Reading roundup
3. Steven Brust, The Phoenix Guards -- I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, though I still definitely prefer the Vlad Taltos books. Paarfi's style is something I find more frustrating than funny, especially when it comes to dialogue, a deterrent rather than a bonus when it comes to this series. But, OK, it was not too bad.
I was expecting to like Aerich, because Athos has always been my favorite by far, but I think I actually was least enamoured of him of all four companions. Maybe because I kept mentally comparing him to Athos and coming up short? I did, however, find his crocheting hilarious -- and then it turned out to be somewhat plot-significant (he was crocheting the Arylle arms), which was even funnier. Anyway, Khaarven was thoroughly charming, both sharp (and thus a character I could respect) and adorkable in his enthusiasm and hero-worship of Aerich. I especially liked how he found a way to convince Tazendra to retain Mica as a lackey even though it was not fashionable, by essentially daring her to take on fashion as she would any enemy attempting to get her to behave in a certain way. Tazendra the Boisterous Bruiser was a lot of fun, with lines like: "'Come, let us get these brave men to a healer.' || 'Well,' said Tazendra, 'I'm afraid I've killed mine, but I'll help with the others.'" And while Pel is not especially colorful by virtue of being so discreet, his ploy with the arresting guardsman and Jenicor was so masterful that I can't help but admire him. I also liked Mica the plucky Teckla with his trusty barstool. And, proving that I have a consistent thing for Dragons, I liked Uttrick and Kaluma and their vengeance-turned-bromance, and Adron, whom I hadn't expected to like. I liked Adron lots, actually, from the moment when he thinks Our Heroes have come to arrest him and not only shows every intent of going with them but actually reassures them that they are safe in his lands. I definitely want to see more of him -- in Five Hundred Years After, presumably?
There were quite a few Crowning Moments of Awesome, especially when Our Heroes are facing off against the Easterners' army:
"Whence came those troops I see upon that field, which was empty an hour ago?"
[...]
"Well," said Crionofenarr, "they do not seem to be advancing."
"No, they are waiting," said Khaavren.
"Well, and what are they waiting for?"
"Kieron's boots!" said Khaavren. "They are waiting to see if they are needed."
And then all the revelations at the end, not only of Aerich's true heritage, which was clear long in advance, but also of Tazendra's parents' role and how they were proper Dzur heroes after all.
I enjoyed a lot of the worldbuilding details, as per usual, like the position of the royal Discreet, and the story about the name of Bengloarafurd: "The serioli, who departed the area [...] left only the name for the place, which was 'Ben,' meaning 'ford' in their language. The Easterners called the place 'Ben Ford,' or, in the Eastern tongue, 'Ben gazlo'. || After ten years of fierce battle, the Imperial Army won a great victory on the spot, driving the easterners well back into the mountains. The Dragonlords who had found the place, then, began calling it 'Bengazlo Ford.' The dragons, wishing to waste as little time on speech as possible, shortened this to Benglo Ford, or, in the tongue of the Dragon, which was still in use at thi time, 'Benglo ara.' Eventually, over the course of the millennia, the gongue of the Dragon fell out of use, and the North-western language gained prominence, which rendered the location Bengloara Ford, which was eventually shortened to Bengloarafurd. The river crossing became the Bengloarafurd Ford, which name it held until after the Interregnum when the river was dredged and the Bengloarafurd Bridge was built. Should anyone be interested in fidning this delightful city, it still stands, and the bridge still appears with the name we have cited, but the city was renamed Troe after the engineer who built the bridge, either because the citizens were proud of their new landmark, or because the engineer's name was short."
Oh, also, loved the the ceremonial dueling circle apparently being a rectangle. And also the expression, "without the Orb" in the sense of "off the record." Alo the inn "The Painted Sign" -- and the story of how it came about -- was pretty damn funny. Also, the play The Return of Duke Highwater is meant to be making fun of Waiting for Godot, right?
I don't think I realized the Serioli were supposed to be ~Dwarves before, though of course it makes sense. Not sure what I think of the Serioli language occasionally being Russian, apparently, except, "XD". At least it was pretty good Russian.
Quotes:
"It would seem, therefore, that if we were to allow our readers, by virtue of being in the company of the historian, to eavesdrop on this interchange, we will have, in one scene, discharged two obligations: a sacrifice, if we may say so, to the god Brevity, whom all historians, indeed, all who work with the written word, ought to worship. We cannot say too little on the subject."
4. Diana Peterfreund, Ascendant -- Yeah, so... as much as I loved Rampant, I can't say that I liked this sequel nearly as much. A couple of reviews I read actually compared it favorably to Rampant, calling it more complex, but in this case it seems like "complex" is code for "kind of a mess". I was really disappointed for the middle two thirds of the book, and then the ending did kind of tie things together, mostly, but I still didn't think it was as good a book as Rampant, by a long shot. Major SPOILERS!
It had a lot of the same ingredients as Rampant... but too much, and in the wrong proportions, and for a large stretch of the book it felt like just a bunch of random things being tossed on top of each other, soap-opera-like. Cory is losing her hunter magic to some mysterious illness! The church is dictating terms in exchange for funds! Love triangle with Giovanni and Astrid's ex! Isabeau and the search for the Remedy! Various approaches to unicorn environmentalism! The sensationalization of unicorn hunting! And then, of course, Astrid's injury and brain damage. Any two or three of these would make for interesting threads in a book. But all of them together just added up to a mess, as far as I'm concerned.
Also, this book seemed to be moving away from some of the aspects I loved about the first book. Astrid continuing to see herself as a scientist -- there is still some lip service paid to that, but I felt like it was being moved to the background, both in her view of herself (which I could kind of see; she thinks of herself as a high school dropout and so on) and also by the narrative (suddenly, after her injury, calculus is hard and she is choosing to learn Latin instead. Um, why?) Also, I'd liked that Astrid and Giovanni were decently mature about their relationship, and it would've been nice to have an example of a mature, functional relationship that has a deep connection and desire but does not involve all-out sex. But no, we had to have drama, with Giovanni moving back to New York -- understandable, and a long-distance relationship could've been tough but interesting -- and then Astrid meeting up with Brandt (which, OK, was clearly going to happen at some point, the way his disappearance was set up in Rampant), and the whole, 'But could Giovanni really love me?' thing... It's not that I couldn't see something like that happening with a long-distance relationship with two teenagers, especially given the stresses on them both, but... I dunno, the way Astrid was reacting just didn't seem true to her character for me. And it didn't seem fair to Giovanni, either, who was nothing but trustworthy and mature throughout the whole thing... I hope that's not retconned some way in a later volume.
Another thing I didn't like: Astrid's mother. Even in Rampant she was edging towards being a purely negative character, but I felt like there was enough there to show that she was screwed up and ineffectual -- but still loved Astrid, in her own way. In Ascendant, though, she is purely poisonous and after only her image. That was kind of hard to swallow, even in light of the less-than-perfect Lilith of the previous book.
There were some things I did like, though. I liked the tension between environmentalism and scientific research when it came to the unicorns. Where Astrid drew the line -- cosmetics -- felt well-reasoned. And I liked the fact that her environmentalist protester allies turned out to be ecoterrorists (well, at least one of them) -- I didn't think the book would go there, but I'm glad it did, because that's certainly part of reality. I liked that there's no instant happily ever after for Phil and Neil, and how Phil is dealing with the consequences of her rape, that it hasn't just been dropped.
I was intrigued by the true source of the Remedy, and what Astrid does when she finds out, the revelation of Brandt's role in the whole thing. I am rather curious how -- logistically -- it works. What physical aspect carries the virginity given up? I'm a bit surprised that Astrid didn't wonder about it, although I suspect that's mostly because the author didn't want to go into it.
I liked Isabeau and her relationship with Astrid, especially when Astrid realizes at one point that Isabeau is asking for her opinion as a scientist, not a hunter -- and am glad she was never a full-on villain. Brandt was appropriately pathetic. I liked Astrid's half sister, at the very end -- it would be interesting to see more of her. And, after I'd read the short story in the Zombies vs Unicorns anthology, I was hoping we'd see Wen in the main narrative, and sure enough, there she was -- though not a whole lot of her. Actually, I was quite sad that we didn't really get to see any of the other hunters develop appreciably, though it was neat that she chose to show a hunter making the call to get out and another one actually dying. The Cory + Valeria revelation kind of came out of nowhere and I felt it was just sort of tossed in without adequate follow-through -- though I'm glad she dealt with the issue of virginity vs lesbian sex. I can see how the way she dealt with it could raise eyebrows... Me, I'm waiting to see what the essence of unicorn-salient hunger virginity entail, and if it's internally consistent, then I'm fine with it. I would really have liked to see more of Cory, though -- I find her among the more interesting characters.
I thought Astrid's brain damage storyline was kind of deus ex machiny, but I did like the way Astrid dealt with it, and the way the other hunters are chosen to. I don't think it adds a whole lot to the plot, but if it had to be in there, I guess it was handled not badly. Similarly, I think the increased interaction with the church was handled quite well, respecting both sides of the debate. I also liked it that just because the unicorn hunters have magical powers, they ar enot exempt from the mudane consideration of any "relief organization", as Neil puts it -- money and logistics and all of that. I also do like it that even though Astrid may think of herself increasingly as a hunter, both she and Phil have not abandoned their pre-unicorn interests -- medical school and volleyball, they are just putting them on hold because there are more important things to do.
It was also neat to see another view of a baby unicorn, this one raised by its mother, unlike Flower/Flayer in the short story. I especially liked this line: "After a few weeks of nursing, the baby began eating regurgitated meat from its mother's mouth, which was a lot more difficult to witness, but still fascinating from a scientific standpoint." And also the concept of unicorn parasites.
There are some deep conversations in this book, about animal rights and animal testing, about being a survivor, what boils down to informed consent, even a brief conversation on confidence and all female education. Some of them are a bit clunky -- clunkier than I found them in Rampant, anyway -- others are pretty well done. And there's mention of Hildegaard, of whom Isabeau is a fan, though Astrid is not particularly sold on the more mystical aspects.
I still liked a lot about this book, I guess. The way the issue of unicorns is treated in a lot of very realistic detail, no whitewashing of the less pretty parts or the difficult questions. I like the way it raises and wrestles with questions that have no easy right answers, even if it may do so a tad didactically at times, in terms of raising the questions if not as far as supplying any answers.
Peterfreund's website says she is not under contract for any more unicorn books. This is distressing, as to me Ascendant feels very much like the middle book in a trilogy -- messy and transitional, but definitely not the end.
5. Holly Black, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories -- I grabbed this book for the Tithe-verse stories, but actually ended up liking the other ones more. I think Holly Black is one of the better fantasy short story writers, actually. She has a very engaging narrative style and a decent breadth of subgenres. Spoilers for individual stories
"The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" -- a vampire story. Not only does this vampirism not sparkle, it's not very attractive at all, which is great -- although some people still find it so.
"A Reversal of Fortune" -- I didn't reread it this time, but I liked it a lot when I read it in... whatever anthology that was in. Girl vs the Devil in an eating contest = pretty awesome.
"The Boy Who Cried Wolf" -- the least interesting story, for me, but still a neat take on werewolves. I especially liked the last line: "His mouth watered and he crept closer. || She might be someone's grandmother, but at least she wasn't his."
"The Night Market" -- a faerie story set in the Phillipines, which was interesting (though I'm not a good judge of whether she does justice to the setting). Of course I already know I like her faeries, but this one also featured an interesting take on an enchanted love-potion like object, one that I've not seen before. It could've been cheesy, but it wasn't.
"The Dog King" -- the first non-urban fantasy story, and, eh, I do think urban fantasy is her forte. This was pretty good -- creepy in all the right ways -- but not one I would consider my favorite.
"Virgin" -- a unicorn story, with the twist that the virgin is a guy, deflowered by the narrator, a girl -- but there's definitely more to it than that. There are some neat lines in it: "Tany had one prosthetic leg made from this shiny pink plastic stuff; so she looked like she was part Barbie doll, part girl. She loved to wear short, tight skirts and platform shoes to show off her leg." And Tanya on Jen and Zachary reading The Hobbit: "'Seriously,' she said. 'Reading this stuff would depress me. People like us, we;re not in those kinds of books. They're not for us.' || I stared at her. It might have been the worst thing anybody had ever said to me. || Because no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't make it feel any less true." I was reflecting, at this point in the book, that all of Black's urban fantasy is full of kids living on the street, drinking, smoking, doing drugs, having sex. Probably disproportionately so, and it was starting to annoy me a little -- but I can understand it as a counterweight to the books that "aren't" for people like them, at least according to Tanya.
"In Vodka Veritas" -- Bacchanalia at a boarding school's junior prom. I liked this story a lot -- it was a lot of fun, and the narrator/protagonist was quite funny, less grim than in a lot of the other stories. I was getting slashy vibes between him and his best friend, and that turned out to be fully intentional. The scene where he comes out to said friend is actually awesome:
"You're not sorry," he says and for a moment the words hang dangerously in the air, able to mean too many things. "You got to kiss Abby Goldstein," he finally finishes, and we can both laugh.
"And you," I say, surprising myself. There I go, not thinking about consequences. I'm not even sure I know what I mean. No, I know what I mean.
"Yeah?" he asks.
I nod miserably. He knows what I mean too.
"That's cool," Danny says. "'Cause I'm such a stud, huh?"
"You're such an asshole," I say, but I laugh.
I also thought the effects of the spell were a lot better handled than in Jim Butcher's "Last Call", which deals with similar circumstances. There it's played for laughs and fanservice, I felt. Here, it came across as suitably awful.
"The Coat of Stars" -- I think this is the only story in the collection focused on a grown person rather than a teenager, which was a nice bit of variety. I liked the allusions to stories about tailors (there are a lot of them, and I've always been fond), and the modern take on a tailor (Rafael is a costume maker), and the other fairy tale tropes invoked, like the "three nights to win back an enchanted bridegroom" motif. I liked the look at Rafael's family (though that, too, skewed kind of grim, albeit not as grim as Lyle's family life), the way they didn't talk about his homosexuality but at least his sister guessed.
I liked the way Rafael realized the Lyle that died had been a changeling -- the "pretend me" connection with his kidnapped nephew, the leaves hi the poison ring where he had put a lock of Lyle's hair. When he saw Lyle among the faeries, looking as young as when he'd "died", I was wondering how she was going to handle the age difference issue. She did it by aging Lyle up the instant he left the Faeries ("Leaving us, even for a time, has a price") but I thought that was a cop-out that didn't make much sense. Not that I think a borderline pedo scene would've been appropriate, but, well... And I liked this line a lot: "He smiled up at [his mother] and thought of all the gifts he had brought at the holidays -- cashmere gloves and leather coats and bottles of perfume. He had never sewn a single thing for her. Making gifts has seemed cheap, like he was giving her a child's misshapen vase or a card colored with crayons. But the elegant, meaningless presents he had sent were cold, revealing nothing about him and even less about her. Imagining her in a silk dress the color of papayas -- one he might sew himself -- filled him with shame."
"Paper Cuts Scissors" -- the Dewey Decimal System subheadings are gimmicky and not particularly tied to the action, but they were interesting. I really enjoyed the story itself, less for what was happening in it and more for just the conceit of characters from various books getting to hang out and have a party, because something exactly like that was the favorite game of my childhood. There are some neat references to favorite characters, and a partial quote from The Sandman even -- it's a toast. And the explanation of RPS (that's rock, paper, scissors of course) strategy was neat, too. One of my favorite lines (about the protagonist's girlfriend, who put herself in a book): "He leaned over the side, scannin all the faces for Linda's. He tried to remember what she looked like; he kept thinking of lines of description instead. Her hair was 'thick chestnut curls like the shining mane of a horse' in the book. He was pretty sure he'd read a passage about her eyes being 'amber as the pin at her throat,' but he remembered them as brown." I liked the ending, too.
"Going Ironside" -- a Tithe-verse ficlet, appropriately creepy; I think I may have actually read it before.
"The Land of Heart's Desire" -- so this is actually a story with the principals of Tithe and sequels, focused on Corny and Roiben. And, eh, not great, I thought. I think I like reading about Roiben a lot more than his POV, though there were some interesting revelations about his childhood and a funny moment of him at the till. And the discussion of free choice in love is fairly well done. But overall, eh.
"The Poison Eaters" -- lovely creepy fairy tale about three girls who are raised eating poison and become poisonous to the touch. There's a real fairytale atmosphere to it, a progression of deaths, and then the resolution of the story-within-a-story which ties it to the framing story. And the framing story ending is sort of morbidly romantic, and there are black humour elements througout the story (e.g. "'Stop feeling sorry for yourself,' said Alice. Lack of corporeal form had not made her any less bossy.") as well as the straigtforward creepy ones. Just, really well done -- I liked it.
6. Adam Rex, Fat Vampire -- I picked up this book because it's by the same author as The True Meaning of Smekday, and I don't regret that I did, but it's certainly a very different book than Smekday. For one thing, it's YA rather than kidlit, and for another... well. MAJORLY SPOILERY
It starts out quite comical: Doug the fifteen-year-old chubby newly made vampire is trying to pick up a girl at a party. He and his friend Jay need to get into ComicCon early because Doug is burning up in the sun. He drinks blood from cows at home and in San Diego tries to sneak into a zoo exhibit for a snack and gets wallopped by a panda. Meanwhile, Sejal the exchange student has an amusingly dressed host family, a funny encounter at the airport, where the daughter of her host family is bothering a random Indian girl because she things the girl is Sejal, and Sejal has left India because of an amusing-sounding internet addiction -- she has "the Google". And the vampire hunter reality show is lame and played for laughs. All very amusing!
But gradually, as the book goes on, things become much darker. This is handled pretty well, I thought, because for me, at least, there wasn't any moment when I went, wait, what? where the tone shifted abruptly. No, it's just a gradual darker shading, as Doug becomes progressively distant from his humanity, his selfishness, horniness, and jealousy of the more popular boys, which were there from the beginning, overtaking his personality. And it turns out that Sejal's internet addiction is rather less amusing than it seems to be at first -- she was responsible for trolling a girl into a suicide attempt. And the lame vampire hunting reality show storyline culminates with a car accident and at least one death. I liked that aspect of it, I guess, even though I hadn't been expecting it. I'm a little more unsure of the ending, which is very open-ended, especially with respect to Doug. It feels a bit like Rex just couldn't come up with one, rather than a purposeful open-endedness.
I'm also not sure how I feel about the "villain" being a gay vampire. On the one hand, I don't think he's really a villain, in that he is sympathetic and tragic -- more sympathetic than the other older vampires, and not that much less sympathetic than Doug himself. It's also not an accidental or careless thing, because there's even a line about gay characters "They were always popping up in shows and movies and in the books he read. They used to be comic relief, but at some point it was like you weren't allowed to laugh anymore, and the gay characters were Very Serious. Their whole character would be about them being gay, and how serious and unfunny and also completely normal it was. In each new book, especially, there seemed to be one or two. Like the author wanted to prove what an open-minded, big-tent guy he was." And there are other non-straight characters in the book, and I think those are quite decently handled. But on the other hand, I found Jay to be the most sympathetic character in the book, and David attacks him brutally and kills his dog. So it's hard not to see him as the bad guy after all, and... It's certainly not his homosexuality that makes him a bad guy, but it's still, I don't know...
I'm also somewhat conflicted about Sejal. I liked a lot of the things about the US and the view of foreigners in the US that her character was there to say or precipitate being said. And I think I would have liked her, too, but I didn't feel like there was enough of her revealed. It's justified by the plot -- she's "lost her heart", had a full psychotic break quite recently, and she is also in a place where she is having to figure out how to behave, but she just didn't feel like a full-fledged character to me -- too detached -- and that's a pity, because I think she could've been an interesting one.
So, I liked it overall, but it left me feeling uneasy, and that's at least partially intentional, I'm sure. It reminded me of Christopher Moore's You Suck, and I think I liked it more than that one. But, I don't know, uneasily.
Quotes:
"...a middle-aged woman as blond and toothy as an ear of corn"
"Her startling toes clutched at the grass. || They were like hazelnuts. Her toes, her feet were a golden brown -- the same color as the rest of her, really; Doug couldn't imagine why it surprised him. He couldn't fathom why it made her feet look more naked than other feet."
"If there had been a fourth Little Pig who'd elected to build his house out of cigarette butts it might have looked and smelled something like this place."
"Doug nodded and looked at his feet. There was another pale rectangle here, this one in the center of the floor like the chalk outline of a dead coffee table."
"He killed time watching clips on YouTube, but nothing moved him. Where he'd once considered it his duty to tell people who posted stupid videos that their videos were stupid, it felt less important now in the grand scheme of things."
"And because she had a nice singing voice, and because the Ardwynne High School drama teacher, on a subconscious level, felt that a girl from India was somehow specially qualified to play a Puerto Rican, Sejal won the role of Maria."
"She comforted herself, however, with the insight that the movie would not kill off the well-meaning foreign-exchange student with the comical internet addiction. Sejal would't be the main character, the hero -- not in an American movie -- but she might be the best friend or the comic relief or the one you think is dead but turns out to be all right in the end. She wondered who the main character in her life was."
And I enjoyed the conversations about Gaiman and Kelly Link and Jonathan Coulton. And what I think might be a crack at Twilight (vampire baseball team), though I'm not sure the timing could support that.
7. Charlaine Harris, Dead in the Family -- I liked it more than I was expecting to. SPOILERS from here One of the things I liked was how the theme of family was really woven throughout -- usually the title is just some kind of throwaway phrase, but in this case it was really meaningful, and integrated very well into all the parts of the story: Sookie and Jason reestablishing their family ties after the whole traumatic thing with Crystal; Sookie spending time with her telepath nephew; Sookie and her fairy family, Claude and at the end Dermot; Bill finally revealing the family connection to the Bellefleurs, and how Miss Caroline took it (sorry to see her go, btw, and I just about teared up when I read that she had left her chocolate cake recipe to the town and it was going to be published in the paper); Bill and his vampire family, Judith, and the whole history there; and of course Eric and his vampire family, both his maker and "brother" and the family he made, Pam and Sookie; the new families being formed on the periphery, the pregnant couples, Calvin and Tanya, etc.; the faerie family that was broken with Claudine's death; and the way those different families interweave and come together. And I thought all of those themes worked together very well, if not especially subtly.
I'd always been intrigued by Claude, and enjoyed getting to see more of him, and ended up liking him more than I expected in the process (I think Sookie was a bit harsh on him in the earlier books -- he doesn't seem that bad). I especially liked Claude's interaction with Hunter (and the fact that Hunter thought both Eric and Claude had hair like a lady *snerk* \easily amused). I liked Ocella, who is dangerous and very much a liability but not actually a bad guy (although I do think the way he died was a bit of a copout), and Alexei was suitably creepy, pitiful and petulant and too dangerous to live. I liked all the interaction between Sookie and Pam and Eric, especially Pam and Sookie as action buddies (Pam is priceless; "You're a great vampire." "Yes, I am." XD).
I'm not sure what I think of the way the book handled Sookie's post-torture recovery. It was more than I'd expected, having there be several downtime weeks dealing specifically with Sookie's recovery. On the other hand, having it be segregated into its own non-chapters before the real book starts read like, OK, here's the recovery, now we can move on -- I think I would've liked it more if it had been integrated into the real book and not just checked off. And also, of course, Sookie's recovery seemed a bit too swift and smooth, but, vampire blood and an adventure novel, OK.
The werewolf subplot left me cold, as it has been doing lately, and I think Sookie was an idiot to drink the potion just because Alcide dared her, essentially. I did find it interesting what Sam said about running with the were pack (in wolf form) now that he's dating someone from there: "That would be like going to an NAACP meeting in blackface." Also, this: "When those demonstrators were at the bat roday, I was so mad at them for hating Weres and shifters without really knowing anything about them. But now I'm wondering how they'd feel if they actually knew more about how packs work; how Gran would feel if she knew I was willing to watch a woman, or anyone, be beaten and maybe killed for an infraction of some rules I don't live by."
Vampire large scale politics also not very interesting, but I feel compelled to point out that Zeus is Greek, not Roman. Shame on you, Eric! Oh, and why is NorCal division California San Jose? I would think SF would be the center, for historical reasons... unless there are a lot of vampire programmers in Silicon Valley (which would make sense, they could work their crazy hours) -- but then I find it doubtful that Bill's vampire Facebook project would the so unique. *clearly overthinking this*
I continue to like the little touches of domesticity and quotidiana, like the fact that because the book takes place in April, Sam actually has to deal with his taxes. I don't think I've ever seen mention a visit to a CPA in a fantasy book. Oh, and Sookie thinking about the logistics of starting a family if she stays with Eric, like artificial insemination. That's one of the things that I really like about this series: it does "modern" properly, in updating the vampire and were thing.
Oh, randomly, so Eric's spy in New Orleans: my money's on Bubba, mostly because I'm pretty sure that's the one character she will never kill off.
8. Jim Butcher, Side Jobs -- Hm. I think short story is just not a great medium for Butcher. It seems to downplay a lot of the charm of the novels and bring out some fairly unpleasant motifs, as a genre. Don't get me wrong, there were a number of stories I enjoyed on their own merits, like "It's My Birthday Too" and "Aftermath", but as a collection, this left rather a bad taste in my mouth. Almost all of the stories feature women in peril, often scantily clad women, punctuated occasionally with women as villains, usually beautiful women. And that gets old real quick. Spoilers
"A Restoration of Faith" -- you can readily tell this is an early effort, and the kid is not very kid-like, and Harry is rather more preachy, but it was interesting to see just how much of the flavor of the series was evident even in this first outing, including the first meeting with Murphy. And a pun in the title XD
"A Vignette" -- cute, for what it is. I find Bob amusing, so any conversation between him and Harry is good.
"Something Borrowed" (Dead Beat x Proven Guilty) -- OK, here it starts. Georgia gets kidnapped (take one) and lies naked and unconscious when they find her. There's an "evil stepmother" whom Harry insults on first meeting (calling her a bed warmer, "mid life crisis by-product" and the like), and the reason he feels guilty afterwards is that he might have made Billy's life harder. I did like the fact that Murphy accompanied Harry on the rescue mission. Of course, once the kiss that would have seal Billy's fate is averted, Harry runs back to find Murphy in need of CPR, which is right in-text compared to a kiss. Nice symbolism, but yet another woman getting rescued, meh. Continuity point: Murphy meets Bob for the first time.
"It's My Birthday Too" (White Night X Small Favor) -- one of the stories in this collection I actually liked, although there was a fair bit that irked me about it, too. Molly is inappropriately clad for the weather because she'd been fighting slime golems and needed to change into summer clothes, the only thing handy. The girl that gets Thomas to do the vampire LARP thing (which is how Harry ends up in the action) is wearing a bikini top, and at one point ends up pressed against Harry and trembling and turning him on. The bad guy is a woman (Black Court vamp), though for a change not a beautiful one. I did like Harry's Crowning Moment of Awesome, when he spits garlic into her eyes ("Couple of words of advice. First, anytime I'm not shooting my mouth off to a cliched, two-bit creature of the night like you, it's because I'm up to something.") And Harry's gift to Thomas of the Rock'em Sock'em Robots and the meaning behind it was very sweet. The cobs were cute. I find it difficult to believe that Harry, with his various nerdy pursuits, doesn't know what a LARP is. Continuity point: Thomas's birthday is Valentine's Day, aww. Quote: (Harry making fun of Thomas for using his fake French accent) "Hello, France? I found a dead mouse in my can of French roast coffee, and I've called to complain. I'm an American, and I refuse to stand for that kind of thing from you people.
"Heorot" (White Night x Small Favor) -- Victim: naked woman abducted for the purpose of rape (and then some). Harry gets a female sidekick (Ms Gard), who outclasses him, but of course he is still the one to actually vanquish the bad guy. And he gets a kiss from her at the end. Did have a couple of nice lines, though: "Caine and company departed in sullen silence, glaring daggers at me -- well, glaring letter openers, anyway; Caine didn't seem real sharp." And I loved the "are you allergic to dogs" line, too.
"Day Off" (Small Favor x Turn Coat) -- this one was probably the worst. Naked Andi coming on to Harry under the influence of magic, Molly passing out and needing to be stripped because her clothes are covered in acid and given CPR. I mean, it's all set up so that Luccio (who is Harry's girlfriend at this point) will walk in on Harry surrounded by naked chicks. Really pretty skeevy. I did find Harry's objections to the rules on fireballs in D&D amusing, as well as the knock against the wannabe dark wizard Slitherfen, but that was about the only thing that was. Oh, and Mouse getting worked up more about danger to Mister than danger to Harry and Harry feeling jealous.
"Backup" (Small Favor x Turn Coat) -- Narrated by Thomas, and I kind of expected more from his voice, but it's an OK story (although here we go again with a female villain, part of a sisterhood of female villains -- and I guess that's mostly to set up how Thomas deals with her in the end). It's very nice to get a better look at what Thomas is actually up to, and the motivation of the vampires' involvement ("Because we don't like competition"). I liked reading the different view of magic Thomas has: "Harry waxes poetic about magic. He'll go on and on about how it comes from your feelings, and how it's a deep statement about the nature of your soul, and then he'll whip out some kind of half-divine half-insane philosophy he's cobbled together from the words of saints and comic books about the importance of handling power responsibly. [...] For the rest of us, here's what you need to know about magic: It's a skill."
"The Warrior" (Small Favor X Turn Coat) -- the Michael story, which was another one I had been eager to read. And I did like seeing how Michael and Charity are doing now that he's retired. The plot, a man who sees the Swords as being wasted because they're gathering dust in Harry's keeping and not being used is one I liked. The other aspects of it, less so. Once again, we have a girl being kidnapped (although, fortunately, Alicia was not sexualized). The "Harry unwittingly helps people" thing that Butcher was trying to do... didn't really work for me, though I suppose it's a nice enough idea. I just don't know that you can do it believably without it becoming treacly and/or fake. I did like seeing Michael, normally so calm, swearing and on the verge of striking a man purely out of anger, and those were affecting scenes. And "Harry Dresden. Saving the world, one act of random destruction at a time" made me LOL.
"Last Call" (Small Favor x Turn Coat) I read already, and it was ick, so I didn't reread it. But, yep, beautiful female villain, Murphy getting whammied in a fanservice-y way, and then Harry deciding not to tell her anything about it. Just, ick.
"Love Hurts" (Turn Coat x Changes) -- Beautiful villain, check. Murphy getting whammied to come on to Harry, check. But I actually kind of liked this story -- it was a nice set-up for the Harry/Murphy resolution-that-wasn't in Changes, a nice lead-up to it. The conversation between Luccio and Harry was... probably best avoided, because that whole situation was rather questionable. I liked the conversation between Harry and Murphy about Kincaid (and Murphy's relationship with him), and the fact that even whammied Harry asks "What about Kincaid" and Murphy actually stops to think about it. And I liked that the Red Court vamp's motivation was, once again, getting rid of competition (from the White Court).
"Aftermath" -- naturally, the one I was looking forward to the most, and I liked it, as much as I normally like Dresden books. I'd expected it to focus more on Harry's death and people dealing with it, so the fact that it was essentially a solo adventure for Murphy -- while still being permeated by her thoughts and feelings about Harry -- came as a pleasant surprise. I liked Murphy's voice well enough, although I think Butcher was trying a bit too hard, early on, with all the "Martian translations" and stuff (although it was neat when she didn't know how to read/respond to Gard because she is used to dealing with men in those types of circumstances). We get it, Murphy is a woman in a man's world, OK. I liked her conversation with Marcone and turning down a job offer from him (and again, via Ms Gard). I liked the fact that Marcone has stepped in as defender of Chicago from supernatural baddies, and Murphy's take on it ("Every predator defends its territory"), and the discussion of the formation of the Justice League of Chicago ("Dibs on Batman"). It was neat to see how Murphy sees Harry -- as a lot more formidable and in control than Harry sees himself (and than we know he is). It was also neat to see how much more paranoid and reluctant to trust Murphy is (e.g. with Marcy), where Harry generally just goes by gut feel -- and is very often wrong. I'm not sure what I think of Murphy's mental monologue about why she shouldn't go back for the Sword when outnumbered... that logic didn't make a lot of sense to me -- but I did like the fact that she went in armed only with mortal weapons and kicked ass. (With the help of two werewolves and knowledge of magic she picked up from Harry, but still.) And for some reason I was particularly moved to read that she is wearing double-thickness Kevlar enhanced with titanium chainmail made by Charity. I didn't like -- Georgia as a victim again, though this time she was only largely passive instead of totally passive, Murphy thinking cattily about Andi's rack (we get it, Butcher, the girl is stacked; we don't need two separate POVs of that).
Currently reading: Sisters Red, Five Hundred Years After, Sweet Far Thing (sort of)
I was expecting to like Aerich, because Athos has always been my favorite by far, but I think I actually was least enamoured of him of all four companions. Maybe because I kept mentally comparing him to Athos and coming up short? I did, however, find his crocheting hilarious -- and then it turned out to be somewhat plot-significant (he was crocheting the Arylle arms), which was even funnier. Anyway, Khaarven was thoroughly charming, both sharp (and thus a character I could respect) and adorkable in his enthusiasm and hero-worship of Aerich. I especially liked how he found a way to convince Tazendra to retain Mica as a lackey even though it was not fashionable, by essentially daring her to take on fashion as she would any enemy attempting to get her to behave in a certain way. Tazendra the Boisterous Bruiser was a lot of fun, with lines like: "'Come, let us get these brave men to a healer.' || 'Well,' said Tazendra, 'I'm afraid I've killed mine, but I'll help with the others.'" And while Pel is not especially colorful by virtue of being so discreet, his ploy with the arresting guardsman and Jenicor was so masterful that I can't help but admire him. I also liked Mica the plucky Teckla with his trusty barstool. And, proving that I have a consistent thing for Dragons, I liked Uttrick and Kaluma and their vengeance-turned-bromance, and Adron, whom I hadn't expected to like. I liked Adron lots, actually, from the moment when he thinks Our Heroes have come to arrest him and not only shows every intent of going with them but actually reassures them that they are safe in his lands. I definitely want to see more of him -- in Five Hundred Years After, presumably?
There were quite a few Crowning Moments of Awesome, especially when Our Heroes are facing off against the Easterners' army:
"Whence came those troops I see upon that field, which was empty an hour ago?"
[...]
"Well," said Crionofenarr, "they do not seem to be advancing."
"No, they are waiting," said Khaavren.
"Well, and what are they waiting for?"
"Kieron's boots!" said Khaavren. "They are waiting to see if they are needed."
And then all the revelations at the end, not only of Aerich's true heritage, which was clear long in advance, but also of Tazendra's parents' role and how they were proper Dzur heroes after all.
I enjoyed a lot of the worldbuilding details, as per usual, like the position of the royal Discreet, and the story about the name of Bengloarafurd: "The serioli, who departed the area [...] left only the name for the place, which was 'Ben,' meaning 'ford' in their language. The Easterners called the place 'Ben Ford,' or, in the Eastern tongue, 'Ben gazlo'. || After ten years of fierce battle, the Imperial Army won a great victory on the spot, driving the easterners well back into the mountains. The Dragonlords who had found the place, then, began calling it 'Bengazlo Ford.' The dragons, wishing to waste as little time on speech as possible, shortened this to Benglo Ford, or, in the tongue of the Dragon, which was still in use at thi time, 'Benglo ara.' Eventually, over the course of the millennia, the gongue of the Dragon fell out of use, and the North-western language gained prominence, which rendered the location Bengloara Ford, which was eventually shortened to Bengloarafurd. The river crossing became the Bengloarafurd Ford, which name it held until after the Interregnum when the river was dredged and the Bengloarafurd Bridge was built. Should anyone be interested in fidning this delightful city, it still stands, and the bridge still appears with the name we have cited, but the city was renamed Troe after the engineer who built the bridge, either because the citizens were proud of their new landmark, or because the engineer's name was short."
Oh, also, loved the the ceremonial dueling circle apparently being a rectangle. And also the expression, "without the Orb" in the sense of "off the record." Alo the inn "The Painted Sign" -- and the story of how it came about -- was pretty damn funny. Also, the play The Return of Duke Highwater is meant to be making fun of Waiting for Godot, right?
I don't think I realized the Serioli were supposed to be ~Dwarves before, though of course it makes sense. Not sure what I think of the Serioli language occasionally being Russian, apparently, except, "XD". At least it was pretty good Russian.
Quotes:
"It would seem, therefore, that if we were to allow our readers, by virtue of being in the company of the historian, to eavesdrop on this interchange, we will have, in one scene, discharged two obligations: a sacrifice, if we may say so, to the god Brevity, whom all historians, indeed, all who work with the written word, ought to worship. We cannot say too little on the subject."
4. Diana Peterfreund, Ascendant -- Yeah, so... as much as I loved Rampant, I can't say that I liked this sequel nearly as much. A couple of reviews I read actually compared it favorably to Rampant, calling it more complex, but in this case it seems like "complex" is code for "kind of a mess". I was really disappointed for the middle two thirds of the book, and then the ending did kind of tie things together, mostly, but I still didn't think it was as good a book as Rampant, by a long shot. Major SPOILERS!
It had a lot of the same ingredients as Rampant... but too much, and in the wrong proportions, and for a large stretch of the book it felt like just a bunch of random things being tossed on top of each other, soap-opera-like. Cory is losing her hunter magic to some mysterious illness! The church is dictating terms in exchange for funds! Love triangle with Giovanni and Astrid's ex! Isabeau and the search for the Remedy! Various approaches to unicorn environmentalism! The sensationalization of unicorn hunting! And then, of course, Astrid's injury and brain damage. Any two or three of these would make for interesting threads in a book. But all of them together just added up to a mess, as far as I'm concerned.
Also, this book seemed to be moving away from some of the aspects I loved about the first book. Astrid continuing to see herself as a scientist -- there is still some lip service paid to that, but I felt like it was being moved to the background, both in her view of herself (which I could kind of see; she thinks of herself as a high school dropout and so on) and also by the narrative (suddenly, after her injury, calculus is hard and she is choosing to learn Latin instead. Um, why?) Also, I'd liked that Astrid and Giovanni were decently mature about their relationship, and it would've been nice to have an example of a mature, functional relationship that has a deep connection and desire but does not involve all-out sex. But no, we had to have drama, with Giovanni moving back to New York -- understandable, and a long-distance relationship could've been tough but interesting -- and then Astrid meeting up with Brandt (which, OK, was clearly going to happen at some point, the way his disappearance was set up in Rampant), and the whole, 'But could Giovanni really love me?' thing... It's not that I couldn't see something like that happening with a long-distance relationship with two teenagers, especially given the stresses on them both, but... I dunno, the way Astrid was reacting just didn't seem true to her character for me. And it didn't seem fair to Giovanni, either, who was nothing but trustworthy and mature throughout the whole thing... I hope that's not retconned some way in a later volume.
Another thing I didn't like: Astrid's mother. Even in Rampant she was edging towards being a purely negative character, but I felt like there was enough there to show that she was screwed up and ineffectual -- but still loved Astrid, in her own way. In Ascendant, though, she is purely poisonous and after only her image. That was kind of hard to swallow, even in light of the less-than-perfect Lilith of the previous book.
There were some things I did like, though. I liked the tension between environmentalism and scientific research when it came to the unicorns. Where Astrid drew the line -- cosmetics -- felt well-reasoned. And I liked the fact that her environmentalist protester allies turned out to be ecoterrorists (well, at least one of them) -- I didn't think the book would go there, but I'm glad it did, because that's certainly part of reality. I liked that there's no instant happily ever after for Phil and Neil, and how Phil is dealing with the consequences of her rape, that it hasn't just been dropped.
I was intrigued by the true source of the Remedy, and what Astrid does when she finds out, the revelation of Brandt's role in the whole thing. I am rather curious how -- logistically -- it works. What physical aspect carries the virginity given up? I'm a bit surprised that Astrid didn't wonder about it, although I suspect that's mostly because the author didn't want to go into it.
I liked Isabeau and her relationship with Astrid, especially when Astrid realizes at one point that Isabeau is asking for her opinion as a scientist, not a hunter -- and am glad she was never a full-on villain. Brandt was appropriately pathetic. I liked Astrid's half sister, at the very end -- it would be interesting to see more of her. And, after I'd read the short story in the Zombies vs Unicorns anthology, I was hoping we'd see Wen in the main narrative, and sure enough, there she was -- though not a whole lot of her. Actually, I was quite sad that we didn't really get to see any of the other hunters develop appreciably, though it was neat that she chose to show a hunter making the call to get out and another one actually dying. The Cory + Valeria revelation kind of came out of nowhere and I felt it was just sort of tossed in without adequate follow-through -- though I'm glad she dealt with the issue of virginity vs lesbian sex. I can see how the way she dealt with it could raise eyebrows... Me, I'm waiting to see what the essence of unicorn-salient hunger virginity entail, and if it's internally consistent, then I'm fine with it. I would really have liked to see more of Cory, though -- I find her among the more interesting characters.
I thought Astrid's brain damage storyline was kind of deus ex machiny, but I did like the way Astrid dealt with it, and the way the other hunters are chosen to. I don't think it adds a whole lot to the plot, but if it had to be in there, I guess it was handled not badly. Similarly, I think the increased interaction with the church was handled quite well, respecting both sides of the debate. I also liked it that just because the unicorn hunters have magical powers, they ar enot exempt from the mudane consideration of any "relief organization", as Neil puts it -- money and logistics and all of that. I also do like it that even though Astrid may think of herself increasingly as a hunter, both she and Phil have not abandoned their pre-unicorn interests -- medical school and volleyball, they are just putting them on hold because there are more important things to do.
It was also neat to see another view of a baby unicorn, this one raised by its mother, unlike Flower/Flayer in the short story. I especially liked this line: "After a few weeks of nursing, the baby began eating regurgitated meat from its mother's mouth, which was a lot more difficult to witness, but still fascinating from a scientific standpoint." And also the concept of unicorn parasites.
There are some deep conversations in this book, about animal rights and animal testing, about being a survivor, what boils down to informed consent, even a brief conversation on confidence and all female education. Some of them are a bit clunky -- clunkier than I found them in Rampant, anyway -- others are pretty well done. And there's mention of Hildegaard, of whom Isabeau is a fan, though Astrid is not particularly sold on the more mystical aspects.
I still liked a lot about this book, I guess. The way the issue of unicorns is treated in a lot of very realistic detail, no whitewashing of the less pretty parts or the difficult questions. I like the way it raises and wrestles with questions that have no easy right answers, even if it may do so a tad didactically at times, in terms of raising the questions if not as far as supplying any answers.
Peterfreund's website says she is not under contract for any more unicorn books. This is distressing, as to me Ascendant feels very much like the middle book in a trilogy -- messy and transitional, but definitely not the end.
5. Holly Black, The Poison Eaters and Other Stories -- I grabbed this book for the Tithe-verse stories, but actually ended up liking the other ones more. I think Holly Black is one of the better fantasy short story writers, actually. She has a very engaging narrative style and a decent breadth of subgenres. Spoilers for individual stories
"The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" -- a vampire story. Not only does this vampirism not sparkle, it's not very attractive at all, which is great -- although some people still find it so.
"A Reversal of Fortune" -- I didn't reread it this time, but I liked it a lot when I read it in... whatever anthology that was in. Girl vs the Devil in an eating contest = pretty awesome.
"The Boy Who Cried Wolf" -- the least interesting story, for me, but still a neat take on werewolves. I especially liked the last line: "His mouth watered and he crept closer. || She might be someone's grandmother, but at least she wasn't his."
"The Night Market" -- a faerie story set in the Phillipines, which was interesting (though I'm not a good judge of whether she does justice to the setting). Of course I already know I like her faeries, but this one also featured an interesting take on an enchanted love-potion like object, one that I've not seen before. It could've been cheesy, but it wasn't.
"The Dog King" -- the first non-urban fantasy story, and, eh, I do think urban fantasy is her forte. This was pretty good -- creepy in all the right ways -- but not one I would consider my favorite.
"Virgin" -- a unicorn story, with the twist that the virgin is a guy, deflowered by the narrator, a girl -- but there's definitely more to it than that. There are some neat lines in it: "Tany had one prosthetic leg made from this shiny pink plastic stuff; so she looked like she was part Barbie doll, part girl. She loved to wear short, tight skirts and platform shoes to show off her leg." And Tanya on Jen and Zachary reading The Hobbit: "'Seriously,' she said. 'Reading this stuff would depress me. People like us, we;re not in those kinds of books. They're not for us.' || I stared at her. It might have been the worst thing anybody had ever said to me. || Because no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't make it feel any less true." I was reflecting, at this point in the book, that all of Black's urban fantasy is full of kids living on the street, drinking, smoking, doing drugs, having sex. Probably disproportionately so, and it was starting to annoy me a little -- but I can understand it as a counterweight to the books that "aren't" for people like them, at least according to Tanya.
"In Vodka Veritas" -- Bacchanalia at a boarding school's junior prom. I liked this story a lot -- it was a lot of fun, and the narrator/protagonist was quite funny, less grim than in a lot of the other stories. I was getting slashy vibes between him and his best friend, and that turned out to be fully intentional. The scene where he comes out to said friend is actually awesome:
"You're not sorry," he says and for a moment the words hang dangerously in the air, able to mean too many things. "You got to kiss Abby Goldstein," he finally finishes, and we can both laugh.
"And you," I say, surprising myself. There I go, not thinking about consequences. I'm not even sure I know what I mean. No, I know what I mean.
"Yeah?" he asks.
I nod miserably. He knows what I mean too.
"That's cool," Danny says. "'Cause I'm such a stud, huh?"
"You're such an asshole," I say, but I laugh.
I also thought the effects of the spell were a lot better handled than in Jim Butcher's "Last Call", which deals with similar circumstances. There it's played for laughs and fanservice, I felt. Here, it came across as suitably awful.
"The Coat of Stars" -- I think this is the only story in the collection focused on a grown person rather than a teenager, which was a nice bit of variety. I liked the allusions to stories about tailors (there are a lot of them, and I've always been fond), and the modern take on a tailor (Rafael is a costume maker), and the other fairy tale tropes invoked, like the "three nights to win back an enchanted bridegroom" motif. I liked the look at Rafael's family (though that, too, skewed kind of grim, albeit not as grim as Lyle's family life), the way they didn't talk about his homosexuality but at least his sister guessed.
I liked the way Rafael realized the Lyle that died had been a changeling -- the "pretend me" connection with his kidnapped nephew, the leaves hi the poison ring where he had put a lock of Lyle's hair. When he saw Lyle among the faeries, looking as young as when he'd "died", I was wondering how she was going to handle the age difference issue. She did it by aging Lyle up the instant he left the Faeries ("Leaving us, even for a time, has a price") but I thought that was a cop-out that didn't make much sense. Not that I think a borderline pedo scene would've been appropriate, but, well... And I liked this line a lot: "He smiled up at [his mother] and thought of all the gifts he had brought at the holidays -- cashmere gloves and leather coats and bottles of perfume. He had never sewn a single thing for her. Making gifts has seemed cheap, like he was giving her a child's misshapen vase or a card colored with crayons. But the elegant, meaningless presents he had sent were cold, revealing nothing about him and even less about her. Imagining her in a silk dress the color of papayas -- one he might sew himself -- filled him with shame."
"Paper Cuts Scissors" -- the Dewey Decimal System subheadings are gimmicky and not particularly tied to the action, but they were interesting. I really enjoyed the story itself, less for what was happening in it and more for just the conceit of characters from various books getting to hang out and have a party, because something exactly like that was the favorite game of my childhood. There are some neat references to favorite characters, and a partial quote from The Sandman even -- it's a toast. And the explanation of RPS (that's rock, paper, scissors of course) strategy was neat, too. One of my favorite lines (about the protagonist's girlfriend, who put herself in a book): "He leaned over the side, scannin all the faces for Linda's. He tried to remember what she looked like; he kept thinking of lines of description instead. Her hair was 'thick chestnut curls like the shining mane of a horse' in the book. He was pretty sure he'd read a passage about her eyes being 'amber as the pin at her throat,' but he remembered them as brown." I liked the ending, too.
"Going Ironside" -- a Tithe-verse ficlet, appropriately creepy; I think I may have actually read it before.
"The Land of Heart's Desire" -- so this is actually a story with the principals of Tithe and sequels, focused on Corny and Roiben. And, eh, not great, I thought. I think I like reading about Roiben a lot more than his POV, though there were some interesting revelations about his childhood and a funny moment of him at the till. And the discussion of free choice in love is fairly well done. But overall, eh.
"The Poison Eaters" -- lovely creepy fairy tale about three girls who are raised eating poison and become poisonous to the touch. There's a real fairytale atmosphere to it, a progression of deaths, and then the resolution of the story-within-a-story which ties it to the framing story. And the framing story ending is sort of morbidly romantic, and there are black humour elements througout the story (e.g. "'Stop feeling sorry for yourself,' said Alice. Lack of corporeal form had not made her any less bossy.") as well as the straigtforward creepy ones. Just, really well done -- I liked it.
6. Adam Rex, Fat Vampire -- I picked up this book because it's by the same author as The True Meaning of Smekday, and I don't regret that I did, but it's certainly a very different book than Smekday. For one thing, it's YA rather than kidlit, and for another... well. MAJORLY SPOILERY
It starts out quite comical: Doug the fifteen-year-old chubby newly made vampire is trying to pick up a girl at a party. He and his friend Jay need to get into ComicCon early because Doug is burning up in the sun. He drinks blood from cows at home and in San Diego tries to sneak into a zoo exhibit for a snack and gets wallopped by a panda. Meanwhile, Sejal the exchange student has an amusingly dressed host family, a funny encounter at the airport, where the daughter of her host family is bothering a random Indian girl because she things the girl is Sejal, and Sejal has left India because of an amusing-sounding internet addiction -- she has "the Google". And the vampire hunter reality show is lame and played for laughs. All very amusing!
But gradually, as the book goes on, things become much darker. This is handled pretty well, I thought, because for me, at least, there wasn't any moment when I went, wait, what? where the tone shifted abruptly. No, it's just a gradual darker shading, as Doug becomes progressively distant from his humanity, his selfishness, horniness, and jealousy of the more popular boys, which were there from the beginning, overtaking his personality. And it turns out that Sejal's internet addiction is rather less amusing than it seems to be at first -- she was responsible for trolling a girl into a suicide attempt. And the lame vampire hunting reality show storyline culminates with a car accident and at least one death. I liked that aspect of it, I guess, even though I hadn't been expecting it. I'm a little more unsure of the ending, which is very open-ended, especially with respect to Doug. It feels a bit like Rex just couldn't come up with one, rather than a purposeful open-endedness.
I'm also not sure how I feel about the "villain" being a gay vampire. On the one hand, I don't think he's really a villain, in that he is sympathetic and tragic -- more sympathetic than the other older vampires, and not that much less sympathetic than Doug himself. It's also not an accidental or careless thing, because there's even a line about gay characters "They were always popping up in shows and movies and in the books he read. They used to be comic relief, but at some point it was like you weren't allowed to laugh anymore, and the gay characters were Very Serious. Their whole character would be about them being gay, and how serious and unfunny and also completely normal it was. In each new book, especially, there seemed to be one or two. Like the author wanted to prove what an open-minded, big-tent guy he was." And there are other non-straight characters in the book, and I think those are quite decently handled. But on the other hand, I found Jay to be the most sympathetic character in the book, and David attacks him brutally and kills his dog. So it's hard not to see him as the bad guy after all, and... It's certainly not his homosexuality that makes him a bad guy, but it's still, I don't know...
I'm also somewhat conflicted about Sejal. I liked a lot of the things about the US and the view of foreigners in the US that her character was there to say or precipitate being said. And I think I would have liked her, too, but I didn't feel like there was enough of her revealed. It's justified by the plot -- she's "lost her heart", had a full psychotic break quite recently, and she is also in a place where she is having to figure out how to behave, but she just didn't feel like a full-fledged character to me -- too detached -- and that's a pity, because I think she could've been an interesting one.
So, I liked it overall, but it left me feeling uneasy, and that's at least partially intentional, I'm sure. It reminded me of Christopher Moore's You Suck, and I think I liked it more than that one. But, I don't know, uneasily.
Quotes:
"...a middle-aged woman as blond and toothy as an ear of corn"
"Her startling toes clutched at the grass. || They were like hazelnuts. Her toes, her feet were a golden brown -- the same color as the rest of her, really; Doug couldn't imagine why it surprised him. He couldn't fathom why it made her feet look more naked than other feet."
"If there had been a fourth Little Pig who'd elected to build his house out of cigarette butts it might have looked and smelled something like this place."
"Doug nodded and looked at his feet. There was another pale rectangle here, this one in the center of the floor like the chalk outline of a dead coffee table."
"He killed time watching clips on YouTube, but nothing moved him. Where he'd once considered it his duty to tell people who posted stupid videos that their videos were stupid, it felt less important now in the grand scheme of things."
"And because she had a nice singing voice, and because the Ardwynne High School drama teacher, on a subconscious level, felt that a girl from India was somehow specially qualified to play a Puerto Rican, Sejal won the role of Maria."
"She comforted herself, however, with the insight that the movie would not kill off the well-meaning foreign-exchange student with the comical internet addiction. Sejal would't be the main character, the hero -- not in an American movie -- but she might be the best friend or the comic relief or the one you think is dead but turns out to be all right in the end. She wondered who the main character in her life was."
And I enjoyed the conversations about Gaiman and Kelly Link and Jonathan Coulton. And what I think might be a crack at Twilight (vampire baseball team), though I'm not sure the timing could support that.
7. Charlaine Harris, Dead in the Family -- I liked it more than I was expecting to. SPOILERS from here One of the things I liked was how the theme of family was really woven throughout -- usually the title is just some kind of throwaway phrase, but in this case it was really meaningful, and integrated very well into all the parts of the story: Sookie and Jason reestablishing their family ties after the whole traumatic thing with Crystal; Sookie spending time with her telepath nephew; Sookie and her fairy family, Claude and at the end Dermot; Bill finally revealing the family connection to the Bellefleurs, and how Miss Caroline took it (sorry to see her go, btw, and I just about teared up when I read that she had left her chocolate cake recipe to the town and it was going to be published in the paper); Bill and his vampire family, Judith, and the whole history there; and of course Eric and his vampire family, both his maker and "brother" and the family he made, Pam and Sookie; the new families being formed on the periphery, the pregnant couples, Calvin and Tanya, etc.; the faerie family that was broken with Claudine's death; and the way those different families interweave and come together. And I thought all of those themes worked together very well, if not especially subtly.
I'd always been intrigued by Claude, and enjoyed getting to see more of him, and ended up liking him more than I expected in the process (I think Sookie was a bit harsh on him in the earlier books -- he doesn't seem that bad). I especially liked Claude's interaction with Hunter (and the fact that Hunter thought both Eric and Claude had hair like a lady *snerk* \easily amused). I liked Ocella, who is dangerous and very much a liability but not actually a bad guy (although I do think the way he died was a bit of a copout), and Alexei was suitably creepy, pitiful and petulant and too dangerous to live. I liked all the interaction between Sookie and Pam and Eric, especially Pam and Sookie as action buddies (Pam is priceless; "You're a great vampire." "Yes, I am." XD).
I'm not sure what I think of the way the book handled Sookie's post-torture recovery. It was more than I'd expected, having there be several downtime weeks dealing specifically with Sookie's recovery. On the other hand, having it be segregated into its own non-chapters before the real book starts read like, OK, here's the recovery, now we can move on -- I think I would've liked it more if it had been integrated into the real book and not just checked off. And also, of course, Sookie's recovery seemed a bit too swift and smooth, but, vampire blood and an adventure novel, OK.
The werewolf subplot left me cold, as it has been doing lately, and I think Sookie was an idiot to drink the potion just because Alcide dared her, essentially. I did find it interesting what Sam said about running with the were pack (in wolf form) now that he's dating someone from there: "That would be like going to an NAACP meeting in blackface." Also, this: "When those demonstrators were at the bat roday, I was so mad at them for hating Weres and shifters without really knowing anything about them. But now I'm wondering how they'd feel if they actually knew more about how packs work; how Gran would feel if she knew I was willing to watch a woman, or anyone, be beaten and maybe killed for an infraction of some rules I don't live by."
Vampire large scale politics also not very interesting, but I feel compelled to point out that Zeus is Greek, not Roman. Shame on you, Eric! Oh, and why is NorCal division California San Jose? I would think SF would be the center, for historical reasons... unless there are a lot of vampire programmers in Silicon Valley (which would make sense, they could work their crazy hours) -- but then I find it doubtful that Bill's vampire Facebook project would the so unique. *clearly overthinking this*
I continue to like the little touches of domesticity and quotidiana, like the fact that because the book takes place in April, Sam actually has to deal with his taxes. I don't think I've ever seen mention a visit to a CPA in a fantasy book. Oh, and Sookie thinking about the logistics of starting a family if she stays with Eric, like artificial insemination. That's one of the things that I really like about this series: it does "modern" properly, in updating the vampire and were thing.
Oh, randomly, so Eric's spy in New Orleans: my money's on Bubba, mostly because I'm pretty sure that's the one character she will never kill off.
8. Jim Butcher, Side Jobs -- Hm. I think short story is just not a great medium for Butcher. It seems to downplay a lot of the charm of the novels and bring out some fairly unpleasant motifs, as a genre. Don't get me wrong, there were a number of stories I enjoyed on their own merits, like "It's My Birthday Too" and "Aftermath", but as a collection, this left rather a bad taste in my mouth. Almost all of the stories feature women in peril, often scantily clad women, punctuated occasionally with women as villains, usually beautiful women. And that gets old real quick. Spoilers
"A Restoration of Faith" -- you can readily tell this is an early effort, and the kid is not very kid-like, and Harry is rather more preachy, but it was interesting to see just how much of the flavor of the series was evident even in this first outing, including the first meeting with Murphy. And a pun in the title XD
"A Vignette" -- cute, for what it is. I find Bob amusing, so any conversation between him and Harry is good.
"Something Borrowed" (Dead Beat x Proven Guilty) -- OK, here it starts. Georgia gets kidnapped (take one) and lies naked and unconscious when they find her. There's an "evil stepmother" whom Harry insults on first meeting (calling her a bed warmer, "mid life crisis by-product" and the like), and the reason he feels guilty afterwards is that he might have made Billy's life harder. I did like the fact that Murphy accompanied Harry on the rescue mission. Of course, once the kiss that would have seal Billy's fate is averted, Harry runs back to find Murphy in need of CPR, which is right in-text compared to a kiss. Nice symbolism, but yet another woman getting rescued, meh. Continuity point: Murphy meets Bob for the first time.
"It's My Birthday Too" (White Night X Small Favor) -- one of the stories in this collection I actually liked, although there was a fair bit that irked me about it, too. Molly is inappropriately clad for the weather because she'd been fighting slime golems and needed to change into summer clothes, the only thing handy. The girl that gets Thomas to do the vampire LARP thing (which is how Harry ends up in the action) is wearing a bikini top, and at one point ends up pressed against Harry and trembling and turning him on. The bad guy is a woman (Black Court vamp), though for a change not a beautiful one. I did like Harry's Crowning Moment of Awesome, when he spits garlic into her eyes ("Couple of words of advice. First, anytime I'm not shooting my mouth off to a cliched, two-bit creature of the night like you, it's because I'm up to something.") And Harry's gift to Thomas of the Rock'em Sock'em Robots and the meaning behind it was very sweet. The cobs were cute. I find it difficult to believe that Harry, with his various nerdy pursuits, doesn't know what a LARP is. Continuity point: Thomas's birthday is Valentine's Day, aww. Quote: (Harry making fun of Thomas for using his fake French accent) "Hello, France? I found a dead mouse in my can of French roast coffee, and I've called to complain. I'm an American, and I refuse to stand for that kind of thing from you people.
"Heorot" (White Night x Small Favor) -- Victim: naked woman abducted for the purpose of rape (and then some). Harry gets a female sidekick (Ms Gard), who outclasses him, but of course he is still the one to actually vanquish the bad guy. And he gets a kiss from her at the end. Did have a couple of nice lines, though: "Caine and company departed in sullen silence, glaring daggers at me -- well, glaring letter openers, anyway; Caine didn't seem real sharp." And I loved the "are you allergic to dogs" line, too.
"Day Off" (Small Favor x Turn Coat) -- this one was probably the worst. Naked Andi coming on to Harry under the influence of magic, Molly passing out and needing to be stripped because her clothes are covered in acid and given CPR. I mean, it's all set up so that Luccio (who is Harry's girlfriend at this point) will walk in on Harry surrounded by naked chicks. Really pretty skeevy. I did find Harry's objections to the rules on fireballs in D&D amusing, as well as the knock against the wannabe dark wizard Slitherfen, but that was about the only thing that was. Oh, and Mouse getting worked up more about danger to Mister than danger to Harry and Harry feeling jealous.
"Backup" (Small Favor x Turn Coat) -- Narrated by Thomas, and I kind of expected more from his voice, but it's an OK story (although here we go again with a female villain, part of a sisterhood of female villains -- and I guess that's mostly to set up how Thomas deals with her in the end). It's very nice to get a better look at what Thomas is actually up to, and the motivation of the vampires' involvement ("Because we don't like competition"). I liked reading the different view of magic Thomas has: "Harry waxes poetic about magic. He'll go on and on about how it comes from your feelings, and how it's a deep statement about the nature of your soul, and then he'll whip out some kind of half-divine half-insane philosophy he's cobbled together from the words of saints and comic books about the importance of handling power responsibly. [...] For the rest of us, here's what you need to know about magic: It's a skill."
"The Warrior" (Small Favor X Turn Coat) -- the Michael story, which was another one I had been eager to read. And I did like seeing how Michael and Charity are doing now that he's retired. The plot, a man who sees the Swords as being wasted because they're gathering dust in Harry's keeping and not being used is one I liked. The other aspects of it, less so. Once again, we have a girl being kidnapped (although, fortunately, Alicia was not sexualized). The "Harry unwittingly helps people" thing that Butcher was trying to do... didn't really work for me, though I suppose it's a nice enough idea. I just don't know that you can do it believably without it becoming treacly and/or fake. I did like seeing Michael, normally so calm, swearing and on the verge of striking a man purely out of anger, and those were affecting scenes. And "Harry Dresden. Saving the world, one act of random destruction at a time" made me LOL.
"Last Call" (Small Favor x Turn Coat) I read already, and it was ick, so I didn't reread it. But, yep, beautiful female villain, Murphy getting whammied in a fanservice-y way, and then Harry deciding not to tell her anything about it. Just, ick.
"Love Hurts" (Turn Coat x Changes) -- Beautiful villain, check. Murphy getting whammied to come on to Harry, check. But I actually kind of liked this story -- it was a nice set-up for the Harry/Murphy resolution-that-wasn't in Changes, a nice lead-up to it. The conversation between Luccio and Harry was... probably best avoided, because that whole situation was rather questionable. I liked the conversation between Harry and Murphy about Kincaid (and Murphy's relationship with him), and the fact that even whammied Harry asks "What about Kincaid" and Murphy actually stops to think about it. And I liked that the Red Court vamp's motivation was, once again, getting rid of competition (from the White Court).
"Aftermath" -- naturally, the one I was looking forward to the most, and I liked it, as much as I normally like Dresden books. I'd expected it to focus more on Harry's death and people dealing with it, so the fact that it was essentially a solo adventure for Murphy -- while still being permeated by her thoughts and feelings about Harry -- came as a pleasant surprise. I liked Murphy's voice well enough, although I think Butcher was trying a bit too hard, early on, with all the "Martian translations" and stuff (although it was neat when she didn't know how to read/respond to Gard because she is used to dealing with men in those types of circumstances). We get it, Murphy is a woman in a man's world, OK. I liked her conversation with Marcone and turning down a job offer from him (and again, via Ms Gard). I liked the fact that Marcone has stepped in as defender of Chicago from supernatural baddies, and Murphy's take on it ("Every predator defends its territory"), and the discussion of the formation of the Justice League of Chicago ("Dibs on Batman"). It was neat to see how Murphy sees Harry -- as a lot more formidable and in control than Harry sees himself (and than we know he is). It was also neat to see how much more paranoid and reluctant to trust Murphy is (e.g. with Marcy), where Harry generally just goes by gut feel -- and is very often wrong. I'm not sure what I think of Murphy's mental monologue about why she shouldn't go back for the Sword when outnumbered... that logic didn't make a lot of sense to me -- but I did like the fact that she went in armed only with mortal weapons and kicked ass. (With the help of two werewolves and knowledge of magic she picked up from Harry, but still.) And for some reason I was particularly moved to read that she is wearing double-thickness Kevlar enhanced with titanium chainmail made by Charity. I didn't like -- Georgia as a victim again, though this time she was only largely passive instead of totally passive, Murphy thinking cattily about Andi's rack (we get it, Butcher, the girl is stacked; we don't need two separate POVs of that).
Currently reading: Sisters Red, Five Hundred Years After, Sweet Far Thing (sort of)