are different versions presented so it's not clear anymore which Micah is preseting as truth at any given time. Micah's tone with the audience changes, too, from trust-building and conspiratorial to occasionally confrontational. The book ends by revealing a huge lie of omission, presenting a rosy coda, and then having Micah play-act her audience and challenge that rosy code and present (while trying to debunk) an alternate ending. Which brings into focus a line from the middle of the book that didn't seem to fit in the narrative this was then and I had sort of skimmed over as metaphorical ("Bars surround me. Prison guards bind my arms, bring me pills several times a day. They ask me -- beg me -- to tell them the truth" -- but she was just talking about how her school is a converted prison and they kept the bars, so this line doesn't stand out as much as it would otherwise in context). When the cover copy says the book with "have readers seesawing truths and lies right up to the end" -- yeah, it totally delivers that.
And it does it well. My faith in Micah as a narrator I could rely on was naturally eroded throughout the book, but it didn't crumble completely until mid-way through the third section. Having finished it, I don't know what I think happened (this is a good thing), and yet I don't feel cheated by the book, because the unreliable narrator thing is so well done and also because it's actually telling a very interesting story at all points, even though the story may change drastically depending on where you are.
When I started reading, I had some attachment to certain characters. Like, I liked Tayshawn for example, because he is so unselfconscious and clearly a good guy. I liked Micah's French mother. But once my faith in Micah's story crumbled, all that fell by the wayside, so it's even weird to talk about these things now. I do still like Micah, in a reeling sort of way. I found it interesting that she thinks of herself as black as opposed to bi-racial, for instance (and the way that whole theme is played around with in the class's DNA test results). I like the way her interest in biology is tied to wanting to understand who/what she is, the way she thinks of werewolves in a scientific way.
Actually, the whole werewolf thing kind of fell by the wayside for me as well, because the big things she could be lying about are sort of independent of whether or not she's a werewolf or lying/delusional about that, too. But until that point, I liked the details with which the werewolf thing was executed, like the way "Wilkins" may well be an anglicized form of something like "volk", and the little sayings of the Greats, like "You may feed the wolf as much as you like; it will always glance toward the forest" (which may exist in Polish, too, but definitely exists in Russian). The way Micah wonders about the transformation and whether she is still herself on a cellular level, and the way her werewolf species is unusual too. And the way she explicitly puts in the unromantic aspects of werewolf life, ticks, mites, tapeworms, etc. The way epithets like "bitch" and "the girl who cried wolf" are tied to the werewolf aspect of the story.
Spoiler thread at Larbalestier's blog has a lot of possibilities / connections I hadn't even considered or picked up on, like the pills being antipsychotics, Jordan and Pete being each other's shadows, the farm "upstate" as the mental institution or jail, the Micah *was* Jordan interpretation.
I don't know what I believe the "true" story is, and I don't think it really matters. I do think I'm leaning towards the darker explanation, but, really, the whole thing could be fiction anyway.
So, basically: this book delivers exactly what the cover copy promises and what I heard from the people who'd blogged about it, which is really very impressive.
34. Warriors, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois -- It's a neat idea, and anthology tied together not by genre but by (a rather broad) theme. It definitely did introduce me to stories and authors I probably wouldn't have encountered otherwise (and which I enjoyed, at least in some cases), and it also seemed to have encouraged authors to write outside of their "normal" field in some cases -- e.g. sci-fi stories from Naomi Novik and Tad Williams, for example. The book's a brick and took me forever to get through, but it's an interesting and worthwhile undertaking.
Cecelia Holland, "The King of Norway" -- this is the second story I've read by this author, and although I didn't dislike it as much as the one in the Dragon book, I didn't actually like it, either. There is some amusing dialogue, and the Viking battle was pretty exciting, but the story on the whole didn't do anything for me.
Joe Haldeman, "Forever Bound" -- this was an interesting one, in that I can't say I like the way the story ended (it felt very abrupt), but I did like the writing on the whole, the way even characters who did not appear in the story for more than a few lines felt quite real. This may be an author I'd give a shot to that I wouldn't have before, which is always a good thing for me to happen in an anthology.
Robin Hobb, "The Triumph" -- a rather grim story about a Roman soldier dying post-torture in a cage exposed to the public, and his childhood friend/comrade who is an escaped slave in Carthage finding a way to deliver the mercy stroke. I liked it a lot as the character study of the two men. (It also works interestingly in counterpoint to "The Eagle and the Rabbit", which I wonder if it's intentional.) Not the best thing by Hobb I've ever read, but it was interesting to see her take on a (mostly) historical story rather than a second-world fantasy one.
Lawrence Block, "Clean Slate" -- I've read one mystery by Block and liked it but was not blown away. Same with this story. I do like the way the depths of the protagonist's pathology and plan are slowly revealed, and the way this story works within the context of the book's theme.
Tad Williams, "And Ministers of Grace" -- this one proved to be one of my favorites in the collection. It's the kind of premise that's really easy to screw up badly -- the POV is a supersoldier/assassin of god named Lamentation Kane, sent to a "godless" planet to assassinate the female prime minister of a "godless" world. The POV is... respectful and empathetic, I guess, to the man if not the ideals he serves, while also presenting a character who is doing really, really horrible things (the most drastic, for me, was the moment when he resorts to cannibalism because his supersoldier metabolism requires immediate fuel). It helps that the planet his planet is campaigning against is far from perfect, too, though his ideals and methods are never presented as OK. Anyway, I was impressed with this one on all levels -- the premise, the writing which pulled it off and pulled no punches.
Joe R. Lansdale, "Soldierin'" -- an entertainingly-narrated story about black soldiers fighting American Indians with the US Army. Not something I thought would be entertained reading about, but the narrative voice was just a lot of fun.
Peter S. Beagle, "Dirae" -- weird, weird story -- the beginning anyway -- and I'm glad the intro before the story said to persevere (well, I would've trusted Beagle to pull it off regardless, but it was weird). I did find it quite effective, which was kind of surprising, actually, given how the main character pretty much literally constructs herself throughout the story, and the ending was very depressing but fitting.
Diana Gabaldon, "The Custom of the Army" -- I got to this story just as the Gabaldon fanfic thing was happening, and I actually skipped this story because I was so annoyed with her, but then I went back and found it quite readable, actually. Sort of pointless, but fairly entertaining. This is actually the second or third Lord John story I've read (all in anthologies), but I don't feel anything for this character. I did like his brother in this (even though he appears only in cameo) and his interaction with his baby daughter.
Naomi Novik, "Seven Years from Home" -- not nearly as much fun as the dragon stories, but it was good. The world-building was pretty impressive, including the implied world-building of the worlds other than the main one being explored, like Ruth's homeworld.
Steven Saylor, "The Eagle and the Rabbit" -- a story about newly enslaved Carthiginians being transported to Rome and the mindgames the sadistic slavedriver. I saw the twist coming a long way off, but the story was still interesting enough, I suppose, and I do like the open-ended but not dismissive of hope ending.
James Rollins, "The Pit" -- this is an interesting one, in that the warrior in question is a pit bull, stolen from his loving home as a pup and is now used in dogfighting. It's a pretty brutal story, and while plenty of other stories in the book feature death and torture, this one actually was the one that felt too graphic for me, though I don't know how much of that is the writing and how much is that maybe I'm more inured to cruelty to people in writing than cruelty to animals. The happy-ish ending felt kind of unrealistic to me, but it's not like I wanted this story to end on a dark note...
David Weber, "Out of the Dark" -- I got a few pages into it and just didn't feel like continuing. I did skip ahead to see if anything more interesting happened, but didn't encounter anything that caught my attention. So this was the one story I didn't read -- it was too long to plow through just because. I doubt I want to read more Weber's stuff either.
Carrie Vaughan, "The Girls from Avenger" -- this is a story I wouldn't have encountered if not for an anthology like this, because it was a straight realistic/historical/military story about female pilots, with a mystery bent, but I quite liked it. I liked the characterization of the female pilots, and that the story got its point across without preaching, and also learning a piece of history I had not known about. Also, I really liked this line: "She wasn't sure she believed the stories about someone putting sugar in the fuel tank of a WASP's plane at Camp Davis, causin it to crash -- mostly because she didn't think anyone would do that to a plane."
S.M.Stirling, "Ancient Ways" -- this story was quite a lot of fun! The plot was swashbuckly and all, and the characters were fun, but mostly I liked the setting, a sort of post-apocalyptic USSR which has reverted back to Cossack stannitsas and warring Easter tribes, with remnants of old technology and old vocabulary sprinkled in. (Most of the Russian was decent, too, except that in some cases the second instance of the word was misspelled when the first one had been correct, the author or the editor getting sloppy, I guess.) This premise worked really well for me as a backdrop for some adventure. In fact, I'd kind of like to read a novel set in this world. If I understand correctly, his Emberverse series *is* set in this world, although on the American side. This is less interesting to me, except it apparently features an organization based on Tolkien's Rangers, which may be a reason to give it a shot.
Howard Waldorp, "Ninieslando" -- a story set during WWI where there's an advanced society flourishing underneath the ground of No Man's Land, dedicated to building a better world and talking in Esperanto. Some interesting ideas here, but the story felt rather flat, though I did like the "reset" ending as the most realistic.
Gardner Dozois, "Recidivist" -- huh. I liked some of the weirdness of this story, just, crazy things going on for reasons that aren't supposed to make sense, with creepy wonderful lines like this: "he passed [flew] over a conjoined being, several different people that had been fused together into a multilobed single body, which had probably been trudging west for months now [...] It looked, looked, looked up at him as he passed." But other than the atmosphere of weirdness, and the Human World meeting where they remember glass milk bottles and Britney Spears songs in the same set of affirmations, the story didn't do much for me, in terms of plot, chararacter or whatever.
David Morrell, "My Name Is Legion" -- gripping premise (legionaires of the Free Foreign Legion fighting for the Allies and legionaires of the Foreign Legion being commanded by the Vichy government and fighting for the Axis Powers fighting each other in Damascus during WWII), but the character and the writing were not very interesting to me. From the author of Rambo, incidentally...
Robert Silverberg, "Defenders of the Frontier" -- I think this might be the first Silverberg story I actually enjoyed. It's about a diwndling group of soldiers holding down a fort on the outskirts of a vast Empire years after everybody, commanders and enemies, have forgotten about them. There are slight fantasy or sci-fi elements, though they are not particularly important. The forgotten defenders made for a neat little microcosm, and I actually came to like or sympathize with a number of these characters, even though none of the men get names.
David Ball, "The Scroll" -- this is basically a story of psychological torture, from beginning to end, centering around a French engineer taken prisoner of the brilliant but psychotic Emperor of Morocco. I liked the engineer as he is first introduced: "Baptiste loved battlements and fortifications and all the tools of war, but found the noise and the smell of battle itself terrifying. He did not like the bodies and blood that fouled his neat ditches, did not like the ravages of shells that tore his pristine walls, did not, in fact, like the killing. It offended the laws of God and the order of his own life. Yes, his work allowed others to kill with speed and efficiency, but his own hands were clean." It's fascinating to see him essentially taken apart, psychologically, by the emperor's extreme psychological manipulation, and then the ending is super-depressing. So, I found this to be a very interesting story, but very grim.
George R.R. Martin, "The Mystery Knight" -- the third Dunk and Egg story. I really like Egg, and Dunk is also sort of adorable (and I like the foreshadowing of him becoming Lord Commander of the Kingsguard in this one). westerosorting has also made me fond of Bloodraven, so it was cool to see him, too. Also neat: references to Leo Longthorn, and Tywin's grandfather, and assorted Freys, and all the varius ancestors of the ASOIAF gang. The plot was interesting, and the twists pretty twisty, and the various characters and their backstories very well done (Glendon "Ball", especially, grew on me) and Ser Uthor Underleaf, who was great in his below-the-radar unprincipled way -- and it's pretty cool to see how a tourney knight would go about making a steady living for himself. Basically, it's really great to have new Westeros stuff to read.
So, I liked a lot of the stories from this book. Of course, Dunk & Egg is the one I read it for, but I also really enjoyed "And Ministries of Grace" and "The Scroll" and "Ancient Ways", and liked "The Girls from Avenger", "Defenders of the Frontier", and, heck, most of the others, really.
35. China Mieville, The City and the City -- I've been wanting to give reading China Mieville a try for ages, but for all of his books I heard things that made me suspect they wouldn't work well for me (horror elements, narratives that went nowhere, etc.) So when I saw TCatC was a mystery, I was quite pleased, 'cos I figured it had to have an actual point/plot, and it didn't sound like there were any horror elements present. And it was a premise that really intrigued me, so even if the book turned out to be mostly premise and world-building, I'd be good with that, too. I think I picked the right book, because I really enjoyed it.
It had a sort of Borgesian feel to it, and, yeah, I guess Kafkaesque, too. The premise, as I said, was fascinating to me, and so I enjoyed all the ways in which it was explored, from neologisms (unseeing, grosstopically, breaching) to the stories, to the various minor incidents described, to the progression of Borlu's perception as he moves first in Beszel, then in Ul Qoma ("I had unseen it as we took the KarnStrasz, at least ostensibly, but of course grosstopically present near us were the lines of Ul Qomans entering, the trickle of visitor-badge-wearing Besz emerging into the same physical space they may have walked an hour previously, but now looking around in astonishment at the architecture of Ul Qoma it would have been breach to see before"), then in both ("We stepped through, and that, when the light ate me up, was when I realized I did not know which city we were in."), to the way the climactic scenes work in a way that wouldn't make any sense outside this particular worldbuilding -- the shock of Borlu breaching to shoot Yolanda's killer when he thinks he is safe, protected by being in a different city, the no-man's land Bowden occuppies, stalemating the Besz and UQ police (and, technically, Breach too, since he isn't breaching).
The characters aren't really that important in this book, but I ended up sort of respecting Borlu, his very occasional and exasperated sense of humour, his professionalism. And I ended up downright liking Dhatt, who I'm glad made it out of the book alive, if not uninjured. I also liked Borlu's commissar, in his one scene.
I was relieved to see that the resolution to the mystery was "mundane" -- i.e. there was no secret Orciny, it was all resolved within the parameters of the world established from the beginning, Beszel, UQ, Breach. I really liked the way a lot of the complications of the mystery were intrinsic to the split city thing, like, the fact that the vehicle transporting the body from UQ to Beszel was pretty much invisible: "A visiting Besz van, one might assume, would be memorable in Ul Qoma, as an Ul qoman one would be in Beszel. The truth is that unless someone saw the sign in the windscreen, people's assumption would be that such a foreign vehicle was no in their home city, and accordingly it would remain unseen. Potential witnesses would generally not know there was anything to witness." And: "Bowden would not likely attack either Dhatt or Corwi: do so and he would declare himself a criminal, in Beszel or Ul Qoma. Attack both and he would be in Breach, which, unbelievably, he was not yet. He walked with equipoise, possibly in either city. Shroedinger's pedestrian." I did have a slightly difficult time believing that Bowden, a foreigner, could manipulate the mannerisms of both cities so skillfully, but whatever -- it was a really cool idea.
The resolution for Borlu felt fitting (and well hinted at during his incarceration with Breach), although not something I could particularly cheer, as I never really warmed up to Breach.
I liked, predictably, the linguistic geekery, from the description of the two alphabets, to the multi-lingual pun in the name of the street drug, to the pun in Mahalia's alias in Beszel, to the referenced mangled translation of "The public has a right to know", to "We had stolen gudcop and badcop from English, verbed them", to the fact that, not knowing Ul Qoman police jargon, Borlu has to resort to English to explain to Dhatt what he means at one point ("'Can you make a... I don't know it in Illitan. Put an APB on him.' I said it in English, copying the films. 'Yeah, we call it "send the halo."'"). Basically, I eat this stuff up with a spoon, and also it contributes to the sense of versimilitude in Beszel and also the mutual alienness (except maybe not) of Beszel and UQ. Also, I don't know that this counts as linguistic geekery, but I still liked it -- when Borlu tells Yolanda (who is Canadian) "I'll be back" in English, and Aikam (who doesn't speak English) recognizes it, and Borlu repeats it with an Austrian accent (which Yolanda doesn't pick up on). I just like things like that. \easily amused by languages and accent hijinks.
I hadn't realized, then I picked up the book, that the city-scape on the cover is Prague. But maybe it had filtered down into my subconsciousness somehow, because I randomly took it out in Prague, while I was in the middle of another book, and started reading it there. It was a good fit, because Beszel does have that generic Central-Eastern-European feel, and it fit my real-time environment very nicely.
Quotes (not related to linguistic geekery or inter-citiness, which are all above):
"Few citizens realize that our tradition of jokes about the foolishness of the middle child derives from a centuries-old humorous dialogue between Beszel's head rabbi and its chief imam about the intemperance of the Beszel Orthodox Church." [Although the rosy view of Jewish and Muslim relations seems a tad improbably...]
"Is it more foolish and childish to assume there is a conspirace, or that there is not?"
"'Would you mind putting it on plain?' I asked. I winked. 'Just in case it's intercepted.' She smiled, not sure what intimacy it was she was privy to."
36. Charlaine Harris, Club Dead (book 3) -- I liked this one better than the first one I read, and I think a lot of that had to do with a) Bill being relatively scarce, except at the very beginning and end, and b) Sookie seeming to be less starry-eyed about Bill. I don't like Bill very much, you see. Sookie is still a weird narrator for me -- the delicate/euphemistic expressions she seems to prefer, the way she worries about her appearance when in a situation where I, personally, would never think about it, like after just getting beaten up, her Word-A-Day calendars and romance novels -- but now that I know not to expect her to be a narrator I can identify with just about at all, I'm starting to find these features amusing rather than distancing. Also, I like the fact that Sookie's showing some balls in her relations with Bill (rescinding his invitation, not instantly forgiving him) and Eric (challenging him when it's clear he thinks there's something wrong with the idea of her rescuing him and the shop clerk).
She still seems a little blase for my taste about men taking advantage of her -- Eric rubbing up against her while giving her blood while she's both injured and strung out, Bill actually raping her (he legitimately didn't have any control over himself and did seem shocked when he came to and realized she wasn't a willing participant... but then it's never mentioned again), even Alcide kissing and groping her (he may not have known she was hurt as badly as she was, but he could see she'd been through a lot, and he knew about the situation with Bill). I do like that, in addition to her infatuation with Bill, Sookie also thinks of him much more coolly: "Bill was the only insurance I had against being annexed by another vampire against my will." I also like that Sookie is better at using a shotgun than Eric is, and Pam wanting to take shotgun lessons from her (having seen a little more of her, I'm starting to like Pam).
I like Alcide (although the whole "manly man who is manly, and also manly" introduction was over the top enough to be funny), and it looks like he could be a serious contender for Sookie's affections if he can get over Debbie for real. He certainly makes a nice counterpoint to Bill, being thoughtful, fairly forthcoming, and, you know, alive, and also to Eric, by mostly not being a jerk, and also by being gentlemanly and somewhat hesitant around Sookie (like when he gives her the shawl). So, Alcide was very nice and I'm looking forward to more of him.
But Eric's still my favorite by far. Powerful charismatic assholes with a sense of humour -- I'm all over that in fiction. Some favorite Eric moments: And of course he fixes up her driveway. And that his only objection to flirting with the king of Mississippi is that it would be suspicious (of course, Eric's willingness to embrace that sort of thing is not new in this book, but I still find it amusing).
OK, so there was plot. I guessed it was Bubba who'd killed the werewolf Sookie and Alcide found in the closet (and, hee, I find Bubba quite amusing... though it's probably fortunate he only showed up in small doses). Getting to Bill and especially getting him out was quite exciting (I especially liked Sookie and Eric working as a team on hostile turf). I liked the King of Mississippi and his entourage. I wonder if there will be more about Lorena in subsequent books, as while that plot line is closed with her death, it seems like there's a lot of backstory still missing. Oh, and the thing everybody was apparently after -- Bill's sekrit project -- was kind of ludicrous... Facebook, the Vampire Edition. I don't really understand why it had to be kept secret from Eric or why everybody wanted a piece of it that much, but... OK.
Random other things I liked: Eric's "This Blood's For You" brewery T-shirt (I'm a sucker for a bad pun). Eric taking offense on Sookie's behalf by saying "You are speaking of my future lover. Be more respectful." This quote: "I'm through with you all. I'm tired of seeing all this sick stuff. I'm tired of having to be brave, and having to do things that scare me, and having to hang out with the bizarre and the supernatural. I am just a regular person, and I just want to date regular people. Or at least people who are breathing." Go Sookie! You tell'em! And this exchange:
Bill: "My Sookie hid a corpse?"
Eric: "I don't think you can be too sure about that possessive pronoun."
B: "Where did you learn that term, Northman?"
E: "I took 'English as a Second Language' at a community college in the seventies."
37. Charlaine Harris, Dead to the World (book 4) -- huh, I thought I'd enjoy a book with so much Eric in it more than I actually did. I still enjoyed it, but amnesiac Eric is no substitute for real Eric, even though he's done pretty well. I did like the fact that you could still see he was smart and proud and ruthless if needed. And Eric the lost puppy was funny for a while. I *didn't* like his relationship with Sookie, especially all the "lover" stuff (eyerollworthy to the extreme for me). But his ~proposal actually was adorable ("His nostrils flared and he looked suddenly proud. 'I could work. You would not be poor. I would help you.'") I liked that he paid her the original $50k reward promised in the poster and not the $35k bargained down price. I liked that he got all gleeful about the prospect of snow. And I liked that, with Eric in hiding, Pam got to take charge, and say things like, "We need you to bring Eric. He can fight even if he doesn't know who he is. He will be useless to us if we can't brak the spell, anyway". I like Pam now. :) And on a final vampire note, I liked the relative absence of Bill.
The were goings-on are a lot less interesting to me (although I liked Hotshot and find myself intrigued by Calvin). I didn't really see the need for Debbie to be a multi-book antagonist, even a minor one. And the witches I found pretty boring, both the good and the bad, and their motivation a tad far-fetched. I also liked Jason more in this book than in book 2, even though he is still not exactly what I would call likeable.
Quotes:
"Oddly, my first feeling was one of embarrassment, when I heard Holly tell me that she was a non-Christian. I'd never met anyone who didn't at least pretend to be a Christian."
38. Charlaine Harris, Definitely Dead (book 6) -- it seems that fannish reaction towards this book was not as positive, and I can't say it's a favorite of mine (that would be book 3, I think, at least so far) but this was the book that made me sort of sit back and say, hey, these can actually be good as well as fun. What I mean is -- and maybe it's because I jumped over a book to get to this one -- I'm really seeing Sookie's growth here, and a much more palatable perspective on some of the stuff that bugged me in the earlier books, which makes me think that the earlier irksome stuff was a feature rather than a bug.
I actually respect this Sookie. She finally seems to have learned not to let love interests du jour just paw her -- I was greatly cheered when she stopped Quinn's heavy petting in the parking lot, and later when she was determined not to just jump into bed with him. I also cheered when she didn't call Bill for help when she was spooked by something outside her house, and that she told him off in the end, heartbroken as she was, that his words were not enough to fix anything after the big reveal. I like the way she is wistful but realistic about her relationship with amnesiac Eric from book 4, and excited but not without suspicion about the new relationship with Quinn. I also really liked the explanation for why she came across as so naive and easily led in the first books -- that for the first time she was dealing with creatures whose minds were not open books to her, which, of course, had to make it much more difficult to know whom to trust. And, on a random note, I was tickled by how she got to play the D'Artagnan role for the Queen of Louisiana, retrieving a missing piece of jewelry to save the Queen from exposure before her king. I don't know if that was intentional, but I loved it either way.
I liked the way the fairy blood reveal was handled. It *could* be the epitome of Mary-Sue-ness, but it's not treated that way. It does explain why Bill, Eric, Alcide, Calvin (whom I still like, btw, and hope he'll continue to appear even though he's no longer courting Sookie), and Quinn are all panting after her -- but it's not seen as a good thing by Sookie, and with good reason. I also like the way Eric takes that reveal. (There wasn't enough Eric in this book for my taste, but he did steal every scene he appeared in, as per usual.)
Quinn... Quinn is boring when he is not being a tiger. Tigers are awesome -- I love tigers! But there doesn't seem to be anything to Quinn beyond that. He is strong, resilient, and sort of blandly gentlemanly, I suppose, but I didn't get any sense of his interests or personality traits beyond wanting to get into Sookie's pants and being all macho protective of her (which is boring, and also there are plenty of candidates for that role). I did get a snicker out of tiger!Quinn marking his teritory on their trek through the swamp.
I like Amelia the witch, though the fact that she was coming back to Bon Temps with Sookie was kind of surprising to me. I was impressed by the queen (my first time meeting her) and intrigued by Andre. Oh, and I also liked the demon lawyer and Rasul the vampire guard.
I looked through some reviews, and sounds like people found Hadley's murder (which is explored in a short story) confusing. Maybe it's because I'd skipped a book and so was expecting to have missed stuff, but I just rolled with it and it wasn't confusing at all. I did find it a bit difficult to believe that the ancient vampire queen would be so attached to a brand new vampire that she hadn't known for very long, presumably partly on the strength of both of them having survived childhood abuse. (I was also quite surprised by the revelation that the funny uncle that Sookie had mentioned earlier had done more than just think about getting her alone, and that she knew about what he was doing to Hadley. I don't know if that's dealt with in the short story or not, but it was sort of thrown out there without going any deeper, and that seemed weird.)
Randomly: LOL, Bill doesn't get jokes in the funnies XP (why am I not surprised).
Now that I've read a bunch of these, I also have to note that the titles all run together and it's very difficult for me to remember which order they go in because they all sound so similar, on account of all having "Dead" in them. I have to say, as far as series books naming conventions go, I far prefer the approach of the other urban fantasy mystery series -- Dresden Files' two words with matched length thing, The Hollows' Clint Eastwood movies allusions, or October Daye's Shakespearean allusions. But oh well.
I do want to go back and read book 5 and read on from book 7, although I do imagine I'll get sick of it at some point, possibly before I run out of books in the series. But so far so good.
39. Vacations from Hell -- an OK YA paranormal anthology, with stories by Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Claudia Gray, Maureen Johnson, and Sarah Mlynowski. Most of the stories are nothing special but readable, and it did introduce me to a couple of authors I hadn't read before.
"Cruisin'" by Sarah Mlynowski -- frothy but cute. It's built around a twist reveal. I accidentally glimpsed ahead and saw enough to guess said twist around the middle of the story, but it may have only made it more fun. Author I haven't read before, and I won't run out and buy her books, but I'll pick'em up if I come across them on the strength of this.
"I Don't Like Your Girlfriend" by Claudia Gray -- teenage witch antagonists, also fun, although the "bad girl" is improbably bad and another character becomes similarly improbably flat. But I liked the protagonist, who makes lists, wishes she could keep an Excel spreadsheet for magical ingredients, and tries to be nice to her little brother -- and does so believably.
"The Law of Suspects" by Maureen Johnson -- eh, not my thing. It's a horror story, I guess, built around a sort of urban legend/chain letter idea. It's narrated cutely, the central characters are fun to hang around with, but the plot left me cold, the twist bored me, and I basically couldn't see what the point was.
"The Mirror House" by Cassandra Claire -- eh. It's very Claire-y, and nicely atmospheric, I suppose, but I didn't care about any of these characters at all, so it was hard to get worked up over one of them being in peril or getting rescued. Meh.
"Nowhere is Safe" by Libba Bray -- this one I actually liked best, although, even though it's a longish story, I felt like it maybe wanted to be a full-length book. The twist I found both surprising and believable (well, as believable as the alternative). The characters, if not particularly realistic, were interesting. It's a very multicultural batch (the bi-racial narrator Poe whose grandmother went through the Japanese internment camps in WWII; his female BFF Isabel, an immigrant from Haiti; his Jewish friend Baz; and Baz's rich cousin John who doesn't really feel like a full-fledged character), but the multiculturalness is not anvilicious and introduced and reinforced in fairly natural ways throughout the story, and their conversations about racism and the Holocaust feel both believable and not totally divorced from what's going on in the story, even if the introduction may not be totally smooth. I also like the modernity of the story, the internet life references. Like, the framing device is that this story, narrated by Poe, is being streamed on YouTube (although the framing ends up kind of divorced from the main story, actually, which was a tad confusing), and there's a scene when the four teens, bored without internet, start talking at each other in netspeak, which could've been awful but was actually quite funny. The supernatural aspect is a bit more horror than I like, but there was some nice creepy imagery and action, and yet some humour throughout, from the protagonists trying not to freak out too badly, and it worked for me, and, unlike most horror stories, felt like it had a point, too. Anyway, worth reading and felt deeper than the other stories in the collection.