Reading roundup, including Smekday and CryoBurn
40. Eoin Colfer, And Another Thing (H2G2 "sequel") -- well, this was kind of a chore to get through. Like, there were some actual funny bits -- mostly in the excerpts from the guide -- but the book overall didn't feel like a H2G2 book, and wasn't enjoyable. Not that I ever loved the series for the characters, but I actively disliked most of them in this, and not in a particularly amusing way, either. It just felt... not right. Like, it was going through the motions, but whatever animated spark had made me a fan of the original was not there. (Mind, I thought the last couple of outings of H2G2 by Adams were kind of heading into "past its prime" territory, but this was a marked jump in that direction.) There are a couple of short passages in first person from a couple different POVs, and those felt particularly off to me. Oh well. Not a surprise, at least.
41. Adam Rex, The True Meaning of Smekday -- this was adorable and funny and poignant and smart and L has already read it and liked it as much as I did, which is awesome!
I like Gratuity ("Tip") Tucci a lot as a protagonist. She is smart and plucky and precocious, but has the faults that are likely to go along with it, too. And she is brave and independent and very capable while still being believably vulnerable and also believably an 11-year-old kid. One of the things I loved most about Tip is that she is smart and mature enough to manipulate the adults she encounters, but she's still very much a kid: "I gotta admit, I ate up the praise as much as the breakfast. I hadn't been anybody's good kid in a while." (P.S. Astrid from Rampant and Tip, when she's a few years older, need to meet and become BFFs.)
J.Lo the Boov and his explanations in comics were hilarious, especially the progression of the koobish space program ("293 years ago -- scientists stop naming the koobish."). His relationship with Tip was pretty great, too (well, and I'm a sucker for "Enemy Mine"-type dynamics), and the development through the big scenes, like when J.Lo calls Tip "Turtlebear" and she finds out her mother was his language tutor (and J.Lo's reaction to Tip's reaction, which was the point where I really started liking J.Lo), and when Tip trusts his plan, and when she thinks he drowned. Oh, and I liked J.Lo's fractured English. It was alien, but not annoying, and also the thing I liked best about it is that it really felt like it came from an alien language with a consistent but different set of morphology and grammatic rules, and I love things like that. And I liked the way the parallel-but-diffeent stories of the Flood and the Boovish version of it are referenced, first by Tip when they're caught in the hurricane, then by J.Lo, for the Arizona heat ("It was the sort of hot that made you want to gather animals in twos and keep them in a huge jar of water with holes poked in the lid.")
Of course, this book is the Tip and J.Lo show, but I liked the way other characters were handled, too. I liked Chief Shouting Bear a lot, and I liked the way we get to see Tip's mother, whom Tip is both protective and dismissive of ("When people ask me about her, I say she's very pretty. When they ask if she's smart like me, I say she's very pretty.") as someone other people look up to, and someone who comes through for Tip when needed even though the world-saving is still left up to Tip and J.Lo. Even the less important characters were interesting, like the interaction between Trey the skeptic and the UFOlogists -- they are kooks and he is kind of an asshole, but he helps save the Chief.
I like the way the book deals with human prejudice, where it's not the main theme or anything, but it's definitely there, and its interplay with the theme and plot points of alien invasion. Like: "'It doesn't matter!' I said, standing. 'Green or purple... it's still the wrong color skin, and they aren't welcome here!' I breathed heavily and thought. 'Okay, that came out wrong,' I said, 'but still...'" And, "'Mr.Hinkel,' said the Chief [...] thinks Indians like me ought to live somewhere else. Likes to tell me about it a lot.' [...] 'Well, maybe they'll let him go soon.' 'Doubt it,' said the Chief. 'Got beat up pretty good by someone who thinks gay people like him ought to live somewhere else.'"
And there are some very neat thoughts on the alien invasion itself, too: "And I wonder if you were a little proud. Proud to be living through something so important, something to tell your grandchildre. Did you watch youself watching the television, making certain that you looked brave, and stoic, and just sad enough. || I think other people felt like this. [...] I'm sorry -- forget I brought it up. I have no idea what other people were thinking. It was just me. I'm awful." And: "'That's nice of them,' I said. 'Nice of the Boov.' And the crazy thing was, I really meant it. The Boov had invaded our planet, erased our monuments, taken our homes, and dumped us in a state they didn't want, and I was already so used to the whole idea that it seemed like a sweet gesture that they hadn't left us to starve in the dark."
I figured out the cat allergy thing a while before Tip did, but it was a cute touch. Of course, since they are all clones, the Gorg would all be susceptible to the same weakness. And I like the way their need for natural resources was justified, and tied to their emerging weakness.
There were so many quotes I loved!
"[T]he rainy-day fund that Mom had kept at the bottom of an underwear drawer in a panty hose egg labeled 'DEAD SPIDERS.' As if I hadn't always known it was there. As if I wouldn't have wanted to look at dead spiders."
Tip on eating stuff she found in abandoned stores: "and Lite Choconilla Froot Bites, which broke my usual rule against eating anything that was misspelled." (I <3 Tip!)
"J.Lo in written English only has three letters, and you still spelled it 'M-smiley face-pound sign'" (I actually LOLed at this point, in spite of being on public transit. In fact, I'm chortling right now.)
After listening to the UFOlogists: "'So,' I said to J.Lo as we crossed the stret, 'if you're gonna impregnate me, I think we should get married first.'" (<3 Tip some more)
"Andromeda [the UFOlogist's baby] was wearing both her Legolas onesie and her Keebler booties. Which seemed wrong, you know -- mixing two different kinds of elves like that. So now I knew Vicki [the mother] was crazy." (God, how much do I love Tip! And Vicki is, indeed, crazy to do that, though she did redeem herself in my eyes slightly by apparently being a fan of Babylon 5. :)
"Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug, and people think he was good, right? Didn't write any decent girl characters, as far as I can tell, but otherwise fine."
"I smiled back sweetly. 'Hi.' The policewoman frowned at my 'hi.' I think her instincts kicked in. 'Do you know why I stopped you today, ma'am?' she said. 'Because I'm only eleven and my car is floating?' The officer stared for another moment, and coughed. 'Yes,' she said. 'Sounds like you'd better take me down to the station, then,' I replied."
"I began thinking that this was a guy who displayed books the way another guy might display his animal trophies."
(dropping the capslock, about the casino) "I was told to go to the large offensively colored building. The building where humans who are bad at math give away their money! This is that place! Bring me Gratuitucci!"
"If that's not enough to convince you that keeping quiet was the right thing to do, then think about this: I saved the world. I saved the whole human race. For the rest of my life [...] I will never again do anything as fantastic and important as what I did when I was eleven. I could win an Oscar and fix the ozone layer. I could cure all known diseases and I'll still feel like my Uncle Roy, who used to be a star quarterback but now just sells hot tubs."
I was greatly amused by Tip's essays subheadings ("How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boov" and "Attack of the Clones"), and by the various rides at the Happy Mouse Kingdom ("Mister Schwa's Grammazing Vocabularcoaster"). And by the graph in J.Lo's explanatory comic that shows "47% of Boov are statisticians" -- a pie chart with "statisticians", "not statisticians" and a small slice reading "other" -- and by the map of the United States of Arizona (especially that it's still got an outlined bit that reads "Texas", and the bit of article on the last page talking about New Mexico being overrun with the koobish.
So, in conclusion, I liked this book a whole lot. Definitely one of the best mid-grade books I've read in a long while.
Also: http://www.smekday.com/
I got L into reading the book by reading her a couple of quotes and showing her this video:
She was skeptical she would like it, at first, but was laughing and quoting bits from it from the very beginning, and finished it -- it's like a 400 page book, the longest she's ever read I think -- in something like 3-4 days. The first line that made her laugh out loud was when Gratuity is imagining the internal monologue of the Boov: "stupid sheep noise, bubble wrap, bubble wrap". And she was tickled to encounter the Pig Latin, as I knew she would. She also spotted, on one of the comics pages, something I had not -- a blobby undersea beastie from the Boovish world, which she decided was a marine guinea pig and/or hamsterpig, and has been drawing it herself. She also found ghost!J.Lo to be very funny and cute.
She has now handed the book off to B (who I don't think will actually read it), and O has expressed an interest in reading it, too. I do think it's a bit too advanced for him at the moment, but I'm game to let him try.
42. Marie Phillips, Gods Behaving Badly -- heh, so, after watching the Percy Jackson movie, I was in the mood for some Greek pantheon soap opera, and this wasn't great literature or anything, but it hit the spot.
The Olympians are living in a dilapidated house in London, losing their powers for reasons they don't understand (but which are pretty evident to anyone who has read any "gods need to be believed in to have power" stories, which, who hasn't at this point?). There are two mortal protagonists, meek Alice, who has a degree in linguistics and is a champion Scrabble player but works as a cleaner (because she likes to clean), and Neil, who is a nerdy engineer (and, it turns out, a virgin). Alice is in love with Neil, and Neil is in love with Alice, and they hang out together a lot and consider each other their best friend, but can never get up the nerve to actually tell the other person how they fell. Now, I said in the 30 day book meme that I can't stand it when a woman thinks the man she loves doesn't/couldn't love her, all evidence to the contrary, but this wasn't like that -- we got their inner monologues and they were quite believable as people who lacked the nerve to take a chance, and couldn't convince themselves that the other person -- whom they saw as so wonderful -- could ever feel the same way about them, etc. It was sitcom-y, of course, but not irritating.
Anyway, so, long story short, Aphrodite gets Eros to make Apollo fall in love with Alice, who, through Hermes's mastery over coincidence comes to work as a cleaner in the Olympians' house. Hijinks ensue, and then tragedy does, and Neil has to follow Alice into Hades and bring her back, along the way helping restore the gods to their full power. There is much funny dorkiness by Neil and Alice, and then a drawn-out and well done description of grief, and then some shmoppiness which culminates in Neil choosing to save the world rather than his beloved despite his willingness to make any personal sacrifice for her (more heroes should be rational thinkers like this), and then there's a happy ending for absolutely everyone concerned.
The gods were fun, for the most part. Apollo and Aphrodite are the closest this book has to "villains", which suited me just fine, since they were always my love-to-hate gods. But Aphrodite and even Apollo get some touching moments and are not really unlikeable. The most prominent divine protagonist is Artemis, and I liked her portrayal (I've always liked her, too -- she was my favorite of the goddesses). Senile Zeus, briefly seen, is well executed and very sad. Hermes was not lighthearted enough for my taste, but well done. Ares was too nice, but he gets the short end of the stick so often, it was neat to see him as something more than a belligerent thug with no brains of his own. I've never particularly cared for Athena, but I was a bit insulted on her behalf by her portrayal here -- she schedules endless meetings where she drones on in academese/businesspeak and nobody can understand what she means. That was the weakest point for me in the portrayal of the gods.
I thought the book did pretty well -- for a frothy romp, anyway -- in portraying the interaction of modern mortals and the Olympians. Alice is terrified by Apollo's advances after a point, and Neil is deeply skeptical of Artemis's and Apollo's claims. And the Ares-caused argument between Alice and Neil was neat (if quite painful) to read (though I don't think the fallout of it was completely dealt with). The thing that bugged me, though, was that the apparently fairly intellectual Alice and Neil did not have even an inkling of suspicion when they were interacting with people called Apollo and Hermes and Artemis and Aphrodite. But, OK, I can accommodate that in the suspension of disbelief.
The description of the underworld was fairly clever (though it went on for a bit too long). Other things that amused me:
Apollo, on Aphrodite: "Looking down at the back of her head, her glossy black hair curling down over the alabaster slope of her shoulders, he could almost imagine that he was screwing Catherine Zeta-Jones. He wondered whether he could persuade Aphrodite to speak to him in Welsh."
Hermes: "I'm the god of everything nobody else wants to do." [which makes him sound a bit like Ponder Stibbons, heh.]
Cute book, and I'd probably give this author a try in the future, even if it wasn't about a subject that dovetailed so with my interests/cravings.
43. Lois McMaster Bujold, CryoBurn -- So, this book isn't actually out yet -- I read the ARC that lodessa awesomely lent me -- but there is an e-ARC that can be purchased ($15). (The book is supposed to come out for real 11/1/10). SPOILERS from the very top. MAJOR spoilers.
So, yeah. Aral. It doesn't come as a surprise, since sounds like LMB's been saying for years that the next logical step in Miles's development would be for him to lose his father and become Count Vorkosigan. But it still comes as a shock, because Aral :((( We haven't seen a whole lot of him lately, but he's always been one of my favorite characters in the saga, and Cordelia :((( And Miles :((( So I knew it was coming, but I was hoping, improbably, that there would be a couple more books before it hit. But in reading even the non-spoilery reviews, mentioning the poignancy of the drabbles, it became increasingly clear that that hope was in vain. So when I got my hands on the ARC the first thing I did was look in the back and confirm for myself that this was, indeed, coming.
I'm glad, in a way, that the news is dealt with only in the last couple of pages, because Miles (and I, as a reader) gets a fun romp in this book. I was afraid it was going to be painful, overshadowed by Aral's death. But no, that'll be the next one... (If there is a next one. I suppose this is a logical place to stop, if LMB wanted to end the series... but I definitely hope she doesn't. I love these characters too much, and there's still too much I want to see.)
As for Aral's death -- there is enough foreshadowing, in Miles and Mark's discussions of how best to persuade Aral to try life-extension treatments, in Miles thinking about Aral's past, that the last pre-drabble line doesn't come out of nowhere, but still feels like a shock (even though I knew it was coming). And I loved the way that last pre-drabble line, which doesn't actually convey any information that would be clear to someone unfamiliar with the series, instantly drives home the point to the reader as well as to Miles and Mark.
Since I'm talking about Aral's death -- I wasn't planning to open with it, but, yeah... -- I should talk about the drabbles, too. They worked very well for me. Gregor's line made me tear up, and Ivan's was heartbreaking on Miles's behalf, and Cordelia's on her own. Mark's is interesting in that it's fixated so totally on Miles. And Miles's... I actually had to go back and check that it was indeed from his POV and not Roic's, because it's almost all conversation -- objective, with not a glimpse inside Miles's head except for "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
OK, so, the actual meat of the book. I liked it! I was sceptical, because non-Miles POVs tend to be hit or miss for me -- I love Mark's and Ivan's, but find Ekaterin's kind of dull, for instance. But Roic -- my first encounter with him, since I've yet to track down "Winterfair Gifts" -- was a very amusing narrator, and Jin was great. Precocious kid with a love of animals -- I'm there!
Also, I find I like books where new people get to encounter Miles for the first time. Or, as lightreads so aptly put it, consist of Miles "happening to people". It's great to see Consul Vorlynkin and Johannes go from awe to exasperation to a sort of bemused resignation upon prolonged exposure to him, and to contrast that with the "well, what are you gonna do, that's Miles for you" worldweary attitutde of Roic and Raven. And it was great to see Jin (and later, Mina's) relationship with Miles shift, from taking care of his drugged out self to adoption fantasies, to letting go of those.
I liked Miles and Jin's relationship a lot. That Miles, in the middle of an interplanetary investigation, takes his charge of looking after Jin's animals seriously -- and that Jin, as guilty as he feels over losing Miles's money, calls him on it when he thinks Miles abandoned said duty. I loved the initial interaction, when Jin is "collecting" Miles as one of his pets, and Miles is aware of it. Also, I totally want art of Miles with a rat perched on his shoulder now, nibbling on his hair. And he remembered that Bel kept hamsters and mentioned it to Jin! It was great to see how Miles interacts with Mina, too, and made me really want to see him interacting with his children. (I do find this line totally believable and also charming: "Judging from the brightness of his eyes, m'lord was as over-stimulated right now as his own kids after one of his bedtime stories." And the pages when he thinks about how he gave Jin and Mina hope and then dashed it forever because their mother is dead and how he is going to have to break the news to them were quite heartbreaking. (Also, I found it interesting that Miles apparently kept thinking of it as Raven's fault and then having to mentally correct himself. I'm not sure what to make of that, except maybe that Miles does not feel like even impossible boundary conditions justify failure... Anyway.)
Speaking of children -- I want to meet all of them! I want to see Gregor and Laisa's "scarily smart children", and what Duv is like as a father (given his personality and his experience with his own father), and what Martya and Enrique's parenting is like (assuming they paired up), and the Vorrutyer family dynamics, between Dono, Olivia, their sprog(s) and more distant relatives, including By. The report of the Vorkosigan family scene was nicely done (this especially resonated: "Miles had been deeply alarmed, earlier in his fatherhood, by what seemed Sasha's [...] in verbal development compared to his age-mate Helen, till Ekaterin had pointed out that the boy's sister never let him ask a question for himself or get a word in edgewise after. He wasn't delayed, merely amiable, and had caught up with complete sentences soon thereafter, as long as Helen wasn't in the same room translating for him." XP, and also LOL, I can totally see this as Miles and Ekaterin's parenting approaches in a nutshell XD), but I would like to see the lot of them in action. Helen in particular seems to be a worthy successor for Miles in the driving people crazy department. Also: "What if my children find out I'm not really a grownup?" Aww, Miles, I'm pretty sure they know XD. Well, if not at five, then they will soon.
But I digress. Kibou was an interesting world, from the cryo-obsessed society perspective, but I have to say that the overwhelmingly Japanese influence felt a bit weird to me. Like, I like that Komarr has a distinct culture, but it doesn't seem to be derived from any specific Earth culture, ditto for Cetaganda and Beta Colony. And Barrayar -- OK, it really is a lot more Russian than Greek or French but, a) that's more fun for me than a world heavily influence by a culture I don't feel connected to, and b) I do think the influences are a good deal subtler. It felt a bit... well, it didn't feel like the Japanese influences went very deep, as well as being not very subtle when they appeared. Pasted on, kinda. Which is a first for Vorkosiverse, I think. At least for a planet that is so key to the plot of an entire book. So that was a bit disappointing.
But the plot was great, and the characters, old and new, were a lot of fun. I don't really remember Raven from Mirror Dance (love the book, can't bear to reread it -- it's not fun, but maybe it's about time), but I liked him here a lot. He is so... cheerful. Generally amiable and willing to go along with Miles's craziness for fun and profit. (This line, particularly, summarized Raven for me: "'You have to have noticed that the man [Miles] is a hyperactive lunatic, surely.' With a fair-minded air, he added. 'To the benefit of me and mine, to be sure.'" But also very much a first-class professional, and I have a thing for sci-fi doctors, apparently (no, seriously. Franklin and Simon and I really can't think of an exception in a franchise I enjoyed). So, that was very nice to see, too, from the way his demeanor changes when he realizes his patient is unrevivifiable, to the wizard high he gets from the successful procedure, down to the offhand remark, at the very beginning, when he and Roic are escaping, "Careful of my hands..." So, yeah. I appear to be a little bit obsessed with Raven Durona now ("Decorative and functional" XD). Also, I kind of want to ship him with someone, but who? I can't think of a ready candidate, but I would like him to meet Ivan, just, platonically. I think they'd get along.
It was good to see Mark (though I wish we'd gotten a POV from him during a more light-hearted moment. I love Mark and can't get enough of him.) and Kareen, and I was glad to see that their partnership is still a partnership and not a marriage -- sort of refreshing, after everybody else seems to have paired solidly off (except Ivan, of course :P). It was also neat to see an outside look at Kareen -- not from somebody who knows her quite well and not from someone who is crazy about her. (I guess we did get a bit of that with Ekaterin in ACC, but there were too many other new people milling about.) And it was really great to see Miles and Mark being brothers, going about their own things in Kibou and being all "do your thing, just don't get in my way" and then really being brothers in that last scene before they get the news. I think this is the first book where it really felt like they were equals, in their own eyes and each other's, and that was great to see.
Sad (though unsurprising) to hear about Taura's passing (and aww at Miles and Ekaterin naming their youngest after her). Oh, and I don't care if it means pairing everybody up, I am totally rooting for Lisa Sato and Council Vorlynkin to get together, and for Jin's creatures to have the run of the Barrayaran embassy. Also, Gyre is the best name ever for a falcon.
I have a whole lot of quotes I liked, mostly about how Miles is crazy. :D!
Miles POV: "Only five days on this benighted world, and already total strangers are trying to kill me. Sadly, it wasn't even a record."
"Raven eyed Roic in speculation. 'Now, by myself I don't think I could jump someone coming out of his lightflyer and grab it after it was opened, but if we worked an ambush together...'
Roic took this, resignedly, as, If you jumped him and I cheered you on..."
"The faint bitterness in the consul's voice was more reassuring to Roic than the man could possibly imagine. It sounded quite like Vorlynkin had undergone some recent dealing with m'lord."
"Roic frowned. 'Very riveting, m'lord, but... what has this got t' do with Barrayar's interests?'
M'lord cleared his throat. 'It's far too early to say,' he said primly.
Roic, glumly, read that as, I haven't made up a reason yet, but give me time.
"M'lord looked around proudly, as if expecting the room to burst into applause, and was plainly disappointed to receive three blank looks instead.
He inhaled, visibly backing up. 'Unpack, Miles, right.'"
Miles, to Jin and Mina, after discovering that the dead woman is not their mother: "I'm still going to look for your mommy. The problem has just suddenly become a lot more interesting. Er, difficult. It's just become a bit more difficult."
Jin, on Roic: "For Miles-san, it must be like owning your own private grownup, following you around and doing stuff for you. Except you got to tell him what to do, instead of the other way around. Jin wished he owned a Roic."
"It was hard to tell, sometimes, if m'lord's style was the result of single-minded dedication to duty, habits of overweening Vor privilege, or simple insanity."
41. Adam Rex, The True Meaning of Smekday -- this was adorable and funny and poignant and smart and L has already read it and liked it as much as I did, which is awesome!
I like Gratuity ("Tip") Tucci a lot as a protagonist. She is smart and plucky and precocious, but has the faults that are likely to go along with it, too. And she is brave and independent and very capable while still being believably vulnerable and also believably an 11-year-old kid. One of the things I loved most about Tip is that she is smart and mature enough to manipulate the adults she encounters, but she's still very much a kid: "I gotta admit, I ate up the praise as much as the breakfast. I hadn't been anybody's good kid in a while." (P.S. Astrid from Rampant and Tip, when she's a few years older, need to meet and become BFFs.)
J.Lo the Boov and his explanations in comics were hilarious, especially the progression of the koobish space program ("293 years ago -- scientists stop naming the koobish."). His relationship with Tip was pretty great, too (well, and I'm a sucker for "Enemy Mine"-type dynamics), and the development through the big scenes, like when J.Lo calls Tip "Turtlebear" and she finds out her mother was his language tutor (and J.Lo's reaction to Tip's reaction, which was the point where I really started liking J.Lo), and when Tip trusts his plan, and when she thinks he drowned. Oh, and I liked J.Lo's fractured English. It was alien, but not annoying, and also the thing I liked best about it is that it really felt like it came from an alien language with a consistent but different set of morphology and grammatic rules, and I love things like that. And I liked the way the parallel-but-diffeent stories of the Flood and the Boovish version of it are referenced, first by Tip when they're caught in the hurricane, then by J.Lo, for the Arizona heat ("It was the sort of hot that made you want to gather animals in twos and keep them in a huge jar of water with holes poked in the lid.")
Of course, this book is the Tip and J.Lo show, but I liked the way other characters were handled, too. I liked Chief Shouting Bear a lot, and I liked the way we get to see Tip's mother, whom Tip is both protective and dismissive of ("When people ask me about her, I say she's very pretty. When they ask if she's smart like me, I say she's very pretty.") as someone other people look up to, and someone who comes through for Tip when needed even though the world-saving is still left up to Tip and J.Lo. Even the less important characters were interesting, like the interaction between Trey the skeptic and the UFOlogists -- they are kooks and he is kind of an asshole, but he helps save the Chief.
I like the way the book deals with human prejudice, where it's not the main theme or anything, but it's definitely there, and its interplay with the theme and plot points of alien invasion. Like: "'It doesn't matter!' I said, standing. 'Green or purple... it's still the wrong color skin, and they aren't welcome here!' I breathed heavily and thought. 'Okay, that came out wrong,' I said, 'but still...'" And, "'Mr.Hinkel,' said the Chief [...] thinks Indians like me ought to live somewhere else. Likes to tell me about it a lot.' [...] 'Well, maybe they'll let him go soon.' 'Doubt it,' said the Chief. 'Got beat up pretty good by someone who thinks gay people like him ought to live somewhere else.'"
And there are some very neat thoughts on the alien invasion itself, too: "And I wonder if you were a little proud. Proud to be living through something so important, something to tell your grandchildre. Did you watch youself watching the television, making certain that you looked brave, and stoic, and just sad enough. || I think other people felt like this. [...] I'm sorry -- forget I brought it up. I have no idea what other people were thinking. It was just me. I'm awful." And: "'That's nice of them,' I said. 'Nice of the Boov.' And the crazy thing was, I really meant it. The Boov had invaded our planet, erased our monuments, taken our homes, and dumped us in a state they didn't want, and I was already so used to the whole idea that it seemed like a sweet gesture that they hadn't left us to starve in the dark."
I figured out the cat allergy thing a while before Tip did, but it was a cute touch. Of course, since they are all clones, the Gorg would all be susceptible to the same weakness. And I like the way their need for natural resources was justified, and tied to their emerging weakness.
There were so many quotes I loved!
"[T]he rainy-day fund that Mom had kept at the bottom of an underwear drawer in a panty hose egg labeled 'DEAD SPIDERS.' As if I hadn't always known it was there. As if I wouldn't have wanted to look at dead spiders."
Tip on eating stuff she found in abandoned stores: "and Lite Choconilla Froot Bites, which broke my usual rule against eating anything that was misspelled." (I <3 Tip!)
"J.Lo in written English only has three letters, and you still spelled it 'M-smiley face-pound sign'" (I actually LOLed at this point, in spite of being on public transit. In fact, I'm chortling right now.)
After listening to the UFOlogists: "'So,' I said to J.Lo as we crossed the stret, 'if you're gonna impregnate me, I think we should get married first.'" (<3 Tip some more)
"Andromeda [the UFOlogist's baby] was wearing both her Legolas onesie and her Keebler booties. Which seemed wrong, you know -- mixing two different kinds of elves like that. So now I knew Vicki [the mother] was crazy." (God, how much do I love Tip! And Vicki is, indeed, crazy to do that, though she did redeem herself in my eyes slightly by apparently being a fan of Babylon 5. :)
"Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and the lightning bug, and people think he was good, right? Didn't write any decent girl characters, as far as I can tell, but otherwise fine."
"I smiled back sweetly. 'Hi.' The policewoman frowned at my 'hi.' I think her instincts kicked in. 'Do you know why I stopped you today, ma'am?' she said. 'Because I'm only eleven and my car is floating?' The officer stared for another moment, and coughed. 'Yes,' she said. 'Sounds like you'd better take me down to the station, then,' I replied."
"I began thinking that this was a guy who displayed books the way another guy might display his animal trophies."
(dropping the capslock, about the casino) "I was told to go to the large offensively colored building. The building where humans who are bad at math give away their money! This is that place! Bring me Gratuitucci!"
"If that's not enough to convince you that keeping quiet was the right thing to do, then think about this: I saved the world. I saved the whole human race. For the rest of my life [...] I will never again do anything as fantastic and important as what I did when I was eleven. I could win an Oscar and fix the ozone layer. I could cure all known diseases and I'll still feel like my Uncle Roy, who used to be a star quarterback but now just sells hot tubs."
I was greatly amused by Tip's essays subheadings ("How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boov" and "Attack of the Clones"), and by the various rides at the Happy Mouse Kingdom ("Mister Schwa's Grammazing Vocabularcoaster"). And by the graph in J.Lo's explanatory comic that shows "47% of Boov are statisticians" -- a pie chart with "statisticians", "not statisticians" and a small slice reading "other" -- and by the map of the United States of Arizona (especially that it's still got an outlined bit that reads "Texas", and the bit of article on the last page talking about New Mexico being overrun with the koobish.
So, in conclusion, I liked this book a whole lot. Definitely one of the best mid-grade books I've read in a long while.
Also: http://www.smekday.com/
I got L into reading the book by reading her a couple of quotes and showing her this video:
Click to viewShe was skeptical she would like it, at first, but was laughing and quoting bits from it from the very beginning, and finished it -- it's like a 400 page book, the longest she's ever read I think -- in something like 3-4 days. The first line that made her laugh out loud was when Gratuity is imagining the internal monologue of the Boov: "stupid sheep noise, bubble wrap, bubble wrap". And she was tickled to encounter the Pig Latin, as I knew she would. She also spotted, on one of the comics pages, something I had not -- a blobby undersea beastie from the Boovish world, which she decided was a marine guinea pig and/or hamsterpig, and has been drawing it herself. She also found ghost!J.Lo to be very funny and cute.
She has now handed the book off to B (who I don't think will actually read it), and O has expressed an interest in reading it, too. I do think it's a bit too advanced for him at the moment, but I'm game to let him try.
42. Marie Phillips, Gods Behaving Badly -- heh, so, after watching the Percy Jackson movie, I was in the mood for some Greek pantheon soap opera, and this wasn't great literature or anything, but it hit the spot.
The Olympians are living in a dilapidated house in London, losing their powers for reasons they don't understand (but which are pretty evident to anyone who has read any "gods need to be believed in to have power" stories, which, who hasn't at this point?). There are two mortal protagonists, meek Alice, who has a degree in linguistics and is a champion Scrabble player but works as a cleaner (because she likes to clean), and Neil, who is a nerdy engineer (and, it turns out, a virgin). Alice is in love with Neil, and Neil is in love with Alice, and they hang out together a lot and consider each other their best friend, but can never get up the nerve to actually tell the other person how they fell. Now, I said in the 30 day book meme that I can't stand it when a woman thinks the man she loves doesn't/couldn't love her, all evidence to the contrary, but this wasn't like that -- we got their inner monologues and they were quite believable as people who lacked the nerve to take a chance, and couldn't convince themselves that the other person -- whom they saw as so wonderful -- could ever feel the same way about them, etc. It was sitcom-y, of course, but not irritating.
Anyway, so, long story short, Aphrodite gets Eros to make Apollo fall in love with Alice, who, through Hermes's mastery over coincidence comes to work as a cleaner in the Olympians' house. Hijinks ensue, and then tragedy does, and Neil has to follow Alice into Hades and bring her back, along the way helping restore the gods to their full power. There is much funny dorkiness by Neil and Alice, and then a drawn-out and well done description of grief, and then some shmoppiness which culminates in Neil choosing to save the world rather than his beloved despite his willingness to make any personal sacrifice for her (more heroes should be rational thinkers like this), and then there's a happy ending for absolutely everyone concerned.
The gods were fun, for the most part. Apollo and Aphrodite are the closest this book has to "villains", which suited me just fine, since they were always my love-to-hate gods. But Aphrodite and even Apollo get some touching moments and are not really unlikeable. The most prominent divine protagonist is Artemis, and I liked her portrayal (I've always liked her, too -- she was my favorite of the goddesses). Senile Zeus, briefly seen, is well executed and very sad. Hermes was not lighthearted enough for my taste, but well done. Ares was too nice, but he gets the short end of the stick so often, it was neat to see him as something more than a belligerent thug with no brains of his own. I've never particularly cared for Athena, but I was a bit insulted on her behalf by her portrayal here -- she schedules endless meetings where she drones on in academese/businesspeak and nobody can understand what she means. That was the weakest point for me in the portrayal of the gods.
I thought the book did pretty well -- for a frothy romp, anyway -- in portraying the interaction of modern mortals and the Olympians. Alice is terrified by Apollo's advances after a point, and Neil is deeply skeptical of Artemis's and Apollo's claims. And the Ares-caused argument between Alice and Neil was neat (if quite painful) to read (though I don't think the fallout of it was completely dealt with). The thing that bugged me, though, was that the apparently fairly intellectual Alice and Neil did not have even an inkling of suspicion when they were interacting with people called Apollo and Hermes and Artemis and Aphrodite. But, OK, I can accommodate that in the suspension of disbelief.
The description of the underworld was fairly clever (though it went on for a bit too long). Other things that amused me:
Apollo, on Aphrodite: "Looking down at the back of her head, her glossy black hair curling down over the alabaster slope of her shoulders, he could almost imagine that he was screwing Catherine Zeta-Jones. He wondered whether he could persuade Aphrodite to speak to him in Welsh."
Hermes: "I'm the god of everything nobody else wants to do." [which makes him sound a bit like Ponder Stibbons, heh.]
Cute book, and I'd probably give this author a try in the future, even if it wasn't about a subject that dovetailed so with my interests/cravings.
43. Lois McMaster Bujold, CryoBurn -- So, this book isn't actually out yet -- I read the ARC that lodessa awesomely lent me -- but there is an e-ARC that can be purchased ($15). (The book is supposed to come out for real 11/1/10). SPOILERS from the very top. MAJOR spoilers.
So, yeah. Aral. It doesn't come as a surprise, since sounds like LMB's been saying for years that the next logical step in Miles's development would be for him to lose his father and become Count Vorkosigan. But it still comes as a shock, because Aral :((( We haven't seen a whole lot of him lately, but he's always been one of my favorite characters in the saga, and Cordelia :((( And Miles :((( So I knew it was coming, but I was hoping, improbably, that there would be a couple more books before it hit. But in reading even the non-spoilery reviews, mentioning the poignancy of the drabbles, it became increasingly clear that that hope was in vain. So when I got my hands on the ARC the first thing I did was look in the back and confirm for myself that this was, indeed, coming.
I'm glad, in a way, that the news is dealt with only in the last couple of pages, because Miles (and I, as a reader) gets a fun romp in this book. I was afraid it was going to be painful, overshadowed by Aral's death. But no, that'll be the next one... (If there is a next one. I suppose this is a logical place to stop, if LMB wanted to end the series... but I definitely hope she doesn't. I love these characters too much, and there's still too much I want to see.)
As for Aral's death -- there is enough foreshadowing, in Miles and Mark's discussions of how best to persuade Aral to try life-extension treatments, in Miles thinking about Aral's past, that the last pre-drabble line doesn't come out of nowhere, but still feels like a shock (even though I knew it was coming). And I loved the way that last pre-drabble line, which doesn't actually convey any information that would be clear to someone unfamiliar with the series, instantly drives home the point to the reader as well as to Miles and Mark.
Since I'm talking about Aral's death -- I wasn't planning to open with it, but, yeah... -- I should talk about the drabbles, too. They worked very well for me. Gregor's line made me tear up, and Ivan's was heartbreaking on Miles's behalf, and Cordelia's on her own. Mark's is interesting in that it's fixated so totally on Miles. And Miles's... I actually had to go back and check that it was indeed from his POV and not Roic's, because it's almost all conversation -- objective, with not a glimpse inside Miles's head except for "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
OK, so, the actual meat of the book. I liked it! I was sceptical, because non-Miles POVs tend to be hit or miss for me -- I love Mark's and Ivan's, but find Ekaterin's kind of dull, for instance. But Roic -- my first encounter with him, since I've yet to track down "Winterfair Gifts" -- was a very amusing narrator, and Jin was great. Precocious kid with a love of animals -- I'm there!
Also, I find I like books where new people get to encounter Miles for the first time. Or, as lightreads so aptly put it, consist of Miles "happening to people". It's great to see Consul Vorlynkin and Johannes go from awe to exasperation to a sort of bemused resignation upon prolonged exposure to him, and to contrast that with the "well, what are you gonna do, that's Miles for you" worldweary attitutde of Roic and Raven. And it was great to see Jin (and later, Mina's) relationship with Miles shift, from taking care of his drugged out self to adoption fantasies, to letting go of those.
I liked Miles and Jin's relationship a lot. That Miles, in the middle of an interplanetary investigation, takes his charge of looking after Jin's animals seriously -- and that Jin, as guilty as he feels over losing Miles's money, calls him on it when he thinks Miles abandoned said duty. I loved the initial interaction, when Jin is "collecting" Miles as one of his pets, and Miles is aware of it. Also, I totally want art of Miles with a rat perched on his shoulder now, nibbling on his hair. And he remembered that Bel kept hamsters and mentioned it to Jin! It was great to see how Miles interacts with Mina, too, and made me really want to see him interacting with his children. (I do find this line totally believable and also charming: "Judging from the brightness of his eyes, m'lord was as over-stimulated right now as his own kids after one of his bedtime stories." And the pages when he thinks about how he gave Jin and Mina hope and then dashed it forever because their mother is dead and how he is going to have to break the news to them were quite heartbreaking. (Also, I found it interesting that Miles apparently kept thinking of it as Raven's fault and then having to mentally correct himself. I'm not sure what to make of that, except maybe that Miles does not feel like even impossible boundary conditions justify failure... Anyway.)
Speaking of children -- I want to meet all of them! I want to see Gregor and Laisa's "scarily smart children", and what Duv is like as a father (given his personality and his experience with his own father), and what Martya and Enrique's parenting is like (assuming they paired up), and the Vorrutyer family dynamics, between Dono, Olivia, their sprog(s) and more distant relatives, including By. The report of the Vorkosigan family scene was nicely done (this especially resonated: "Miles had been deeply alarmed, earlier in his fatherhood, by what seemed Sasha's [...] in verbal development compared to his age-mate Helen, till Ekaterin had pointed out that the boy's sister never let him ask a question for himself or get a word in edgewise after. He wasn't delayed, merely amiable, and had caught up with complete sentences soon thereafter, as long as Helen wasn't in the same room translating for him." XP, and also LOL, I can totally see this as Miles and Ekaterin's parenting approaches in a nutshell XD), but I would like to see the lot of them in action. Helen in particular seems to be a worthy successor for Miles in the driving people crazy department. Also: "What if my children find out I'm not really a grownup?" Aww, Miles, I'm pretty sure they know XD. Well, if not at five, then they will soon.
But I digress. Kibou was an interesting world, from the cryo-obsessed society perspective, but I have to say that the overwhelmingly Japanese influence felt a bit weird to me. Like, I like that Komarr has a distinct culture, but it doesn't seem to be derived from any specific Earth culture, ditto for Cetaganda and Beta Colony. And Barrayar -- OK, it really is a lot more Russian than Greek or French but, a) that's more fun for me than a world heavily influence by a culture I don't feel connected to, and b) I do think the influences are a good deal subtler. It felt a bit... well, it didn't feel like the Japanese influences went very deep, as well as being not very subtle when they appeared. Pasted on, kinda. Which is a first for Vorkosiverse, I think. At least for a planet that is so key to the plot of an entire book. So that was a bit disappointing.
But the plot was great, and the characters, old and new, were a lot of fun. I don't really remember Raven from Mirror Dance (love the book, can't bear to reread it -- it's not fun, but maybe it's about time), but I liked him here a lot. He is so... cheerful. Generally amiable and willing to go along with Miles's craziness for fun and profit. (This line, particularly, summarized Raven for me: "'You have to have noticed that the man [Miles] is a hyperactive lunatic, surely.' With a fair-minded air, he added. 'To the benefit of me and mine, to be sure.'" But also very much a first-class professional, and I have a thing for sci-fi doctors, apparently (no, seriously. Franklin and Simon and I really can't think of an exception in a franchise I enjoyed). So, that was very nice to see, too, from the way his demeanor changes when he realizes his patient is unrevivifiable, to the wizard high he gets from the successful procedure, down to the offhand remark, at the very beginning, when he and Roic are escaping, "Careful of my hands..." So, yeah. I appear to be a little bit obsessed with Raven Durona now ("Decorative and functional" XD). Also, I kind of want to ship him with someone, but who? I can't think of a ready candidate, but I would like him to meet Ivan, just, platonically. I think they'd get along.
It was good to see Mark (though I wish we'd gotten a POV from him during a more light-hearted moment. I love Mark and can't get enough of him.) and Kareen, and I was glad to see that their partnership is still a partnership and not a marriage -- sort of refreshing, after everybody else seems to have paired solidly off (except Ivan, of course :P). It was also neat to see an outside look at Kareen -- not from somebody who knows her quite well and not from someone who is crazy about her. (I guess we did get a bit of that with Ekaterin in ACC, but there were too many other new people milling about.) And it was really great to see Miles and Mark being brothers, going about their own things in Kibou and being all "do your thing, just don't get in my way" and then really being brothers in that last scene before they get the news. I think this is the first book where it really felt like they were equals, in their own eyes and each other's, and that was great to see.
Sad (though unsurprising) to hear about Taura's passing (and aww at Miles and Ekaterin naming their youngest after her). Oh, and I don't care if it means pairing everybody up, I am totally rooting for Lisa Sato and Council Vorlynkin to get together, and for Jin's creatures to have the run of the Barrayaran embassy. Also, Gyre is the best name ever for a falcon.
I have a whole lot of quotes I liked, mostly about how Miles is crazy. :D!
Miles POV: "Only five days on this benighted world, and already total strangers are trying to kill me. Sadly, it wasn't even a record."
"Raven eyed Roic in speculation. 'Now, by myself I don't think I could jump someone coming out of his lightflyer and grab it after it was opened, but if we worked an ambush together...'
Roic took this, resignedly, as, If you jumped him and I cheered you on..."
"The faint bitterness in the consul's voice was more reassuring to Roic than the man could possibly imagine. It sounded quite like Vorlynkin had undergone some recent dealing with m'lord."
"Roic frowned. 'Very riveting, m'lord, but... what has this got t' do with Barrayar's interests?'
M'lord cleared his throat. 'It's far too early to say,' he said primly.
Roic, glumly, read that as, I haven't made up a reason yet, but give me time.
"M'lord looked around proudly, as if expecting the room to burst into applause, and was plainly disappointed to receive three blank looks instead.
He inhaled, visibly backing up. 'Unpack, Miles, right.'"
Miles, to Jin and Mina, after discovering that the dead woman is not their mother: "I'm still going to look for your mommy. The problem has just suddenly become a lot more interesting. Er, difficult. It's just become a bit more difficult."
Jin, on Roic: "For Miles-san, it must be like owning your own private grownup, following you around and doing stuff for you. Except you got to tell him what to do, instead of the other way around. Jin wished he owned a Roic."
"It was hard to tell, sometimes, if m'lord's style was the result of single-minded dedication to duty, habits of overweening Vor privilege, or simple insanity."