Merry Krysa-mouse! and Reading Roundup
Reprising this from two years ago, when it was made up, mostly on accident:
(Backstory is that B made a joke, pronouncing "Merry Christmas" as "Merry
Krysa-mas" and then L took it a step further to "Merry Krysa-mouse" [krysa = rat, for the non-Russian-speakers]. Of course, I embraced this new holiday, and was even compelled to illustrate it. You are looking at the pinnacle of my artistic ability, y'all. Drawn from "life" -- i.e. a rubber Halloween rat and a box of mouse finger puppets.)
So -- Merry Krysa-mouse to you!
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I suspect I will actually finish another book before the new year (I'm currently reading Ascendant and eyeing Iorich), but this post got long enough already, so:
65. Ursula Vernon (ursulav), Dragonbreath -- this one came about in kind of a funny way. I spotted a Dragonbreath book on L's Scholastic flyer and asked her if she wanted to get it, because I love ursulav's art and the hilarious way she talks about her life on her LJ and wanted to check out her children's books. L was unconvinced, so I took her over to ursulav's LJ and showed her a bunch of the art, and, predictably, L was won over. So she ordered the book, which turned out to be Dragonbreath 3, and then checked Dragonbreath 1 out of the library. She liked them both -- she'd actually been planning to read just #1 and then wait with #3 for when she got the second book, but ended up reading straight through. And once she was done, I read it too. It is just as quirky, clever, and charming as I was expecting, and also quite educational about sea life, which was a bonus.
Wendell the iguana who is Danny Dragonbreath's long-suffering best friend was actually my favorite character, and I also rather liked Danny's not-a-morning-person mother. And I kind of love the sentient and vicious potato salad. Danny himself is not too appealing to me as a character, but he is a very effective story engine, both in terms of how he gets into scrapes and how he bends reality by being a dragon among regular reptiles and amphibians.
The book is a mix of text, illustrations, and interspersed comic-style pages. Both of my favorite moments happened in the comic style pages, actually, because the expressions are just priceless. For the record, these are when cousin Edward the sea serpent reassures Wendell that the sea cucumber that threw up its guts all over him will recover just fine (Wendell: "Oh. Yay.") and the encounter with the anglerfish (Danny: "Ugh! It's hideous!" Anglerfish: "Hey! Do I come up to the surface and make fun of your looks?" Danny: "Oh! Um. No. Sorry.")
I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of these, as is L. O just read the comics parts, though I'm still working on him.
66. Tom Angleberger, The Strange Case of Origami Yoda -- I spotted this one on the Kirkus list of best children's books of 2010, and the premise seemed intriguing. I tried to talk L into reading it, but she didn't want to, but O jumped at the Yoda in the title... and then gave up a couple of pages in. Which, now that I read the book, is understandable, as it's aimed above his level and not at his interests. Meanwhile, though, L saw a trailer for it at the book fair and was interested in reading it all of a sudden. So she did, and then recommended it to me, and I read it too. Spoilers!
I didn't like it as much as Dragonbreath, and I didn't even like it as much as I'd expected to, but it was not a bad book, and I liked the message pretty well -- it's a similar message to what you get out of the Louis Sachar books. There's the weirdo Dwight, who sits in holes and answers all questions with "Purple!" and does other crazy and/or gross things that make most of the students make fun of him and even the kids he sits with at lunch only sort of tolerate him. And then he makes a (not-great) Yoda finger puppet and starts dispensing wise advice in a really bad impression of Yoda's voice. There are stories narrated by a bunch of the middle-schoolers who have asked Yoda for advice, with various results, but in the end -- spoiler! -- Yoda's advice ends up helping them ace pop quizzes, get rid of an embarrassing nickname or habit, and get together with the girl/boy they like in convoluted ways. And Dwight himself ends up with the girl he likes after getting pummeled by a bully in her honor.
I went to high school with a couple of Dwights, so he was the most fun part of the book for me, no contest. The other characters, including the framing narrator Tommy, his buddy Kellen who adds doodles to the margins, and his love interest Sara, and the less-recurring characters in their class/school, seem like nice kids, if not particularly differentiated from each other -- it's a slim book, with a large cast of characters, and the focused first-person narration makes it difficult to give them a lot of character. And then there's Harvey, the nay-sayer, who keeps trying to get rid of Dwight and is mean to him, and most of the other kids, even though he is nominally friends with Tommy and Kellen. Harvey is actually the closest this book has to an antagonist, so it's interesting to have his comments right there on each story. But he is rather one-dimensionally unpleasant, although it is admitted by his friends that his Yoda puppet is fancier and his Yoda impression is spot on, unlike Dwight's.
So, anyway, cute book for the late elementary/middle school crowd. And I enjoyed the couple of references to The Hobbit in there, too, as well as Star Wars.
67. Stephfordy Mayo, New Moan -- oh god, I don't even know why I read this, considering I haven't read Twilight itself. I guess it was all the puns on the cover -- not just the author's name and the title itself, but the cover also proclaims it to be "The first book in The Twishite Saga" (and, yep, it's a book published in the UK, and there are some Britishisms in it, but I just found that to be an added bonus). It was actually entertaining for the first 3/4 or so (it's a pretty slim book -- under 300 pages in paperback, including a couple faithfully left nearly blank), but the end sort of dragged on. Kind of spoilery for a lot of the jokes, I guess?
The characters are named things like Heffa Lump (Bella), Teddy Kelledy (Edward, kind of meh), Joe Cahontas (Jacob), Chump (Bella's father), and a variety of puns on their lack of dimensionality for Heffa's school friends, and the town itself is named Spatula. There is actually a lot more to the plot than what I understand the actual Twilight contains: in addition to Heffa and Teddy pining for each other, there's a noirish chapter narrated by Chump which has some hard-boiled mystery stuff going on, Teddy's diary of his stay in Romania, and the clo9sest this thing has to an overarching plot, which is the Reshuffle, an event that will decide which group of characters (vampires, werewolves, zombies, cowboys, etc.) will rule over popular media.
There's lots of breaking of the fourth wall and making fun of SMeyer's writing style (e.g. "I told him all about my dream, and then the conversation passed on to other matters; I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say we had everything in common and all those things were unusual and really deep"), and a hell of a lot of innuendo, featuring things like: "the trees that surrounded the house were dripping with moisture. Their mighty trunks probed skyward and vines climbed the thick girth of those trunks like veins, pulsing with life as globs of milky cloud scudded overhead. Something about that imagery intrigued me, but I couldn't think what," as well as some moments that read like the literary equivalent of, you know, fireworks going off and trains rushing into tunnels in old TV shows.
Oh, oh! And the great sparkling reveal? The reason these vampires can't go out in sunlight is that the sun literally shines out of their ass. Yes, I think that's inspired! XD
So, um, yeah. This was actually pretty enjoyable, even given that all I know about Twilight I learned from the internet mocking it (and plan to keep it that way), though the book could've easily been quite a bit shorter. Certainly made for a nice change from epic fantasy. :)
And then I tried to read Harvard Lampoon's parody (Nightlight, featuring Belle Goose, Edwart Mullen, et al in a town called Switchblade), and it was really, really boring.
68. Strange Brew, edited by P.N. Elrod -- so, I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the book, for the most part, and then... the lack of variety in the stories started getting kind of old, and also I do think the last three stories are pretty weak. But, really, it's the whole line-up. I feel like I should put together a matrix, you know? Matrix and stuff from here on has spoilers!
Also, I found it kind of funny that all of the authors except Jim Butcher were female. That's great, of course, but it really felt like Butcher was the token guy. That appears to largely be the case for the other urban fantasy anthologies edited by this person -- and probably urban fantasy in general...
But, OK, the individual stories:
"Seeing Eye" by Patricia Briggs -- I liked this one. The female witch protagonist is blind, which adds some variety, the magic is more gruesome and demanding of sacrifice than in the other pieces, but there's a hopeful ending, and I thought the "seeing eye wolf" thing was cute. And I liked Tom, the scarred werewolf she teams up with. The cover blurb makes it sound more romancey than it is, but I actually quite liked the writing, and the gradual if not super-subtle way in which Moira's connections to the antagonists are revealed. I think this is one of the strongest stories in the book.
"Last Call" by Jim Butcher -- ugh. The premise is cute -- somebody's been messing with Harry's (well, Mac's) beer, and Harry's usual hijinks ensue. But, ugh. This felt so, so fanservicey, given that the climax is Murphy making out with a goddess in front of Harry, and this is after another woman throws herself at Harry under the effect of a lust spell on the beer. And then Harry decides not to tell Murphy what happened because "the truth would just bother her." Ugh.
"Death Warmed Over" by Rachel Caine -- kind of a weird one, in that it's a very romancey mystery story, but the love interest happens to be dead, as in, reanimated corpse, except not in any gross or inconvenient ways. That said, it was actually really sweet, and Andy the corpse (and colleague of Holly the resurrection witch who brings him back for reasons of duty and falls for him) sounds like a great and fun guy, so I was actually rooting for the zombie romance, except... it feels like cheating, in a "their love conveniently transcends the limitations of regular resurrection magic" way, although it's kind of sort of handwaved in that he was the one who made up the rules/ostensible limitations. I did like the fact that, while there was still a psycho evil villain in this one, some of the antagonists were actually kind of sympathetic, or at least pitiable. More complexity than in most of the other stories, then. And I liked the fact that the witch protagonist had a day job which involved accounting spreadsheets in some capacity. Don't see that very often.
"Vegas Odds" by Karen Chance -- read a lot like fanfic to me. Plotty fanfic, but it felt like the focus was on the relationship rather than the individual characters or the plot. Like, there was a lot of action and a couple of twists (the action ran a bit long, but the twists were enjoyable and not badly set up for a not-very-long mystery story), but there was lots of room for banter between the half-were witch protagonist and her werewolf boyfriend, relationshift conflict, a softcore scene with bonus BDSM overtones, and a cute shippy coda. Through it all, I didn't feel like I got much of a feel for the were boyfriend except that he is macho and protective, and the female protagonist did seem to have a bit more depth but it was rather more tell than show. So, cute, but kind of amateurish, if you ask me.
"Hecate's Golden Eye" by P.N.Elrod -- kind of an outlier, this one. One of only two stories with a male protagonist/narrator, not set in present-day, and with relatively little focus on the supernatural -- which was actually kind of refreshing. It's a detective/con story and worked pretty well on that level, but the vampirity of the protagonist was thus kind of extraneous, and seemed to be mostly used as a deus ex machina -- he can vanish and hypnotize people and stuff. I realize this is a story set in a larger universe centered around this protagonist, and there are some somewhat intriguing throwaway mentions, like of the vampire's girlfriend, but I can't say that it makes me wanna run out and read these books.
"Bacon" by Charlaine Harris -- kind of conflicted about this one. There were aspects of it I liked a lot -- Circe's descendent having to hold down a day job (and what/how she does it), Kathy's character and nonchallant approach to taking commissions to kill people, the pop culture references (Hogwarts) and cross-universe references ("The only sorcerer who's gone public is in Chicago, and I hear he's struggling.") and stuff about how Odysseus was hung -- the sort of good fun I've come to expect from Harris. And also slightly deeper social commentary, like the rival werewolf packs coming from different classes, white-collar vs blue-collar. But then it turns out that Kathy is the main bad guy, and we have a pudgy woman whose size is gratuitously underlines at least once being turned into a pig to be hunted by werewolves. And there's totally the mythological reason for the pig connection, but still, ugh. Basically, this was one of my favorite stories as I was reading the first half of it, and then... not so much *sigh*
"Signature of the Dead" by Faith Hunter -- huh. Earth witch whose main personality trait (besides being an earth witch) is that she is worried about her babies, her witch husband (who doesn't do much except provide a showcase for her healing skills), a human lawman, and a were-puma take on a nest of rogue vampires (whose depredations we get to hear about more graphically than I really needed to). I found it boring. There were two things I liked: The were-puma is a badass lady (whom the narrator has way more chemistry with than with her husband, I might add) and the logistics around her transformation are interesting; and the narrator makes a tough call and uses her last healing charm on the lawman instead of the were-puma, who is also grieviously hurt, and the guy dies anyway (the were-puma survives). Also, I don't know what was up with the names... some kind of Appalachian thing?
"Ginger" by Caitlin Kittredge -- pleasantly frothy narration, but the unpleasant DA (descirbed as plastic-looking and suspected of using hair dye) turns out to be the main bad guy, killing people and torturing children and stuff. And she has an evil gay sidekick. That's about it. (No, seriously. I usually mark down interesting passages as I read, so I can remember to go back to them when I'm doing the write-ups. This is the only story in the collection that had not a single page marked...)
"Dark Sins" by Jenna Maclaine -- oy. This seems like Twilight for the slightly more erudite/older crowd. The protagonist is a Mary-Sue -- one of a bunch of super-special good vampires (they never kill mortals! they only kill vampires who hurt mortals!), she is the only vampire to have magic, and her magic (of course) ends up being more powerful than anyone else's, and not subject to the same limitations. Oh, and she was created especially by the goddess as a "special weapon" (she gets to meet said goddess over the course of the story, and the goddess actually tells he, "You are my chosen one" and "You may not understand it now [...] but one day you will."). And her beautifully perfect and kind lover had been created by the goddess just for her. *gag* Add to this that the story is supposedly set in 1818 Venice, but you wouldn't know it from the descriptions or the dialogue or, you know, anything. I doubt I would've finished this story if it wasn't the last in the anthology. Note to self: never ever read these books.
So: "Seeing Eye", "Death Warmed Over", "Vegas Odds" were pretty good, if not at all groundbreaking (and in that order of interest). "Last Call" and "Bacon" were entertaining... but kinda skeevy, and "Ginger" was just kinda skeevy without being particularly entertaining. "Hecate's Golden Eye" was not a bad story but seemed to have wandered in from a different anthology. "Signatures of the Dead" was mostly boring but with a few redeeming qualities, and "Dark Sins" I just disliked/was bored by start to finish. Not a great haul, considering this is a genre I tend to really enjoy and be quite forgiving of.
69. Jim Butcher, First Lord's Fury -- so, OK, I've read all six of these books now, and I'm still conflicted as hell about this series. There's a lot I like about it: Spoilers from here on!
The worldbuilding is really fun. I love the magical system with the furies, and I like the Roman aspects (explained in this book, sort of -- apparently a lost Roman legion wandered through some time-space rift into this world, as did all the other critters), and I like the way the non-human races are handled. The Marat, the Canem, the Icemen all start out as a threat, and then we get their side of the story, too, and the Alerans learn to work together with them. And for the Marat and Canem at least, they become major characters in their own right, just as formidable as Alerans albeit in different ways, and their culture, however strange to the POV characters and the reader, treated with respect. Even the vord, who are an implacable, all-consuming enemy that must be exterminated, while they're sentient under the queen's control anyway, are sort of treated with respect, and shown to be more than a senseless horde. (I especially liked the brief scene where Isana the watercrafter senses the childlike innocence of the vord queen.) And I liked the detail at the end, with some Alerans trying to protect "their" vord, with whom they've developed a sort of partnership. OK, so Speaker for the Dead it ain't, but it's a much more nuanced and interesting look at "alien" cultures of the beastmen/barbarian/evil horde type than you usually get in fantasy, and the overall message is neat.
I like a lot of the characters. Kitai rocks! I think she's easily the best woman Butcher has written, and I like the fact that she is kickass and competent without being a ~rebellious tomboy~ or whatever -- being kickass and competent is just what Marat women are expected to be. I love the fact that she often has more sense than Tavi -- and that he listens to her. That when, in this book, she is all "oh, I can't sleep with you any longer, you must woo me!" (and Tavi is understandably all WTF?), she both has a point and it's also a ploy. And that when Tavi finds out she is pregnant and is all, "You have to stop fighting now, I couldn't bear to have you in danger!" and Kitai tells him she can't do that, and they realize they need to figure out a way past that, what ends up happening is... Kitai continues fighting in all the battles, right in the center of danger. I love the fact that Kitai, as much as she loves Tavi and can't bear to live without him, makes the cool, rational choice of whom to spend her limited healing powers on (a trained and powerful healer, who can do more good) -- I guess people making rational choices against their heart's instincts is kind of a kink of mine, maybe? I love the fact that Kitai never stops teasing Tavi, and he mostly takes it, because he clearly realizes just how lucky he is to have her. So, yeah, Kitai rocks. And I like Tavi, too, and am willing to concede that he is really clever and a good guy. Of the secondary characters, I like Max a lot, and Crassus, and Fidelias, and I really liked the Aquitanes and Gaius Sextus, and Demos the pirate captain, and I liked Aldrick ex Gladius a whole lot (though I wish we'd seen more of him, though it was nice to finally get the whole of the background on him in this book), and I like the Canim, especially Varg.
There are things about the series I don't like so much -- the furycraft-assisted battles got old a couple of books ago. There is some very cool stuff still, especially on the furycraft engineering side, but I started skimming the duels and battles and sieges more and more, because, seriously, enough already. But that's minor compared to my main problem with the series.
Here's the thing that bugs me and prevents me from actually liking the series and considering myself a fan. It makes... overtures and shades of gray in morality, but then it just backs away from those and seems to hold up its characters as black and white. The "good" characters -- Bernard, Isana, Araris, Amara, the Placidas (who are apparently meant to be a homage to Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan, and, Butcher, it's cute that you're a fanboy, but no) -- hold these squeaky-clean worldviews, and the thing is, the narrative justifies them. There never seem to be negative consequences to the stupidly honorable things they do, even though, by the laws of causality set up by the worldbuilding, there should be. There are greyer characters, like Tavi himself. You get a few lines like "Renzo had been an appallingly petty evil from the last days of Tavi's childhood. || Tavi felt sick at how easy it had been to murder him." and "if he had his way, he would never engage in a fair fight ever again." But his actions, whether squeaky-clean or more underhanded, are always justified, by the narrative and by other characters pointing out how awesome he is. (The only negative consequences he suffers, I guess, is that Crassus does not forgive him for hiding the truth from him -- which I thought was a nice touch, but pretty slight.)
And there are people like Ehren, who are clearly underhanded -- but they are apparently underhanded in the service of the greater good -- the kind of greater good that the narrative approves of -- so apparently that's OK. And of course there's Fidelias/Marcus (and the way the two names are used in this book are not subtle, but effective, I thought) and his Face Heel --> Heel Face Turn, but, again, he accepts death by Tavi's order as a form of justice and redemption, and then Tavi specifically orders him to live. I thought that was handled not badly, especially the part where it required Kitai's intervention to make Tavi see the right thing to do, but it's... sanctified greyness, which is not the same thing as true greyness.
And then you have the really grey-to-darker ones -- the Aquitanes, Dorotea, Gaius Sextus, Aldrick. Dorotea becomes a better person through a life of slavery. Now, the good guys are in no position to free her from the collar, but the implications are still a bit... you know? Aldrick is treated mostly neutrally (probably because he is so minor), but his actions with Odiana as revealed in backstory, are treated unilaterally as a transgression, instead of something more subtle. And, like, taking advantage of a deeply emotionally disurbed girl barely out of childhood is obviously not a good thing... but the Odiana we see with Aldrick, however crazy she may be, os obviously a lot happier than she had been without him. And it's entirely possible that, in the intervening years she would've attained some sort of normalcy, even greater normalcy, if he'd left her alone, but I dunno, it doesn't seem as black and white as Araris presents it. But whatever, Aldrick is just my own obsession, moving on now. Sextus is a Magnificent Bastard and he has a hero's death, sort of... but characters are constantly comparing Tavi to him favorably, and blaming him for the shape of Alera in the beginning -- it feels like the narrative recognizes him as a cool character, but is unwilling to grant him actual respect.
This bugged me with the Aquitanes, too. Attis is actually a really neat character -- he is ruthless, very bright (though, we get it, we get it, not as brilliant as Tavi, OK?), the ultimate pragmatist, willing to sacrifice himself as well as others as long as the return is worth it -- exactly the kind of character I like. I enjoyed the rather frank way he interacts with Doroga and Isana, with Bernard, Amara, and Ehren, as well as with the various High Lords. He gets an awful death (though a kind of death that's neat to see in a fantasy story), and the best thing there is to say about him is "Amara bowed her head, and wept a few silent tears for the man Gaius Aquitainus Attis had become in his last weeks." Which, what? How did he change in the last weeks, exactly? Not at all, that I'd seen -- it just so happened that now he was on the same side with the "good guys". And Invidia gets it worst of all. She is such a powerful, capable character, but the narrative just refuses to treat her with respect, and insists on painting her survival instinct as some kind of terrible flaw. She is not a nice person, certainly, but I don't think the not wanting to die part makes her evil (though some of the other things she's done do/may). Anyway, in conclusion, I just want to note that the Aquitanes are Lannistery as hell, and Invidia, in particular, is quite Cersei-like, dead mother, thwarted romantic ambitions (Septimus sound quite Rhaegar-like, too), and blaming the patriarchy, only, you know, actually good at what she does.
With all of these things it feels like the series comes to the edge of an actual grey morality, with some promising characters and great lines, and then hastily backs off into a "Just kidding! the good guys are all shiny and infallible and the bad guys must convert to worshipping them or die!" kind of thing, and it sucks. It especially sucks because I think the Dresden Files illustrate that Butcher *can* actually do a grey morality. Marcone, Lara, Morgan, the Merlin, Lea and Mab, even straight out villains like Nicodemus -- they've all been antagonists, but I feel like the narrative treats them with respect. And then you have the good guys who are not so squeaky clean, like Molly. And I get that the palette of a noir story is different from a typical epic fantasy (says so right on the tin, in the case of noir), but it's just frustrating to know that Codex Alera makes these overtures and that Butcher is capable of following through on them... but choses not to. I guess it comes down to something lodessa said as we were chatting about this the other day: the Alera books were a story conceived by Butcher when he was a teenager, he just didn't have the writing skills (or the clout with publishers) to get them out there sooner. And while his writing is now adequate to the story, the core of it is still pretty immature. Oh well.
So, like, about this book specifically. I liked the major changes, both for the good and bad, that we are left with at the end of the story -- the years it will take to rebuild roads, having to eat croach, Alera the fury dying, the coming storms, the looming battle with the Canea vord, the fragile alliances, the idea of merit-based furycraft, the dawning of the age when technology coexists with furycraft, etc. I liked the scene where Tavi takes down the gates of Riva with water and growing things -- it felt properly epic, and so did Tavi's watercrafted speech. Oh, and here's one thing I didn't like: the way Amara and Bernard adopt several children in what seems an afterthought, and then Amara (who had been barren due to illness) gets pregnant. It's explained why, but I still don't like the message. I also thought the conversation between Isana and Aquitane, when he propses to marry her, was an excellent example of all that stuff up there about how the narrative cheats in favor of the "good guys". So was the point where Ehren seconds the Windwolves to Amara to go retrieve Isana. Oh, and speaking of Ehren, I did fall for the fake death, and it surprised the hell out of me at the time. But of course, no, we can't have any of the good guys who are not bit characters like Lord Cereus die! Oh, and the creepy dinners with Invidia, Isana, and the vord queen were neatly creepy. And the scene where Kitai gets to feel the baby inside her through her connection with Tavi was quite charming.
Oh, and. That scene in the end where Tavi is all "I own you" to Fidelias? Yeah, kind of shipping it a little bit, for all that I love Tavi/Kitai >.>
A few quotes:
"We have been together for years," Kitai said. "We have shared a bed and pleasured one another on a daily basis. For years. And you are finally becoming competent."
Invidia, on eating croach: "On a scale of one to ten, ten being the most revolting and one being almost edible, I believe that rating this recipe would require the use of exponents."
"Or perhaps instead of being a manipulator and assassin, [Ehren] was simply a loyal servant of the Realm," Amara said.
A wry, bitter smile tugged at [Attis's] lips. "The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, Countess."
70. Zombies vs Unicorns, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier -- you know, I don't like zombies. I probably dislike them even more than vampires. And I'm highly indifferent to unicors. But, man, this is a really good anthology! There were almost no weak stories, and, unlike with a lot of anthologies centered around a single topic (dragons or wizards or urban fantasy/mystery types as per above), each story was different enough from all the others for the book to stay interesting from beginning to end. The "dueling editors" thing in the preface of each story was, eh, cute, but less interesting than I thought it was meant to be. I liked the little zombie and unicorn icons, though! Spoilers for individual stories!
"The Highest Justice" by Garth Nix -- I think this story is merely OK, not strong... but it's still probably the Garth Nix story I've enjoyed the most, out of the handful I read, so even that's saying something. Although I guess the only reason it was chosen to open this anthology is that it features both a unicorn and a zombie.
"Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Alaya Dawn Johnson -- I've never read anything by her before, but on the strength of this story will pick up a book by her quite happily. One of my very favorites, because it's dark and funny and poignant and hopeful and real and subtle. And features a very self-aware half-cured zombie and his paramilitary trained boyfriend with lots of baggage of his own, and it's painful and sweet and I was definitely rooting for them as a couple, even though the zombie, Grayson, opened the story by comparing his love interest, Jack, to really good mac'n'cheese. Also, Grayson not recognizing any of Jack's poetry quotes was very endearing.
"Purity Test" by Naomi Novik -- funny! Likeable, capable, skeptical teenage girl protagonist (who keeps being insulted that it's being intimated she's a virgin) teaming up with a sarcastic unicorn. Not a deep, lingering piece, like some of the other stories, but very likeable.
"Bougainvillea" by Carrie Ryan -- apparently set in the world of "Forest of Hands and Teeth", which I haven't read, and which I don't really want to read, because this place is scary. But I liked the story, the father who starts out competently and decisively protecting his family and ends up a ruthless dictator rather distant from his only daughter (and he might have possibly murdered his wife...), the mother who can't adjust to the new world because she can't let go of ordinary life, and Iza, the daughter, who chooses mercy over ruthlessness... and then learns that she chose wrong, and corrects her mistake. Dark stuff, and while I liked the worldbuilding, this is not the sort of creepiness I need in my life, but even I can recognize it as a good, powerful story.
"A Thousand Flowers" by Margo Lanagan -- a unicorn story which Larbalestier (Team Zombie) describes as the creepiest story in the book. And it might be true, although "Bougainvillea" and "The Children of the Revolution" give it a run for its money, but it is not, by a long, long shot, the creepiest Margo Lanagan story I've read (that would be "The Goosle"). There is some very interesting, colorful narration (a bit too colorful, even, in the first instance) from 3 first-person POVs, and it's sort of... the main plot is sketched in almost in negative space, with surrounding stories. But, yeah, it's lovely and creepy and a rather novel look at unicorns' beauty and peril.
"The Children of the Revolution" by Maureen Johnson -- the bit of stunt writing at the end didn't work for me, but I thought the rest of the story was solid, the premise really neat, and way creepily executed, wherein a ditzy super-famous actresses adopted children turn out to be zombies, and what comes of it. I enjoyed both the very creepy descriptions of the children and the non-zombie parts of the story, the introduction of Sofie's relationship with Franklin, her parents, her time in England, etc.
"The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn" by Diana Peterfreund -- one of my favorites, not surprisingly, because it was one of the reasons I wanted to read this book in the first place. It's set in the same world as Rampant, and I wonder if Wen and Flayer will shop up in the main Rampant storyline, because it definitely feels like a very important potential plot being set up (and also, I'd love to see Wen and Astrid meet). I think this story was especially good at showing Wen and her family's faith (rather than telling about it) in a well-rounded way. Her parents are strict and protective and think Wen's unicorn-wrangling powers are sorcerous and devilish -- but there are clearly still good, loving parents. And Wen, raising the killer unicorn, struggles with her actions, not knowing whether this is meant to be temptation, a trial she is failing, or something God can help her through -- and in the end she finds a way to fit Flayer and what she is doing into a framework that works with her faith. It was pretty well done, I thought, where religion and faith permeate her life and thoughts, but it never felt preachy or anvilicious or fake or look-at-me or any of the other things it could've easily felt like. And I'm particularly impressed that Peterfreund chose to write both an intensely scientific and rational heroine in Astrid and a deeply spiritual one in Wen. I also liked Yves, his relationship with Wen (which was not overexplained or melodramatized) and the fact that his background is clearly present but doesn't feel shoehorned in or look-at-me tokenistic. Just, very natural execution on a couple of things that I think generally tend to be less elegantly done.
"Innoculata" by Scott Westerfeld -- I liked the writing, especially the narration, and I liked the premise -- a randomly generated vaccine against zombiefication which nevertheless changes the person into a sort of semi-zombie. But to be honest I'd been expecting more from Westerfeld in the way of creative worldbuilding, given Uglies et al and what I've heard of his other stuff, and his zombies and anti-zombie measures were disappointingly ordinary.
"Princess Prettypants" by Meg Cabot -- OK, I've seen this one called out as one of the strongest stories and I don't get that. It was actually the story I liked least in the collection. I guess it's supposed to be delightfully ironic or something that the unicorn (which is a birthday gift) is named Princess Prettypants and literally farts rainbows, but I'm not seeing the irony. I liked Liz-the-protagonist well enough, but the story itself felt a lot more cliche than any of the others. There's an asshole bully who's the son of the sherriff! A cheating ex who leads her into a live of petty larceny! The boy-next-door whom she'd never noticed that way before but who wuvs her. And a dorky best friend Liz ends up having to rescue from a party. The best friend bugged me particularly because, as sensitively and elegantly as Wen's family's faith was handled in "Killer Unicorn", this story handled it about as subtly as a Saved by the Bell episode. The girl was homeschooled for nine years, has seven younger siblings, wears long skirts everywhere, and thinks it's inappropriate to kiss without being engaged. Just, no. And the plot is basically a story version of the Avenging Unicorn Playset, with a moral of sorts tacked on. About the only thing I liked about the story is that Liz renames her unicorn Gloria -- after Gloria Steinem.
"Cold Hands" by Cassie Clare -- not groundbreaking, but a nice way to add variety to the zombie crop, with a world where the zombies aren't a recently emerged threat but rather something that's been part of town life for centuries. It's another zombie love story, but what I liked best about it is the mix of modern (jeans, cell phones, cars) and fairy-tale staple (an evil duke, a commoner girl in love with a prince, coffins bound in bronze and salt, public executions), echoed even in the two names for the town where they live, Lychsgate/Zombietown.
"The Third Virgin" by Kathleen Duey -- this was an interesting one. I didn't much care for the writing (the part where the unicorn sneaks onto a ship headed for the New World by breaking off his horn is pretty ludicrous, for instance), and the narrator -- a unicorn -- was quite annoying (I have to agree with Larbalestier, what a whinger!), but the premise is just really interesting and original, if a tad anvilicious. The unicorn can heal people -- and/but chooses to take days or years off their life as he heals, and is addicted to the high he gets from it. Serial killing, emotionally abusive addict of a unicorn -- that's pretty cool! And I liked the ending, which underscores the point that people (unicorns) like that don't change.
"Prom Night" by Libba Bray -- a very grim story that I nevertheless liked a lot. A town of teenagers, because their parents are all dead following zombie infections, some of them killed by the kids in self-defense, some of them pushed out into the dessert to avoid spreading contagion. I liked Tashmina a lot, upholding the law even though she knows it's pretty much hopeless, and does her best, and is worried about her mother, who may still be alive, and I liked her relationship with her cop-partner Jeff and with Javier, and just the way she interact with everyone in town. Very well written and atmospheric -- it seems like Bray is a better short story writer than she is a novelist, in terms of writing quality, because I think I've liked all of her short stories a lot. And I liked this exchange: "'Who died and made you God?' 'Everybody,' Tashmina said quietly."
I'm a bit bummed that there weren't stories from the editors, Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier, themselves, but it was a very good anthology even without that. One of the things that really struck me, reading this one pretty much on the heels of Strange Brew, is how much more diverse the characters in these YA stories were, and how much more naturally that was treated. Two of the stories featured a gay relationship (one male, one female, with some evidence of bisexuality, too), and there was a fairly major gay character in another story ("Prom Night"), but in all three cases it didn't feel like A Thing, just part of who the characters were. One, probably two of the protagonists (at least) are POCs and children of immigrants on at least one side, and it would seem that so are two of the love interests in another story. One of the protagonists practices Zoroastrianism, another is a devout Christian. I don't know how well the stories represent these characters vs reality, but it was neat to see, and also neat to see that all of these things were just aspects of the character, very important ones, but not THE defining characteristics or cliches, and that the information was implied via natural detail, not artificially highlighted. And because of that last part, it also doesn't feel like these characters are the *only* non-straight, non-white, non-whatever ones. It really feels like watching the evolution of media in action, and it's neat.
So, anyway, yeah, really enjoyed this anthology, even though I have to say the subject matter feels rather grown-up for YA -- there is a ton of swearing, violence (and not just in the zombie stories), (implied) sex, mentions of drug use, even a spot of offscreen bestiality. So, not something I'll be handing my kids any time soon, but the stories are very, very solid.
My favorites were "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and "The Care and Feeding etc.", but "Prom Night" is also very good, and most of the others were well worth reading as well.
(Backstory is that B made a joke, pronouncing "Merry Christmas" as "Merry
Krysa-mas" and then L took it a step further to "Merry Krysa-mouse" [krysa = rat, for the non-Russian-speakers]. Of course, I embraced this new holiday, and was even compelled to illustrate it. You are looking at the pinnacle of my artistic ability, y'all. Drawn from "life" -- i.e. a rubber Halloween rat and a box of mouse finger puppets.)
So -- Merry Krysa-mouse to you!
*
I suspect I will actually finish another book before the new year (I'm currently reading Ascendant and eyeing Iorich), but this post got long enough already, so:
65. Ursula Vernon (ursulav), Dragonbreath -- this one came about in kind of a funny way. I spotted a Dragonbreath book on L's Scholastic flyer and asked her if she wanted to get it, because I love ursulav's art and the hilarious way she talks about her life on her LJ and wanted to check out her children's books. L was unconvinced, so I took her over to ursulav's LJ and showed her a bunch of the art, and, predictably, L was won over. So she ordered the book, which turned out to be Dragonbreath 3, and then checked Dragonbreath 1 out of the library. She liked them both -- she'd actually been planning to read just #1 and then wait with #3 for when she got the second book, but ended up reading straight through. And once she was done, I read it too. It is just as quirky, clever, and charming as I was expecting, and also quite educational about sea life, which was a bonus.
Wendell the iguana who is Danny Dragonbreath's long-suffering best friend was actually my favorite character, and I also rather liked Danny's not-a-morning-person mother. And I kind of love the sentient and vicious potato salad. Danny himself is not too appealing to me as a character, but he is a very effective story engine, both in terms of how he gets into scrapes and how he bends reality by being a dragon among regular reptiles and amphibians.
The book is a mix of text, illustrations, and interspersed comic-style pages. Both of my favorite moments happened in the comic style pages, actually, because the expressions are just priceless. For the record, these are when cousin Edward the sea serpent reassures Wendell that the sea cucumber that threw up its guts all over him will recover just fine (Wendell: "Oh. Yay.") and the encounter with the anglerfish (Danny: "Ugh! It's hideous!" Anglerfish: "Hey! Do I come up to the surface and make fun of your looks?" Danny: "Oh! Um. No. Sorry.")
I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of these, as is L. O just read the comics parts, though I'm still working on him.
66. Tom Angleberger, The Strange Case of Origami Yoda -- I spotted this one on the Kirkus list of best children's books of 2010, and the premise seemed intriguing. I tried to talk L into reading it, but she didn't want to, but O jumped at the Yoda in the title... and then gave up a couple of pages in. Which, now that I read the book, is understandable, as it's aimed above his level and not at his interests. Meanwhile, though, L saw a trailer for it at the book fair and was interested in reading it all of a sudden. So she did, and then recommended it to me, and I read it too. Spoilers!
I didn't like it as much as Dragonbreath, and I didn't even like it as much as I'd expected to, but it was not a bad book, and I liked the message pretty well -- it's a similar message to what you get out of the Louis Sachar books. There's the weirdo Dwight, who sits in holes and answers all questions with "Purple!" and does other crazy and/or gross things that make most of the students make fun of him and even the kids he sits with at lunch only sort of tolerate him. And then he makes a (not-great) Yoda finger puppet and starts dispensing wise advice in a really bad impression of Yoda's voice. There are stories narrated by a bunch of the middle-schoolers who have asked Yoda for advice, with various results, but in the end -- spoiler! -- Yoda's advice ends up helping them ace pop quizzes, get rid of an embarrassing nickname or habit, and get together with the girl/boy they like in convoluted ways. And Dwight himself ends up with the girl he likes after getting pummeled by a bully in her honor.
I went to high school with a couple of Dwights, so he was the most fun part of the book for me, no contest. The other characters, including the framing narrator Tommy, his buddy Kellen who adds doodles to the margins, and his love interest Sara, and the less-recurring characters in their class/school, seem like nice kids, if not particularly differentiated from each other -- it's a slim book, with a large cast of characters, and the focused first-person narration makes it difficult to give them a lot of character. And then there's Harvey, the nay-sayer, who keeps trying to get rid of Dwight and is mean to him, and most of the other kids, even though he is nominally friends with Tommy and Kellen. Harvey is actually the closest this book has to an antagonist, so it's interesting to have his comments right there on each story. But he is rather one-dimensionally unpleasant, although it is admitted by his friends that his Yoda puppet is fancier and his Yoda impression is spot on, unlike Dwight's.
So, anyway, cute book for the late elementary/middle school crowd. And I enjoyed the couple of references to The Hobbit in there, too, as well as Star Wars.
67. Stephfordy Mayo, New Moan -- oh god, I don't even know why I read this, considering I haven't read Twilight itself. I guess it was all the puns on the cover -- not just the author's name and the title itself, but the cover also proclaims it to be "The first book in The Twishite Saga" (and, yep, it's a book published in the UK, and there are some Britishisms in it, but I just found that to be an added bonus). It was actually entertaining for the first 3/4 or so (it's a pretty slim book -- under 300 pages in paperback, including a couple faithfully left nearly blank), but the end sort of dragged on. Kind of spoilery for a lot of the jokes, I guess?
The characters are named things like Heffa Lump (Bella), Teddy Kelledy (Edward, kind of meh), Joe Cahontas (Jacob), Chump (Bella's father), and a variety of puns on their lack of dimensionality for Heffa's school friends, and the town itself is named Spatula. There is actually a lot more to the plot than what I understand the actual Twilight contains: in addition to Heffa and Teddy pining for each other, there's a noirish chapter narrated by Chump which has some hard-boiled mystery stuff going on, Teddy's diary of his stay in Romania, and the clo9sest this thing has to an overarching plot, which is the Reshuffle, an event that will decide which group of characters (vampires, werewolves, zombies, cowboys, etc.) will rule over popular media.
There's lots of breaking of the fourth wall and making fun of SMeyer's writing style (e.g. "I told him all about my dream, and then the conversation passed on to other matters; I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say we had everything in common and all those things were unusual and really deep"), and a hell of a lot of innuendo, featuring things like: "the trees that surrounded the house were dripping with moisture. Their mighty trunks probed skyward and vines climbed the thick girth of those trunks like veins, pulsing with life as globs of milky cloud scudded overhead. Something about that imagery intrigued me, but I couldn't think what," as well as some moments that read like the literary equivalent of, you know, fireworks going off and trains rushing into tunnels in old TV shows.
Oh, oh! And the great sparkling reveal? The reason these vampires can't go out in sunlight is that the sun literally shines out of their ass. Yes, I think that's inspired! XD
So, um, yeah. This was actually pretty enjoyable, even given that all I know about Twilight I learned from the internet mocking it (and plan to keep it that way), though the book could've easily been quite a bit shorter. Certainly made for a nice change from epic fantasy. :)
And then I tried to read Harvard Lampoon's parody (Nightlight, featuring Belle Goose, Edwart Mullen, et al in a town called Switchblade), and it was really, really boring.
68. Strange Brew, edited by P.N. Elrod -- so, I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the book, for the most part, and then... the lack of variety in the stories started getting kind of old, and also I do think the last three stories are pretty weak. But, really, it's the whole line-up. I feel like I should put together a matrix, you know? Matrix and stuff from here on has spoilers!
Also, I found it kind of funny that all of the authors except Jim Butcher were female. That's great, of course, but it really felt like Butcher was the token guy. That appears to largely be the case for the other urban fantasy anthologies edited by this person -- and probably urban fantasy in general...
But, OK, the individual stories:
"Seeing Eye" by Patricia Briggs -- I liked this one. The female witch protagonist is blind, which adds some variety, the magic is more gruesome and demanding of sacrifice than in the other pieces, but there's a hopeful ending, and I thought the "seeing eye wolf" thing was cute. And I liked Tom, the scarred werewolf she teams up with. The cover blurb makes it sound more romancey than it is, but I actually quite liked the writing, and the gradual if not super-subtle way in which Moira's connections to the antagonists are revealed. I think this is one of the strongest stories in the book.
"Last Call" by Jim Butcher -- ugh. The premise is cute -- somebody's been messing with Harry's (well, Mac's) beer, and Harry's usual hijinks ensue. But, ugh. This felt so, so fanservicey, given that the climax is Murphy making out with a goddess in front of Harry, and this is after another woman throws herself at Harry under the effect of a lust spell on the beer. And then Harry decides not to tell Murphy what happened because "the truth would just bother her." Ugh.
"Death Warmed Over" by Rachel Caine -- kind of a weird one, in that it's a very romancey mystery story, but the love interest happens to be dead, as in, reanimated corpse, except not in any gross or inconvenient ways. That said, it was actually really sweet, and Andy the corpse (and colleague of Holly the resurrection witch who brings him back for reasons of duty and falls for him) sounds like a great and fun guy, so I was actually rooting for the zombie romance, except... it feels like cheating, in a "their love conveniently transcends the limitations of regular resurrection magic" way, although it's kind of sort of handwaved in that he was the one who made up the rules/ostensible limitations. I did like the fact that, while there was still a psycho evil villain in this one, some of the antagonists were actually kind of sympathetic, or at least pitiable. More complexity than in most of the other stories, then. And I liked the fact that the witch protagonist had a day job which involved accounting spreadsheets in some capacity. Don't see that very often.
"Vegas Odds" by Karen Chance -- read a lot like fanfic to me. Plotty fanfic, but it felt like the focus was on the relationship rather than the individual characters or the plot. Like, there was a lot of action and a couple of twists (the action ran a bit long, but the twists were enjoyable and not badly set up for a not-very-long mystery story), but there was lots of room for banter between the half-were witch protagonist and her werewolf boyfriend, relationshift conflict, a softcore scene with bonus BDSM overtones, and a cute shippy coda. Through it all, I didn't feel like I got much of a feel for the were boyfriend except that he is macho and protective, and the female protagonist did seem to have a bit more depth but it was rather more tell than show. So, cute, but kind of amateurish, if you ask me.
"Hecate's Golden Eye" by P.N.Elrod -- kind of an outlier, this one. One of only two stories with a male protagonist/narrator, not set in present-day, and with relatively little focus on the supernatural -- which was actually kind of refreshing. It's a detective/con story and worked pretty well on that level, but the vampirity of the protagonist was thus kind of extraneous, and seemed to be mostly used as a deus ex machina -- he can vanish and hypnotize people and stuff. I realize this is a story set in a larger universe centered around this protagonist, and there are some somewhat intriguing throwaway mentions, like of the vampire's girlfriend, but I can't say that it makes me wanna run out and read these books.
"Bacon" by Charlaine Harris -- kind of conflicted about this one. There were aspects of it I liked a lot -- Circe's descendent having to hold down a day job (and what/how she does it), Kathy's character and nonchallant approach to taking commissions to kill people, the pop culture references (Hogwarts) and cross-universe references ("The only sorcerer who's gone public is in Chicago, and I hear he's struggling.") and stuff about how Odysseus was hung -- the sort of good fun I've come to expect from Harris. And also slightly deeper social commentary, like the rival werewolf packs coming from different classes, white-collar vs blue-collar. But then it turns out that Kathy is the main bad guy, and we have a pudgy woman whose size is gratuitously underlines at least once being turned into a pig to be hunted by werewolves. And there's totally the mythological reason for the pig connection, but still, ugh. Basically, this was one of my favorite stories as I was reading the first half of it, and then... not so much *sigh*
"Signature of the Dead" by Faith Hunter -- huh. Earth witch whose main personality trait (besides being an earth witch) is that she is worried about her babies, her witch husband (who doesn't do much except provide a showcase for her healing skills), a human lawman, and a were-puma take on a nest of rogue vampires (whose depredations we get to hear about more graphically than I really needed to). I found it boring. There were two things I liked: The were-puma is a badass lady (whom the narrator has way more chemistry with than with her husband, I might add) and the logistics around her transformation are interesting; and the narrator makes a tough call and uses her last healing charm on the lawman instead of the were-puma, who is also grieviously hurt, and the guy dies anyway (the were-puma survives). Also, I don't know what was up with the names... some kind of Appalachian thing?
"Ginger" by Caitlin Kittredge -- pleasantly frothy narration, but the unpleasant DA (descirbed as plastic-looking and suspected of using hair dye) turns out to be the main bad guy, killing people and torturing children and stuff. And she has an evil gay sidekick. That's about it. (No, seriously. I usually mark down interesting passages as I read, so I can remember to go back to them when I'm doing the write-ups. This is the only story in the collection that had not a single page marked...)
"Dark Sins" by Jenna Maclaine -- oy. This seems like Twilight for the slightly more erudite/older crowd. The protagonist is a Mary-Sue -- one of a bunch of super-special good vampires (they never kill mortals! they only kill vampires who hurt mortals!), she is the only vampire to have magic, and her magic (of course) ends up being more powerful than anyone else's, and not subject to the same limitations. Oh, and she was created especially by the goddess as a "special weapon" (she gets to meet said goddess over the course of the story, and the goddess actually tells he, "You are my chosen one" and "You may not understand it now [...] but one day you will."). And her beautifully perfect and kind lover had been created by the goddess just for her. *gag* Add to this that the story is supposedly set in 1818 Venice, but you wouldn't know it from the descriptions or the dialogue or, you know, anything. I doubt I would've finished this story if it wasn't the last in the anthology. Note to self: never ever read these books.
So: "Seeing Eye", "Death Warmed Over", "Vegas Odds" were pretty good, if not at all groundbreaking (and in that order of interest). "Last Call" and "Bacon" were entertaining... but kinda skeevy, and "Ginger" was just kinda skeevy without being particularly entertaining. "Hecate's Golden Eye" was not a bad story but seemed to have wandered in from a different anthology. "Signatures of the Dead" was mostly boring but with a few redeeming qualities, and "Dark Sins" I just disliked/was bored by start to finish. Not a great haul, considering this is a genre I tend to really enjoy and be quite forgiving of.
69. Jim Butcher, First Lord's Fury -- so, OK, I've read all six of these books now, and I'm still conflicted as hell about this series. There's a lot I like about it: Spoilers from here on!
The worldbuilding is really fun. I love the magical system with the furies, and I like the Roman aspects (explained in this book, sort of -- apparently a lost Roman legion wandered through some time-space rift into this world, as did all the other critters), and I like the way the non-human races are handled. The Marat, the Canem, the Icemen all start out as a threat, and then we get their side of the story, too, and the Alerans learn to work together with them. And for the Marat and Canem at least, they become major characters in their own right, just as formidable as Alerans albeit in different ways, and their culture, however strange to the POV characters and the reader, treated with respect. Even the vord, who are an implacable, all-consuming enemy that must be exterminated, while they're sentient under the queen's control anyway, are sort of treated with respect, and shown to be more than a senseless horde. (I especially liked the brief scene where Isana the watercrafter senses the childlike innocence of the vord queen.) And I liked the detail at the end, with some Alerans trying to protect "their" vord, with whom they've developed a sort of partnership. OK, so Speaker for the Dead it ain't, but it's a much more nuanced and interesting look at "alien" cultures of the beastmen/barbarian/evil horde type than you usually get in fantasy, and the overall message is neat.
I like a lot of the characters. Kitai rocks! I think she's easily the best woman Butcher has written, and I like the fact that she is kickass and competent without being a ~rebellious tomboy~ or whatever -- being kickass and competent is just what Marat women are expected to be. I love the fact that she often has more sense than Tavi -- and that he listens to her. That when, in this book, she is all "oh, I can't sleep with you any longer, you must woo me!" (and Tavi is understandably all WTF?), she both has a point and it's also a ploy. And that when Tavi finds out she is pregnant and is all, "You have to stop fighting now, I couldn't bear to have you in danger!" and Kitai tells him she can't do that, and they realize they need to figure out a way past that, what ends up happening is... Kitai continues fighting in all the battles, right in the center of danger. I love the fact that Kitai, as much as she loves Tavi and can't bear to live without him, makes the cool, rational choice of whom to spend her limited healing powers on (a trained and powerful healer, who can do more good) -- I guess people making rational choices against their heart's instincts is kind of a kink of mine, maybe? I love the fact that Kitai never stops teasing Tavi, and he mostly takes it, because he clearly realizes just how lucky he is to have her. So, yeah, Kitai rocks. And I like Tavi, too, and am willing to concede that he is really clever and a good guy. Of the secondary characters, I like Max a lot, and Crassus, and Fidelias, and I really liked the Aquitanes and Gaius Sextus, and Demos the pirate captain, and I liked Aldrick ex Gladius a whole lot (though I wish we'd seen more of him, though it was nice to finally get the whole of the background on him in this book), and I like the Canim, especially Varg.
There are things about the series I don't like so much -- the furycraft-assisted battles got old a couple of books ago. There is some very cool stuff still, especially on the furycraft engineering side, but I started skimming the duels and battles and sieges more and more, because, seriously, enough already. But that's minor compared to my main problem with the series.
Here's the thing that bugs me and prevents me from actually liking the series and considering myself a fan. It makes... overtures and shades of gray in morality, but then it just backs away from those and seems to hold up its characters as black and white. The "good" characters -- Bernard, Isana, Araris, Amara, the Placidas (who are apparently meant to be a homage to Cordelia and Aral Vorkosigan, and, Butcher, it's cute that you're a fanboy, but no) -- hold these squeaky-clean worldviews, and the thing is, the narrative justifies them. There never seem to be negative consequences to the stupidly honorable things they do, even though, by the laws of causality set up by the worldbuilding, there should be. There are greyer characters, like Tavi himself. You get a few lines like "Renzo had been an appallingly petty evil from the last days of Tavi's childhood. || Tavi felt sick at how easy it had been to murder him." and "if he had his way, he would never engage in a fair fight ever again." But his actions, whether squeaky-clean or more underhanded, are always justified, by the narrative and by other characters pointing out how awesome he is. (The only negative consequences he suffers, I guess, is that Crassus does not forgive him for hiding the truth from him -- which I thought was a nice touch, but pretty slight.)
And there are people like Ehren, who are clearly underhanded -- but they are apparently underhanded in the service of the greater good -- the kind of greater good that the narrative approves of -- so apparently that's OK. And of course there's Fidelias/Marcus (and the way the two names are used in this book are not subtle, but effective, I thought) and his Face Heel --> Heel Face Turn, but, again, he accepts death by Tavi's order as a form of justice and redemption, and then Tavi specifically orders him to live. I thought that was handled not badly, especially the part where it required Kitai's intervention to make Tavi see the right thing to do, but it's... sanctified greyness, which is not the same thing as true greyness.
And then you have the really grey-to-darker ones -- the Aquitanes, Dorotea, Gaius Sextus, Aldrick. Dorotea becomes a better person through a life of slavery. Now, the good guys are in no position to free her from the collar, but the implications are still a bit... you know? Aldrick is treated mostly neutrally (probably because he is so minor), but his actions with Odiana as revealed in backstory, are treated unilaterally as a transgression, instead of something more subtle. And, like, taking advantage of a deeply emotionally disurbed girl barely out of childhood is obviously not a good thing... but the Odiana we see with Aldrick, however crazy she may be, os obviously a lot happier than she had been without him. And it's entirely possible that, in the intervening years she would've attained some sort of normalcy, even greater normalcy, if he'd left her alone, but I dunno, it doesn't seem as black and white as Araris presents it. But whatever, Aldrick is just my own obsession, moving on now. Sextus is a Magnificent Bastard and he has a hero's death, sort of... but characters are constantly comparing Tavi to him favorably, and blaming him for the shape of Alera in the beginning -- it feels like the narrative recognizes him as a cool character, but is unwilling to grant him actual respect.
This bugged me with the Aquitanes, too. Attis is actually a really neat character -- he is ruthless, very bright (though, we get it, we get it, not as brilliant as Tavi, OK?), the ultimate pragmatist, willing to sacrifice himself as well as others as long as the return is worth it -- exactly the kind of character I like. I enjoyed the rather frank way he interacts with Doroga and Isana, with Bernard, Amara, and Ehren, as well as with the various High Lords. He gets an awful death (though a kind of death that's neat to see in a fantasy story), and the best thing there is to say about him is "Amara bowed her head, and wept a few silent tears for the man Gaius Aquitainus Attis had become in his last weeks." Which, what? How did he change in the last weeks, exactly? Not at all, that I'd seen -- it just so happened that now he was on the same side with the "good guys". And Invidia gets it worst of all. She is such a powerful, capable character, but the narrative just refuses to treat her with respect, and insists on painting her survival instinct as some kind of terrible flaw. She is not a nice person, certainly, but I don't think the not wanting to die part makes her evil (though some of the other things she's done do/may). Anyway, in conclusion, I just want to note that the Aquitanes are Lannistery as hell, and Invidia, in particular, is quite Cersei-like, dead mother, thwarted romantic ambitions (Septimus sound quite Rhaegar-like, too), and blaming the patriarchy, only, you know, actually good at what she does.
With all of these things it feels like the series comes to the edge of an actual grey morality, with some promising characters and great lines, and then hastily backs off into a "Just kidding! the good guys are all shiny and infallible and the bad guys must convert to worshipping them or die!" kind of thing, and it sucks. It especially sucks because I think the Dresden Files illustrate that Butcher *can* actually do a grey morality. Marcone, Lara, Morgan, the Merlin, Lea and Mab, even straight out villains like Nicodemus -- they've all been antagonists, but I feel like the narrative treats them with respect. And then you have the good guys who are not so squeaky clean, like Molly. And I get that the palette of a noir story is different from a typical epic fantasy (says so right on the tin, in the case of noir), but it's just frustrating to know that Codex Alera makes these overtures and that Butcher is capable of following through on them... but choses not to. I guess it comes down to something lodessa said as we were chatting about this the other day: the Alera books were a story conceived by Butcher when he was a teenager, he just didn't have the writing skills (or the clout with publishers) to get them out there sooner. And while his writing is now adequate to the story, the core of it is still pretty immature. Oh well.
So, like, about this book specifically. I liked the major changes, both for the good and bad, that we are left with at the end of the story -- the years it will take to rebuild roads, having to eat croach, Alera the fury dying, the coming storms, the looming battle with the Canea vord, the fragile alliances, the idea of merit-based furycraft, the dawning of the age when technology coexists with furycraft, etc. I liked the scene where Tavi takes down the gates of Riva with water and growing things -- it felt properly epic, and so did Tavi's watercrafted speech. Oh, and here's one thing I didn't like: the way Amara and Bernard adopt several children in what seems an afterthought, and then Amara (who had been barren due to illness) gets pregnant. It's explained why, but I still don't like the message. I also thought the conversation between Isana and Aquitane, when he propses to marry her, was an excellent example of all that stuff up there about how the narrative cheats in favor of the "good guys". So was the point where Ehren seconds the Windwolves to Amara to go retrieve Isana. Oh, and speaking of Ehren, I did fall for the fake death, and it surprised the hell out of me at the time. But of course, no, we can't have any of the good guys who are not bit characters like Lord Cereus die! Oh, and the creepy dinners with Invidia, Isana, and the vord queen were neatly creepy. And the scene where Kitai gets to feel the baby inside her through her connection with Tavi was quite charming.
Oh, and. That scene in the end where Tavi is all "I own you" to Fidelias? Yeah, kind of shipping it a little bit, for all that I love Tavi/Kitai >.>
A few quotes:
"We have been together for years," Kitai said. "We have shared a bed and pleasured one another on a daily basis. For years. And you are finally becoming competent."
Invidia, on eating croach: "On a scale of one to ten, ten being the most revolting and one being almost edible, I believe that rating this recipe would require the use of exponents."
"Or perhaps instead of being a manipulator and assassin, [Ehren] was simply a loyal servant of the Realm," Amara said.
A wry, bitter smile tugged at [Attis's] lips. "The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, Countess."
70. Zombies vs Unicorns, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier -- you know, I don't like zombies. I probably dislike them even more than vampires. And I'm highly indifferent to unicors. But, man, this is a really good anthology! There were almost no weak stories, and, unlike with a lot of anthologies centered around a single topic (dragons or wizards or urban fantasy/mystery types as per above), each story was different enough from all the others for the book to stay interesting from beginning to end. The "dueling editors" thing in the preface of each story was, eh, cute, but less interesting than I thought it was meant to be. I liked the little zombie and unicorn icons, though! Spoilers for individual stories!
"The Highest Justice" by Garth Nix -- I think this story is merely OK, not strong... but it's still probably the Garth Nix story I've enjoyed the most, out of the handful I read, so even that's saying something. Although I guess the only reason it was chosen to open this anthology is that it features both a unicorn and a zombie.
"Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Alaya Dawn Johnson -- I've never read anything by her before, but on the strength of this story will pick up a book by her quite happily. One of my very favorites, because it's dark and funny and poignant and hopeful and real and subtle. And features a very self-aware half-cured zombie and his paramilitary trained boyfriend with lots of baggage of his own, and it's painful and sweet and I was definitely rooting for them as a couple, even though the zombie, Grayson, opened the story by comparing his love interest, Jack, to really good mac'n'cheese. Also, Grayson not recognizing any of Jack's poetry quotes was very endearing.
"Purity Test" by Naomi Novik -- funny! Likeable, capable, skeptical teenage girl protagonist (who keeps being insulted that it's being intimated she's a virgin) teaming up with a sarcastic unicorn. Not a deep, lingering piece, like some of the other stories, but very likeable.
"Bougainvillea" by Carrie Ryan -- apparently set in the world of "Forest of Hands and Teeth", which I haven't read, and which I don't really want to read, because this place is scary. But I liked the story, the father who starts out competently and decisively protecting his family and ends up a ruthless dictator rather distant from his only daughter (and he might have possibly murdered his wife...), the mother who can't adjust to the new world because she can't let go of ordinary life, and Iza, the daughter, who chooses mercy over ruthlessness... and then learns that she chose wrong, and corrects her mistake. Dark stuff, and while I liked the worldbuilding, this is not the sort of creepiness I need in my life, but even I can recognize it as a good, powerful story.
"A Thousand Flowers" by Margo Lanagan -- a unicorn story which Larbalestier (Team Zombie) describes as the creepiest story in the book. And it might be true, although "Bougainvillea" and "The Children of the Revolution" give it a run for its money, but it is not, by a long, long shot, the creepiest Margo Lanagan story I've read (that would be "The Goosle"). There is some very interesting, colorful narration (a bit too colorful, even, in the first instance) from 3 first-person POVs, and it's sort of... the main plot is sketched in almost in negative space, with surrounding stories. But, yeah, it's lovely and creepy and a rather novel look at unicorns' beauty and peril.
"The Children of the Revolution" by Maureen Johnson -- the bit of stunt writing at the end didn't work for me, but I thought the rest of the story was solid, the premise really neat, and way creepily executed, wherein a ditzy super-famous actresses adopted children turn out to be zombies, and what comes of it. I enjoyed both the very creepy descriptions of the children and the non-zombie parts of the story, the introduction of Sofie's relationship with Franklin, her parents, her time in England, etc.
"The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn" by Diana Peterfreund -- one of my favorites, not surprisingly, because it was one of the reasons I wanted to read this book in the first place. It's set in the same world as Rampant, and I wonder if Wen and Flayer will shop up in the main Rampant storyline, because it definitely feels like a very important potential plot being set up (and also, I'd love to see Wen and Astrid meet). I think this story was especially good at showing Wen and her family's faith (rather than telling about it) in a well-rounded way. Her parents are strict and protective and think Wen's unicorn-wrangling powers are sorcerous and devilish -- but there are clearly still good, loving parents. And Wen, raising the killer unicorn, struggles with her actions, not knowing whether this is meant to be temptation, a trial she is failing, or something God can help her through -- and in the end she finds a way to fit Flayer and what she is doing into a framework that works with her faith. It was pretty well done, I thought, where religion and faith permeate her life and thoughts, but it never felt preachy or anvilicious or fake or look-at-me or any of the other things it could've easily felt like. And I'm particularly impressed that Peterfreund chose to write both an intensely scientific and rational heroine in Astrid and a deeply spiritual one in Wen. I also liked Yves, his relationship with Wen (which was not overexplained or melodramatized) and the fact that his background is clearly present but doesn't feel shoehorned in or look-at-me tokenistic. Just, very natural execution on a couple of things that I think generally tend to be less elegantly done.
"Innoculata" by Scott Westerfeld -- I liked the writing, especially the narration, and I liked the premise -- a randomly generated vaccine against zombiefication which nevertheless changes the person into a sort of semi-zombie. But to be honest I'd been expecting more from Westerfeld in the way of creative worldbuilding, given Uglies et al and what I've heard of his other stuff, and his zombies and anti-zombie measures were disappointingly ordinary.
"Princess Prettypants" by Meg Cabot -- OK, I've seen this one called out as one of the strongest stories and I don't get that. It was actually the story I liked least in the collection. I guess it's supposed to be delightfully ironic or something that the unicorn (which is a birthday gift) is named Princess Prettypants and literally farts rainbows, but I'm not seeing the irony. I liked Liz-the-protagonist well enough, but the story itself felt a lot more cliche than any of the others. There's an asshole bully who's the son of the sherriff! A cheating ex who leads her into a live of petty larceny! The boy-next-door whom she'd never noticed that way before but who wuvs her. And a dorky best friend Liz ends up having to rescue from a party. The best friend bugged me particularly because, as sensitively and elegantly as Wen's family's faith was handled in "Killer Unicorn", this story handled it about as subtly as a Saved by the Bell episode. The girl was homeschooled for nine years, has seven younger siblings, wears long skirts everywhere, and thinks it's inappropriate to kiss without being engaged. Just, no. And the plot is basically a story version of the Avenging Unicorn Playset, with a moral of sorts tacked on. About the only thing I liked about the story is that Liz renames her unicorn Gloria -- after Gloria Steinem.
"Cold Hands" by Cassie Clare -- not groundbreaking, but a nice way to add variety to the zombie crop, with a world where the zombies aren't a recently emerged threat but rather something that's been part of town life for centuries. It's another zombie love story, but what I liked best about it is the mix of modern (jeans, cell phones, cars) and fairy-tale staple (an evil duke, a commoner girl in love with a prince, coffins bound in bronze and salt, public executions), echoed even in the two names for the town where they live, Lychsgate/Zombietown.
"The Third Virgin" by Kathleen Duey -- this was an interesting one. I didn't much care for the writing (the part where the unicorn sneaks onto a ship headed for the New World by breaking off his horn is pretty ludicrous, for instance), and the narrator -- a unicorn -- was quite annoying (I have to agree with Larbalestier, what a whinger!), but the premise is just really interesting and original, if a tad anvilicious. The unicorn can heal people -- and/but chooses to take days or years off their life as he heals, and is addicted to the high he gets from it. Serial killing, emotionally abusive addict of a unicorn -- that's pretty cool! And I liked the ending, which underscores the point that people (unicorns) like that don't change.
"Prom Night" by Libba Bray -- a very grim story that I nevertheless liked a lot. A town of teenagers, because their parents are all dead following zombie infections, some of them killed by the kids in self-defense, some of them pushed out into the dessert to avoid spreading contagion. I liked Tashmina a lot, upholding the law even though she knows it's pretty much hopeless, and does her best, and is worried about her mother, who may still be alive, and I liked her relationship with her cop-partner Jeff and with Javier, and just the way she interact with everyone in town. Very well written and atmospheric -- it seems like Bray is a better short story writer than she is a novelist, in terms of writing quality, because I think I've liked all of her short stories a lot. And I liked this exchange: "'Who died and made you God?' 'Everybody,' Tashmina said quietly."
I'm a bit bummed that there weren't stories from the editors, Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier, themselves, but it was a very good anthology even without that. One of the things that really struck me, reading this one pretty much on the heels of Strange Brew, is how much more diverse the characters in these YA stories were, and how much more naturally that was treated. Two of the stories featured a gay relationship (one male, one female, with some evidence of bisexuality, too), and there was a fairly major gay character in another story ("Prom Night"), but in all three cases it didn't feel like A Thing, just part of who the characters were. One, probably two of the protagonists (at least) are POCs and children of immigrants on at least one side, and it would seem that so are two of the love interests in another story. One of the protagonists practices Zoroastrianism, another is a devout Christian. I don't know how well the stories represent these characters vs reality, but it was neat to see, and also neat to see that all of these things were just aspects of the character, very important ones, but not THE defining characteristics or cliches, and that the information was implied via natural detail, not artificially highlighted. And because of that last part, it also doesn't feel like these characters are the *only* non-straight, non-white, non-whatever ones. It really feels like watching the evolution of media in action, and it's neat.
So, anyway, yeah, really enjoyed this anthology, even though I have to say the subject matter feels rather grown-up for YA -- there is a ton of swearing, violence (and not just in the zombie stories), (implied) sex, mentions of drug use, even a spot of offscreen bestiality. So, not something I'll be handing my kids any time soon, but the stories are very, very solid.
My favorites were "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and "The Care and Feeding etc.", but "Prom Night" is also very good, and most of the others were well worth reading as well.