Reading roundup
20. Lev Grossman, The Magicians -- very interesting book. I loved the first half of it, while Quentin and company were at Brakebills. I enjoyed the rest of it, too, but in a different way. I liked the way the plot unfolded, all the echoes and connections. I enjoyed a lot of the details, bits of dialogue and prose... but past the halfway mark, i.e. past book 1, I no longer enjoyed it as a coherent story. Spoilers!
I think a large part of that is that a cosmography that contains both the painstaking magic of Brakebills and the talking bunnies of Fillory does not make sense to me, so as soon as Fillory entered into it as a real place, my suspension of disbelief was significantly shaken. And it doesn't help that the characters get progressively less sympathetic after graduation. Or that I'm a much bigger fan of the magic school narrative than I am of the Narnia-type narrative.
I found Quentin quite... not likeable, but an easy protagonist/POV character to follow: the academic intensity of his default setting, the way he throws himself at challenges just to prove he can do it, his obliviousness and awkwardness -- I liked him a lot in book 1, even when he was doing less than positive things like the incident with the Beast. Which made book 2 and onward not that much fun to read.
I was intrigued by Alice but wish we'd gotten a better look at her. Quentin being largely clueless about her is a key point, but I still wish I'd come away with a better feel for her. I did like Eliot and Janet, in all their fucked-uppedness (especially the fact that Janet can be a pretty awful person to Alice, and Quentin, but felt sorry for her cacodemon and let it go the night after graduation), and I think Josh and perky, bloodthirsty Anais may have ended up as my favorite characters. I liked Josh's unpredictable but occasionally super-powered magic and general personality even before, but he cemented my devotion with the "Enthouse" joke and being determined to find his way to Middle-Earth. "It took Quentin a while to figure out that Josh expected people not to take him seriously, and he enjoyed -- not always kindly -- the moment when they realized, too late, that they'd underestimated him. Because he wasn't as self-absorbed as Eliot or Janet he was the group's shaprest observer, and he missed very little of what went on around him." I liked the various Brakebills teachers, too, especially Fogg and Mayakovsky, who says stuff like, "You have been studying magic the way a parrot studies Shakespeare" (and his Russian was pretty good, too).
Brakebills, and the part of the book that leads up to and is set there, I really liked, with all the weirdness and flaws and insularity. The marbles going everywhere with them the first year and some (or all?) even having nicknames, the classes, the Discipline examinations (which Alice calls a "magic bat mitzvah"), the late-night study sessions, the magical library with its migratory books and spells to conceal necessary texts from rivals ("The librarian had imagined he could summon a given book to perch on his hand just by shouting out its call number, but in actuality they were just too willful, and some were actively predatory. The librarian was swiftly deposed, and his successor set about domesticating the books again, but even now there were stragglers, notably in Swiss History and Architecture 300-1399, that stubbornly flapped around near the ceiling. Once in a while an entire sub-sub-category that had long been thought safely dormant would take wing with an indescribable papery suurrus"), the professors (like Professor Bigby, the pixie: "Quentin had the impression that Bigby was a political refugee from somewhere. He was always making vague noises about the conspiracy that had ousted him, and what he would do following his inevitable return to power. He had the stiff, wounded dignity of the deposed intelligentsia", the possibility for continuing education and work beyond Brakebills ("Who knew what exotic spells you could create using the new transuranic elements?"), although hardly anybody seems to really take advantage of those opportunities. It was all just the sort of thing I love to read about. Even welters, even though it doesn't sound any more interesting to me than Quidditch. I could also readily empathize with Quentin's feelings the last year of Brakebills, but unable to bleieve it was almost over and being heartily sick of the place.
I also liked the parallel between real magic and the stage magic Quentin learns first: " "Quentin had spent hundreds of emotionally arid hours with his iPod on palming coins and shuffling cards and producing fake flowers from skinny plastic canes in a trance of boredom. He wathed and rewatched grainy, porn-like instructional videotapes in which middle-aged men demonstrated close-up magic passes in front of backdrops made of bedsheets. Magic, Quentin discovered, wasn't romantic at all. It was grim and repetitive and deceptive. And he worked his ass off and became very good at it." and: "One thing had always confused Quentin about the magic he read about in books: it never seemed especially hard to do. There were lots of furrowed brows and thick books and long white beards and whatnot, but when it came right down to it, you memorized the incantation [...] you collected the herbs, waved the wand, rubbed the lamp [...] -- and just like that the forces of the beyond did your bidding. It was like making salad dressing or driving stick or assembling Ikea furniture -- just another skill you could learn. It took some time and effort, but compared to doing calculus, say, or playing the oboe -- well, there really was no comparison. Any idiot could do magic. || Quentin had been perversely relieved when he learned that there was more to it than that. Talent was part of it [...] But there was also work, hard work, mountains of it."
Fillory was... I don't know, not for me. Like, the talking bear being boring and focused on honey was cute, but I don't appreicate it in the same way I do the magic school narrative. Although I liked the lead-up to it, their planning, which turned out to be for nothing pretty much:
'We were talking about what to do next,' Richard said. 'Making up an actions list.'
'Right,' Josh pounded authoritatively on the heavy table. 'Who's got some action items for me? We need to enumerate our deliverables!'
'Food,' Richard said, straight-faced. 'And if we're really going to Fillory, we all need to reread all the books.'
'Gold,' Anais chipped in gamely. 'And trade items. What do Fillorians want? Cigarettes?'
'We're not going to Brezhnev-era Russia, Anais. Steel?'
'Gunpowder?'
'My God,' Eliot said. 'Listen to you people. I am not going to be the man who brought the gun to Fillory'
[and then of course Janet does it anyway]
Having Martin be the Beast and Jane the Watcherwoman and the paramedic (I guessed the latter but not the former a bit before Quentin figured it out) was interesting and hung together fairly well. I'm not sure what to make of Jane's offhand revelation, at the end, "try not to judge Martin too harshly [...] Plover used to diddle him whenever he could get him alone. I think that's why he went to Fillory in the first place. Why else would he try to crawl into a grandfather clock?" I suppose I can see how the portrayal of Fillory would sully the Narnia sub-genre, but I don't care about that, and I also don't care about the sub-genre enough to have been interested in that part of the story. I understand what it's doing thematically, but it makes the story less interesting for me personally, and Book 4 onwards was even weirder and less relevant to my interests and harder to assimilate. And looks like the sequel is going to be more of the same... :/
cancan_cadenza (IIRC) pointed out that Julia, the object of Q's affections whom he leaves behind for the magical world and whom he later meets again, when she's found her own magic, could be a reference to Zelazny's Merlin's Chronicles of Amber. It certainly works neatly that way, intentionally or not. I liked what we see of Julia in the beginning, especially this: "She would be working on her Western Civ paper for Mr Karras, a six-week project she would complete in two sleepless days and nights" -- because it's so familiar. The possible allusion with Julia also made me wonder if James, Q's friend, Julia's boyfriend, is not meant to be reminiscent of James Potter, with his easy charm, taking the lead in the friendship and all that.
Really, much of what I enjoyed the most in the book was the writing itself, which hit the right balance for me -- definitely interesting enough to be noticeable but not pretentious or distracting or trying too hard. Consequently, rather a lot of quotes:
"Quentin was thin and tall, though he habitually hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to brace himself against whatever blow was coming from the heavens, and which would logically hit the tall people first."
"I should be happy, Quentin thought. [...] My GPA is a number higher than most people even realize it is possible for a GPA to be."
"Marting opens the cabinet of the grandfather clock that stands in a dark, narrow back hallway in his aunt's house and slips through into Fillory (quentin always pictured him awkwardly pushing aside the pendulum, like the uvula of a monstrous throat)"
"He would have to explain to his parents what happened, and they would, in some way he could never grasp, and therefore could never properly rebut, make him feel like it was his fault."
"And gift horses and all that notwithstanding, how much did he know about this place? Suppose it really was a school for magic. Was it any good? What if he'd stumbled into some third-tier magical college by accident? He had to think practically. He didn't want to be committing himself to some community college of sorcery when he could have Magic Harvard or whatever."
"But now he felt like Pinocchio, a wooden boy who was made real. Or maybe it was the other way around, he'd been turned from a real boy into something else? Either way the change was for the better." -- which is echoed curiously in Book IV, when recovering Quentin discofvers that his right shoulder is now apparently made of fruitwood, and is actually referenced at least once as "his Pinocchio shoulder".
"He knew for a fact that one of the girls had managed to take over the plenary session of the national model UN and push through a motion sanctioning the use of nuclear weapons to protect a critically endangered species of turtle. This while representing Lesotho."
"Leonardo, Roger Bacon, Nostradamus, John Dee, Newton -- sure, all of them were mages of various stripes, but of relatively modest ability. The fact that they were famous in mainstream circles was just a strike against them. By the standards of magical society they'd fallen at the first hurdle: they hadn't had the basic good sense to keep their shit to themselves."
"On some level Quentin was hurt: I*f this was what Eliot wanted, why hadn't he come after Quentin? Though as much as he longed for Eliot's attention, he didn't know if he could have gone through with it. It was better this way. Eliot wouldn't have forgiven him for refusing."
"'You're a what again? A photomancer?'
'Phosphoromancer.'
'What can you do?'
'I'm not sure yet. I practiced some things over the summer. Focusing light, refracting it, bending it. [...]'
'Show me something.'
Alice turned shy. It didn't take much.
'I can hardly do anything.'
'Look, I don't even have a Discipline. I'm a nothingmancer. I'm a squatmancer.'
'They just don't know what it is yet. You have your little sparky thing.'
'Same difference. And don't make fun of my sparky thing. Now bend me some damn light.'"
re: getting the door to the Physical Kids cottage to open: "'It used to be you could say 'friend' in Elvish and it would let you in,' Josh said. 'Now too many people have read Tolkien.'"
"[The Beast] approached a ship's clock that hung at the back of the stage and slowly put his fist through it -- he didn't punch it, he forced his hand into its face, breaking the glass and snapping th ehands and crushing the mechanism inside until he was satisfied that it was destroyed. It was as if he thought he would hurt it more that way." (<-- And, in retrospect, understanding why he would lash out specifically against a clock, makes it even neater, of course.)
"He didn't know whether he'd committed the perfect crime or a crime so public and unspeakable that nobody could bring themselves to confront him about it in broad daylight."
"Mayakovsky senior was recruited from a remote Siberan location, a cluster of frozen Soviet blockhouses where local shamanic tradition had hybridized with sophisticated Muscovite practices brought there by gulag inmates." (I... kind of want to read fic of this.)
Alice: "I know. I get it. [...] That's what makes you different from the rest of us, Quentin. You actually still believe in magic. You do realize, right, that nobody else does? I mean, we all know magic is real. But you really believe in it. Don't you."
On the new Physical Kids:
"'I feel like an elderly docent,' Quentin said.
'I already forget their names,' Alice said. 'They're like quadruplets.'
'We should give them numbers. Tell them it's a tradition.'
'And then we could always call them by the wrong number. Freak them out. Or we could call them all the same thing. Alfred or something.'
'Even the girls?'
'Especially the girls.'"
"He carried a wand, which almost nobody at Brakebills did. It was considered slightly embarrassing, like training wheels, or a marital aid."
"And those nice, surprisingly Pottery Barn-y curtains, the color of the stems of plants. They were coarse-woven, but it wasn't the familiar, dperessing fake-authentic coarseness of high-end Earth housewares, which merely imitated the real coarseness of fabrics that were woven by hand out of genuine necessity [...] these were authentically coarse woven curtains, woven by people who didn't know any other way of making curtains, who didn't even know that their way was special, and whose way was therefore not discounted and emptied of meaning in advance."
Also, not really a quote per se, but although I'd heard the phrase I had not heard an explanation for the origin (apocryphal though it may be), so:
"Russell once gave a public lecture on the structure of the universe/ Afterward he was approached by a woman who told him that he was a very clever young man but much mistaken in his thinking, because everyone knew that the world was flat and sat on the back of a turtle. || When Russell asked her what the turtle was standing on, she replied, 'You're very clever, young man, very clever. But it's turtles all the way down."
In conclusion: parts of it reminded me more of my beloved Monday Starts Saturday than of Harry Potter and similar magic school narratives in flavor, though the satire is darker and a lot more Western/American and modern, of course. And I can definitely understand why Junot Diaz (of Oscar Wao) was blurbing it, too -- there's a similar flavor to that, too, though approaching it from a different direction and with different themes.
Also, I love that there's a Brakebills website.
21. Michelle Sagara, Cast in Silence -- eh. The last two or so were better written than the first couple, I thought, but this one was back to being SO annoyingly narrated that I almost gave up. SPOILERS! I think it's because the ratio of stuff happening that involves other people to Kaylin's introspection is too low, and I kind of hate Kaylin's narrative voice. The narration is just so... mumbly. Like, the opposite of crisp and clean. There are all these utterly pointless sentence fragments, and heaped-on clauses that don't add anything, and this sentence structure? It needs to die in a fire. Like, OK, once in a while it's fine. But it is so, SO criminally overused. Same with the "[X], for a value of [X] that included [Y]". It's kind of a cute construction if you use it once or twice. But like a dozen times per book? NOOO! Also, heartily sick of everyone raising a brow at everything. There are other facial expressions!
So, yeah, as you might have been able to tell, reading this book was kind of irritating. My favorite part of this series is the in-depth look at the various cultures that populate Elantra, because the world-building tends to be better than characterization or plot or, god help us, the writing style. This was the first, I think, book to take a departure from cycling through the races (unless the Towers now count as a race? or the fieflings?), and, consequently, it was pretty boring. Instead it focused of Kaylin's past, which I didn't feel any burning need to know more about (and I thought she was a total idiot to go back to Barren just because she didn't want Marcus to know her history; it didn't even feel like character-driven idiocy, it felt like an authorial excuse), and magic, which I find to be boring and impenetrable in this series.
I liked Morse, the tough fief enforcer lady who trained young Kaylin as an assassin (and I like the detail that Kaylin learned to kill people because she wanted to be able to kill Severn). I liked past!Nightshade, and especially his interaction with Tiamaris (I might have started shipping them a bit out of desperation from how boring everything else was). But no, see:
"I have often been criticized," [Nightshade] said, as he slid his perfect hand into the Dragon's wider palm, "for my impulsiveness."
"A trait, sadly, that we all have in common," Tiamaris replied.
Severn coughed.
I even kind of liked Barren, the false fieflord, in his last conversation with Tiamaris, because I find it neat (and rare) when cornered bad guys act with sense as opposed to having some kind of villainous breakdown. I've always liked Tiamaris, so I liked him all through this, but especially once he becomes fieflord and thus gains a hoard and is able to do things like actually assume his draconic shape and fly. So, the last couple of chapters of the book were actually enjoyable, oddly enough, though I don't think they really made up for the preceding boringness. And I can't say that I liked Illien, and I definitely didn't like Tara the Tower avatar, but their dysfunctional relationship -- and her finding exactly the kind of focused, all-consuming love that she was looking for in Tiamaris and his draconic concept of hoard -- were pretty neat touches.
Quotes:
"Kaylin's understanding of the Dragon term hoard wasn't exact, but time had made clear that it meant 'touch any of my stuff and die horribly.'"
Sannabalis, on the Dragon version of hubris: "But, as so many do who acquire power and the learning to ield it with greater and greater ease, we flew where we should not have flown, and we tried to acquire what we could not, in safety, hold."
Tiamaris: "I will not require your services in the capacity of assassin. If I believe someone merits death, I will kill them."
Definitely one of my least favorite in the series, but I do like the note on which it leaves off -- I'm intrigued by the idea of a Dragon fieflord (and his interaction with the Dragon Court), and also the revelation of Kaylin and past!Nightshade's encounter (which presumably holds true in the present timeline as well). So I'll keep reading, but I sure hope the next book is more enjoyable than this one...
22. Steven Brust, Issola (reread) -- it's been a serious while since I read this book (which I'd done only once), and I remembered very little of it except the central conflict and final spoiler. It was especially good to reread it fresh on the heels of Viscount of Adrilankha, since it's pretty clear they were written close together, as Vlad suddenly takes an interest in Morrolan's past. Spoilers from here on (This doesn't surprise me, actually, in in-universe terms. Because Vlad and Morrolan never actually seem to talk -- they banter and bait each other, and I suppose it's possible they do occasionally discuss witchcraft, but it's not like I could see them talking about their backgrounds. That would be actual conversation! But it's perfectly natural that Vlad can have that conversation with Teldra.)
I did find a couple of discrepancies which I thought interesting, and I'm wondering if they're of the intentional or unintentional kind, or the "close enough" kind. When talking about Morrolan's time in the east, Teldra says that he was calling himself "Sotetcsilleg" at the time, which is at odds with Paarfi. But I guess Miska could/would have called him that, and he's the one that brought Teldra to Morrolan? Or maybe Paarfi was just loath to miss an opportunity to make up something mildly denigrating about Morrolan, that could be it, too. Also, she says the Tri'nagore-worshipping villages Morrolan had put to the sword were Dragaeran villages (as opposed to Fenarian)... but weren't they actually Easterners' villages? Not Fenarian, but Eastern anyway? I mean, Teldra was not around when he actually did it, and upon his return he was more interested in understanding time zones than in talking about what had happened (at least according to Paarfi, who was, admittedly, probably making stuff up in this section as I don't exactly see Morrolan confiding to him about the experience), but still. Or was Teldra trying to make Vlad feel more comfortable with a little white lie? Also, unrelated to Morrolan, there's the comment Vlad makes: "I thought the Lavodes were disbanded before the Interregnum", to which Sethra says, "That is true" -- except of course it's not true at all, because the Lavodes fought against Adron (although not under Sethra's leadership). I suppose Sethra could just be saying that it's true that Vlad thinks so. I wouldn't put that past her...
I enjoyed reading Vlad's impressions of Blackwand and Pathfinder. It's interesting to me that the way Blackwand is described (arrogance, strength, desire towards destruction), she sounds a lot like Aliera, while Pathfinder seems to have a slightly more sedate personality (more patient, protective, inquisitive), perhaps more akin to Morrolan's, so that M and A's swords complement them the way they do each other, only with less arguement. (It also seems to lend credence to the idea that Pathfinder contains Drien's soul -- the gender ambiguity and stuff.) Also, there was some explanation/clarification for the thing that bothered me in Jhereg about them being able to take out Morrolan, as Verra explains re: killing the wielder of a Great Weapon: "So Morrolan told me. Yes, it can be done, by a judicious combination of sorcery, surprise, and more sorcery. But even then, had Morrolan not been returned to life, Blackwand would have continued to guard his soul. And it might have done far more than that; the Jhereg assassin was a fool."
There is one very weird bit in this book where Vlad thinks: "It suddenly flashed into my head to wonder if he [Morrolan] and Sethra were currently or ever had been lovers. Now that was an interesting thought, and one that would probably come back to me on many cold nights". So, uh... Vlad thinks about Morrolan's sex life now to keep himself warm at night? Is that what I just read? I kind of have no idea where Vlad is getting this speculation from, because it's plenty clear from Sethra's interaction with Morrolan, especially here, that she treats him the way one would a teenage nephew, who is pretty bright and almost an adult but still not nearly as grown-up as he thinks, and thus requires a lot of advice and occasional ribbing. Maybe Vlad's just thinking of the wrong Dragonlord? 'Cos I do continue to see possible chemistry between Sethra and Aliera, or at least can easily see them as two people who were once lovers but are now simply friends.
On that note, still feeling the Vlad/Morrolan, though not on the same levels as in Taltos. Vlad baiting him when Morrolan is shackled to the wall:
Morrolan was staring at me. "Vlad, you can't be thinking about it. Think! Verra, the Demon Goddess. Your ancestors have worshipped her--"
"Leave it alone, Morrolan."
"Leave it alone? She is my goddess, too. How can I let you destroy her to save me?"
I laughed. "How can you stop me?"
"Vlad--"
"Oh, be still, dammit."
And also: "I probably hurt him a little while I was doing it [working leather strips under the shackles], but, of course, the wouldn't give me the satisfaction of letting me know if I had." And on a similar note: "I contemplated giving Morrolan and Aliera a good, hard whack apiece, and tried to refrain from smiling." Wanting to see Morrolan beg in Taltos, the satisfaction of knowing whether he's hurting him, smiling at the thought of hitting him (OK, and Aliera), and playing mindgames with him while Morrolan is chained up. There is seriously some heavy duty S&M subtext going on here...
Oh, and Morrolan does get a bit of turnabout, at least:
Suddenly I wasn't having fun anymore. "I'd rather not touch the blade, if it's all the same to you," I said.
He seemed amused; maybe it was his turn to have fun. He said, "Well, I'm certainly not going to let you hold her."
"I--"
"Don't worry, she doesn't bite."
And then Morrolan dragging an unconscious Vlad to Dzur Mountain in a fireman's carry ("How did I get back to Dzur Mountain?" "Over my shoulder," said Morrolan) and bringing him jhereg ("I thought you might be missing her") and weapons ("Here, Vlad. [...] I thought you might like to restock, so I grabbed these from my armory. I don't know exactly what you like*, but one or two of these must be all right"), it's all quite adorable. (* Why, yes, I do have the urge to add "That's what she said!" to a lot of Morrolan-Vlad exchanges. Sue me.)
I've been thinking about this more, actually, and I think one of the reasons Vlad/Morrolan works for me better than Vlad and Morrolan as simply buddies -- although I have a hard time seeing it as anything more than UST, possibly UST that Vlad is in denial about and Morrolan is largely oblivious to -- is that the relationship between them has this weird mixture of intimacy and distance, from start to finish. Like, they nearly kill each other the first time they meet, and then save each other's lives a bunch of times, and then Vlad risks his life for Morrolan in the Paths of the Dead, and there's this battle-forged closeness between them on the one hand, and on the other hand they never seem to do normal friend stuff. Vlad disappears for years, walking out on newly revivified, barely conscious Morrolan who is struggling to speak, then reappears a number of years later, in Iorich, and it's pretty much like he never left. Morrolan barges in on him psionically (I noticed this in Yendi and Teckla, under very different circumstances), which nobody else seems to do, and Vlad never actually seems to mind (e.g. in Yendi, when Vlad and Cawti are about to stop practicing throwing knives: "'What the bleeding deviltries of Deathgate Falls to you-- Oh, Morrolan." "Bad time, Vlad?" "Could be worse. What is it?", or in Taltos, after Cawti walks out on him and he is walking the neighborhood, "Morrolan reached me psionically at some point in there, but claimed it wasn't important when I asked why, so I didn't find out what he wanted" -- this is pretty much right after the line "If Loiosh had said anything I'd probably have killed him" (which, for me, is the most chilling in the book)). And when Vlad walks out on Cawti (and it's not safe for him to be in the streets), he thinks about teleporting to Castle Black. They're basically always dropping in on each other and it doesn't matter what each is in the middle of or how much time has passed, and it's like the most normal thing in the world, and apparently for me that's a market of OTP-ness. It's very odd, and I can't quite put it into words, but there's something there that feels slightly different from just friendship.
Other Morrolan stuff: I found it very interesting that Morrolan very quickly guessed how Vlad and Teldra must have reached them ("The window in my tower. [...] He used Spellbreaker to find Pathfinder") while Verra (who'd given him the window... probably?) had to ask Vlad. Also, this passage is just so wonderfully Morrolan, and the difference between him and Vlad:
"Try Spellbreaker," said Morrolan. I looked at him. "On the chains," he said. "Try Spellbreaker."
[...]
"Can't hurt," I said.
"What are you worried about, Boss?"
"Looking ridiculous."
"It was his idea."
[He tries it and] Nothing else happened. I felt ridiculous. [...] Morrolan shrugged; evidently he didn't feel ridiculous.
That's one of my favorite things about Morrolan, actually -- as prideful as he is, he doesn't seem to mind being wrong, or corrected.
And: "Morrolan has always been better at understanding how objects work than how other beings are thinking." And: "[Morrolan] winced. It was obvious that he wanted to go exploring, and was damned curious to see our river of amorphia; it was equally obvious that he didn't think it was what he should do just then." Morrolan being his giant nerd self, awww, but working hard at being responsible!
And from Vlad's conversation with Teldra:
"The Lord Morrolan refused to be put in the position of defending his actions. He considers it undignified."
"So he'd rather everyone thought him a bloodthirsty butcher?"
"Yes."
"Yeah, I guess he would at that."
And also:
"What stopped him [Morrolan] from killing you?"
"His strong sense of self-interest combined with iron self-control."
"I don't believe that is entirely correct, Lord Taltos. I know him rather well, I think, and there are severe limits to his self-control, whereas there are no limits to his pride. Had you pushed him far enough, you would have faced a mortal contest."
And later, still from Vlad's conversations with Teldra, when Teldra points out that being a young Dragon "means seeing the world with one's self as the center" which means that "Morrolan is generous, and self-sacrificing, and always glad to be of help to a friend, but sometimes he sees things first from how they affect him. It means he will sometimes go into a situation wondering what he should do, rather than wondering what needs to be done" -- which is of course the same distinction the pyrologist draws for Khaavren in Viscount.
I did wonder at the example Teldra relates, about Morrolan, serving as division commander under Sethra and trying to give her suggestions. I suppose it would have happened after the levitation of Castle Black, during Zerika's march to Adrilankha? Sethra was Warlord, certainly, and Morrolan wanted to be... I guess there was some clean-up fighting in between the events of LoCB and SL, and Morrolan actually did pull those stunts, and Sethra thwapped him for it, and that's why he was relatively humble and also reluctant when she wanted to give him command of on part of the forces in the Battle of Adrilankha? But Paarfi seems to imply M was mainly holed up in Castle Black, studying magic.
And: "He licked his lips. I recognized that gesture -- I'd been there often enough myself, just before tyring something difficult and a little scary. || Sometimes it almost seemed as if Morrolan were human."
And: "The Goddess stood taller than Morrolan, and glared down at him. He put on his supercilious look and seemed unimpressed with her glare; if it was an act, it was a good one, and if it wasn't, he had a remarkable amount of confidence in himself. Or he was a complete fool, which I'd suspected for some years." (Heh, I kind of wonder if Morrolan is not faintly embarrassed now at the kind of Easterner-like worship he used to feel for Verra and trying to compensate for it. Although I'm not sure that's really his style.) I was also noticing that Verra seems to direct more asides to Morrolan than to other people, judging by the number of non-sequiturs from him Vlad hears. I wonder if that's significant of anything...
And of course there's the whole psychoanalysis of Morrolan and Aliera arguing, which leads Morrolan to smile self-consciously and Aliera to blush: "Besides, your arguments, as always, are stupid to begin with. Morrolan goes out of his way to be contentious toward Aliera because he idolizes Adron and therefore blieves his daughter ought to not only be his equal in all matters, but ought to do and say everythign exactly the way Morrolan imagines Adron would; and Aliera, of course, idolizes her big, powerful, brave cousin Morrolan, and so has a tantrum whenever he fails to live up to the Morrolan she's manufactured in her head." (Also, the idea of Morrolan fanboying Adron, while not surprising, is one I find vastly amusing. Perhaps because I was so head-over-heels for Adron myself after reading 500YA.)
I wonder at what point Teldra became Morrolan's "priestess". In Viscount, Arra had been his conduit to Verra, and he wasn't involved with any of the other gods, but of course things have changed... and Arra doesn't seem to be in the picture anymore. In any case, that was interesting to learn, considering that it doesn't come up anywhere in the Paarfi books.
Now that I've read 500YA, I cared a lot more about the revelation that Adron is still somewhere in there in the Lesser Sea of Chaos (and I find it sweet that Aliera still calls him Daddy).
Random stuff:
I had totally forgotten about this explanation for clapping vs knocking in Dragaeran society: "I will not insult you by explaining why, in a culture rich in sorcery and steeped in paranoia, it is a bad idea to touch the door of someone's home."
I also found it really neat that Sethra has remembered and used Timmer's method for tracking Vlad (through Loiosh) from Orca.
Quotes:
"Just because they really are out to get you doesn't mean you aren't paranoid."
On the plan for breaking Morrolan and Aliera out of the shackles: "I was convinced. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard Morrolan and Aliera agree on anything; how could I fail to go along."
Vlad, re: Morrolan's wizard's staff (that he mostly keeps transformed into a ring): "I suppose it is immensely powerful and you can do all sorts of amazing things with it?"
Morrolan: "Naturally."
"You know, Loiosh, if anyone had told me yesterday at this time that thirty hours later I would have rescued Morrolan and Aliera, nearly killed the Demon Goddess, and found myself trapped in a prison the size of the world, unable to decide if I was hoping to be saved or hoping not to be saved, I'd have said, 'Yeah, sounds about right.'"
"Your probably would have, Boss."
"I think this says something about my life choices."
25. Steven Brust, Teckla (reread) -- yeah, this one is still no fun. I think it's a really good book, and I respect it, especially for being fairly subtle except a bit at the very end, in Vlad's conversation with Kelly and Cawti -- but fun it's not. Spoilers The disintegration of Vlad and Cawti's marriage is still very well done. The torture Vlad undergoes and the aftermath (when Loiosh increasingly frantically attempt to speak to him and Vlad hears but does not respond) and his suicide attempt/conversation with Spellbreaker all hit me harder this time than I remember, as did Vlad's aborted plan to murder all of Kelly's group as a way of protecting Cawti. Vlad trying to figure out where he belongs, a continued trajectory from Jhereg (where he discoveres he was a Dragaeran in his past life and his self-explained reasons for becoming an assassin maybe aren't valid) and Yendi, was quite well done, but sad. Just, the whole thing is depressing.
I did like the fact that, whatever Brust's own politics may be, he did not present the revolutionists as being unequivocally right. Vlad's moral compass is, um, idiosyncratic, but Noish-Pa, who has always been the voice of wisdom, does not approve of how they're going about things either.
Since I've now read the Khaavern Romances, I was able to compare Paresh's story with what we get via Paarfi about Aerich, which is of course a lot less complimentary about Aerich (though Paresh seems to have borne Tazendra no ill will). I'm kind of impressed by how well the two connect, considering there were almost 20 years between the two books -- from Teckla (1987) to Sethra Lavode (2004) -- like, I'm impressed that when writing The Phoenix Guards in 1991 Brust decided to reuse the characters, or at least the names and fealty relationships from a single scene in Teckla. Unless he put those in later? There do seem to have been some changes made for these repackaged omnibus editions, because some of the errors I remember readin Brust talking about were no longer there, or at least I couldn't find them. Either way, pretty cool. (Lyorn Records suggests it's Paresh who is probably prevaricating in this one, because Aerich would not have been able to deflect a sorcerous attack. Interesting!) And I wonder if Vlad's decision to teach Svan some witchcraft for real had anything to do with meeting a Teckla sorcerer in Paresh.
It was also much more interesting to glimpse Khaavren among the Phoenix Guards patrolling South Adrilankha.
I was looking at the Dragaera timeline, and here's the calendar of events per that:
Vlad born in 222
Taltos -- 240
Yendi (Vlad and Cawti meet) -- 242
Jhereg/Teckla/Phoenix -- 243
Vlad Norathar born in 244
Issola/Dzur -- 248
Iorich -- 252
So Vlad and Cawti were only together for maybe over a year, less than two, and Vlad has known Morrolan and Aliera for about 3-4 years when he takes off at the end of Phoenix, comes back 4-5 years later for Issola, then another 4 years later for Iorich (unless they've seen each other meanwhile, of course). See what I mean up above? (I'm not counting Sethra because of the *spoiler* thing)
For my own records:
1.Jhereg (1983)
2.Yendi (1984)
3.Teckla (1987)
4.Taltos (1988)
5.Phoenix (1990)
6.Athyra (1993)
7.Orca (1996)
8.Dragon (1998)
9.Issola (2001)
10.Dzur (2006)
11.Jhegaala (2008)
12.Iorich (2010)
13.Tiassa (2011)
1.The Phoenix Guards (1991)
2.Five Hundred Years After (1994)
1.The Paths of the Dead (2002)
2.The Lord of Castle Black (2003)
3.Sethra Lavode (2004)
23. Dave Barry, I'll Mature When I'm Dead -- not one of his strongest books, but fun. I especially enjoyed the chapeters/columns on the death of newspapers and on Miami. I thought the last two columns -- on kid sports and "Father of the Groom" were heartfelt and all, but not really funny, like I expect Dave Barry to be. Which is fine, but not why I read him. And I have to admit, I got through Chapter 1 of the Twilight parody and gave up. I don't want to read Twilight -- I don't even want to read stuff that makes fun of Twilight by immitating it too precisely, so.
A couple of quotes I especially liked:
"What if, for example, all the Bluetooth phone earpieces in the world suddenly sprouted drill bits and bored into people's brains? | OK, that particular example would actually be fine. But you see my point, don't you?"
"[The Norwegian tourists'] hotel courtesy van was hijacked. This story got BIG in Norway, which does not have a lot of violent crime. If there were a TV crime show called CSI: Norway, most of the cases would involve improperly labeled herring."
24. Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing -- so it actually wasn't as bad as I'd been expecting. Bloody long -- I don't know that it really needed to be 800+ pages, but once I got past the first couple, it was fairly fast going, and I generally enjoyed myself. Spoilers!
Felicity is still the best part of the book. I thought this one was laying on Fee/Pippa a bit thick, but I still really enjoyed Fee's side of it -- the sort of courting gestures like giving Pippa the cloak, bringing her ostrich feathers so she could have her debut (that was very touching), playing the knight to her queen. I also liked the foreshadowing interaction with Dr Van Ripple and discussion of Oscar Wilde. There are just so many great details about Fee in this book -- wanting to turn a rock into a falcon, parading about in chainmail over her nightgown, writing her initial in the dirt with the tip of her fencing foil, plenty more, and I enjoyed them all immensely.
I wasn't sure I was going to like Ann's arc in this one, but I did -- first almost succeeding with the aid of magic to make her beautiful, backing away for a mixture of good and bad reasons (and Gemma being angry at her over that; "'You'll make a fine governess,' I said, like a slap"), and then taking the chance anyway with her own appearance and getting what she wanted. The singing in the street after missing the auditions was a bit too Disney movie, but I was glad to see how the whole thing played out.
Gemma... She is an interesting character, and after reading gogoratchet's impression that Gemma has ADHD I pretty much couldn't stop thinking of that when Gemma was coming up with her more non-sequiturish statements and thoughts. She's an engaging narrator, in any case, so those aspects were just fine, but I found it harder to root for her while she was so clearly misusing her magic, like making people trip and interfering with people's will and making people forget, and not even necessarily for good reasons. I did really like Gemma and Tom's sibling interaction (though I have to say, I find Tom a lot more sympathetic than Gemma does, especially when she tells him, "They don't want you; they want me", and I like the fact that Tom fairly readily embraces Gemma's magic after a demonstration of it (he doesn't share their father's tendency towards denial, e.g.), and I like Gemma's reaction upon learning Fee's secret ("I have questions I do not yet know how to ask: Has she always been this way? Does she feel this same affection for me? I have undressed before her. She has seen me. And I have seen her, have noted her beauty. Do I harbor these secret feelings for Felicity? Am I just as she is? How would I know if I were?"). I thought the Gemma we see at the end was way too... suddenly enlightened to be believable. I understand she lived through momentous things and learned stuff from it, but it just seemed like way too big a leap, especially when she was lecturing Mrs Nightwing.
I found it interesting that with both her present or erstwhile love interests, with Kartik and Simon, Gemma does something magically that verges on dubcon, although in very mild Victorian terms -- she makes Kartik think he is dreaming so he takes the libery of kissing her as he would not awake, and she makes Simon pay exclusive attention to her at the ball as a form of revenge against him and the family. I have to say, I'd rather liked Simon, and was sorry to see that his interest in her had been strategic, apparently. I was not particularly invested in Gemma's relationship with Kartik, though some moments of it were nicely done, so I didn't terribly care about the tree thing from that perspective, though it was a pretty WTF-y way to end Kartik's arc... like a loose end randomly tied up more than a natural development, it felt to me. It is neat that Gemma ends up single at the end, though she does have the magical/spiritual connection to Kartik still, and so do both her friends. That's got to be pretty rare for a YA book targeted at girls.
There was a lot of intrigue and weird goings on, and it made the plot interesting and confusing but I don't really read these for the magic or the plot so much as for the interaction between the girls. I did like the way Gemma gave her place to Circe at the end, and her reasoning ("I'll not have you wandering in the mists. Tpp dangerous."), and I liked the way Gemma's allies in the final battle included former opponents like Fowlson (who suddenly doesn't have nearly so grating an accent, heh), and Ms McCleethy, and Bessie. I guessed a little in advance that Eugenia Spence was the big bad, having been corrupted by the Tree, and the column creatures coming to life was nicely creepy, but I suspect I could've done with less of all that (and less of hanging around with Pippa's gang of factory girls and their progressively decaying castle) and a shorter book, honestly. There's a reason I tend not to read gothics.
Randomly, I quite liked Inspector Kent, who seems like a very decent fellow and says stuff like, "Tommyrot! My dear mother reared four boys, and it was woe unto any one of us who tried to fool her. She could have been a chief inspector, such were her talents. Someday there shall be women at Scotland Yard. Mark my words."
So, hey, I'm glad I finished up this trilogy. Felicity rocks, and the whole thing was pretty fun, if a trifle on the long side.
I think a large part of that is that a cosmography that contains both the painstaking magic of Brakebills and the talking bunnies of Fillory does not make sense to me, so as soon as Fillory entered into it as a real place, my suspension of disbelief was significantly shaken. And it doesn't help that the characters get progressively less sympathetic after graduation. Or that I'm a much bigger fan of the magic school narrative than I am of the Narnia-type narrative.
I found Quentin quite... not likeable, but an easy protagonist/POV character to follow: the academic intensity of his default setting, the way he throws himself at challenges just to prove he can do it, his obliviousness and awkwardness -- I liked him a lot in book 1, even when he was doing less than positive things like the incident with the Beast. Which made book 2 and onward not that much fun to read.
I was intrigued by Alice but wish we'd gotten a better look at her. Quentin being largely clueless about her is a key point, but I still wish I'd come away with a better feel for her. I did like Eliot and Janet, in all their fucked-uppedness (especially the fact that Janet can be a pretty awful person to Alice, and Quentin, but felt sorry for her cacodemon and let it go the night after graduation), and I think Josh and perky, bloodthirsty Anais may have ended up as my favorite characters. I liked Josh's unpredictable but occasionally super-powered magic and general personality even before, but he cemented my devotion with the "Enthouse" joke and being determined to find his way to Middle-Earth. "It took Quentin a while to figure out that Josh expected people not to take him seriously, and he enjoyed -- not always kindly -- the moment when they realized, too late, that they'd underestimated him. Because he wasn't as self-absorbed as Eliot or Janet he was the group's shaprest observer, and he missed very little of what went on around him." I liked the various Brakebills teachers, too, especially Fogg and Mayakovsky, who says stuff like, "You have been studying magic the way a parrot studies Shakespeare" (and his Russian was pretty good, too).
Brakebills, and the part of the book that leads up to and is set there, I really liked, with all the weirdness and flaws and insularity. The marbles going everywhere with them the first year and some (or all?) even having nicknames, the classes, the Discipline examinations (which Alice calls a "magic bat mitzvah"), the late-night study sessions, the magical library with its migratory books and spells to conceal necessary texts from rivals ("The librarian had imagined he could summon a given book to perch on his hand just by shouting out its call number, but in actuality they were just too willful, and some were actively predatory. The librarian was swiftly deposed, and his successor set about domesticating the books again, but even now there were stragglers, notably in Swiss History and Architecture 300-1399, that stubbornly flapped around near the ceiling. Once in a while an entire sub-sub-category that had long been thought safely dormant would take wing with an indescribable papery suurrus"), the professors (like Professor Bigby, the pixie: "Quentin had the impression that Bigby was a political refugee from somewhere. He was always making vague noises about the conspiracy that had ousted him, and what he would do following his inevitable return to power. He had the stiff, wounded dignity of the deposed intelligentsia", the possibility for continuing education and work beyond Brakebills ("Who knew what exotic spells you could create using the new transuranic elements?"), although hardly anybody seems to really take advantage of those opportunities. It was all just the sort of thing I love to read about. Even welters, even though it doesn't sound any more interesting to me than Quidditch. I could also readily empathize with Quentin's feelings the last year of Brakebills, but unable to bleieve it was almost over and being heartily sick of the place.
I also liked the parallel between real magic and the stage magic Quentin learns first: " "Quentin had spent hundreds of emotionally arid hours with his iPod on palming coins and shuffling cards and producing fake flowers from skinny plastic canes in a trance of boredom. He wathed and rewatched grainy, porn-like instructional videotapes in which middle-aged men demonstrated close-up magic passes in front of backdrops made of bedsheets. Magic, Quentin discovered, wasn't romantic at all. It was grim and repetitive and deceptive. And he worked his ass off and became very good at it." and: "One thing had always confused Quentin about the magic he read about in books: it never seemed especially hard to do. There were lots of furrowed brows and thick books and long white beards and whatnot, but when it came right down to it, you memorized the incantation [...] you collected the herbs, waved the wand, rubbed the lamp [...] -- and just like that the forces of the beyond did your bidding. It was like making salad dressing or driving stick or assembling Ikea furniture -- just another skill you could learn. It took some time and effort, but compared to doing calculus, say, or playing the oboe -- well, there really was no comparison. Any idiot could do magic. || Quentin had been perversely relieved when he learned that there was more to it than that. Talent was part of it [...] But there was also work, hard work, mountains of it."
Fillory was... I don't know, not for me. Like, the talking bear being boring and focused on honey was cute, but I don't appreicate it in the same way I do the magic school narrative. Although I liked the lead-up to it, their planning, which turned out to be for nothing pretty much:
'We were talking about what to do next,' Richard said. 'Making up an actions list.'
'Right,' Josh pounded authoritatively on the heavy table. 'Who's got some action items for me? We need to enumerate our deliverables!'
'Food,' Richard said, straight-faced. 'And if we're really going to Fillory, we all need to reread all the books.'
'Gold,' Anais chipped in gamely. 'And trade items. What do Fillorians want? Cigarettes?'
'We're not going to Brezhnev-era Russia, Anais. Steel?'
'Gunpowder?'
'My God,' Eliot said. 'Listen to you people. I am not going to be the man who brought the gun to Fillory'
[and then of course Janet does it anyway]
Having Martin be the Beast and Jane the Watcherwoman and the paramedic (I guessed the latter but not the former a bit before Quentin figured it out) was interesting and hung together fairly well. I'm not sure what to make of Jane's offhand revelation, at the end, "try not to judge Martin too harshly [...] Plover used to diddle him whenever he could get him alone. I think that's why he went to Fillory in the first place. Why else would he try to crawl into a grandfather clock?" I suppose I can see how the portrayal of Fillory would sully the Narnia sub-genre, but I don't care about that, and I also don't care about the sub-genre enough to have been interested in that part of the story. I understand what it's doing thematically, but it makes the story less interesting for me personally, and Book 4 onwards was even weirder and less relevant to my interests and harder to assimilate. And looks like the sequel is going to be more of the same... :/
cancan_cadenza (IIRC) pointed out that Julia, the object of Q's affections whom he leaves behind for the magical world and whom he later meets again, when she's found her own magic, could be a reference to Zelazny's Merlin's Chronicles of Amber. It certainly works neatly that way, intentionally or not. I liked what we see of Julia in the beginning, especially this: "She would be working on her Western Civ paper for Mr Karras, a six-week project she would complete in two sleepless days and nights" -- because it's so familiar. The possible allusion with Julia also made me wonder if James, Q's friend, Julia's boyfriend, is not meant to be reminiscent of James Potter, with his easy charm, taking the lead in the friendship and all that.
Really, much of what I enjoyed the most in the book was the writing itself, which hit the right balance for me -- definitely interesting enough to be noticeable but not pretentious or distracting or trying too hard. Consequently, rather a lot of quotes:
"Quentin was thin and tall, though he habitually hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to brace himself against whatever blow was coming from the heavens, and which would logically hit the tall people first."
"I should be happy, Quentin thought. [...] My GPA is a number higher than most people even realize it is possible for a GPA to be."
"Marting opens the cabinet of the grandfather clock that stands in a dark, narrow back hallway in his aunt's house and slips through into Fillory (quentin always pictured him awkwardly pushing aside the pendulum, like the uvula of a monstrous throat)"
"He would have to explain to his parents what happened, and they would, in some way he could never grasp, and therefore could never properly rebut, make him feel like it was his fault."
"And gift horses and all that notwithstanding, how much did he know about this place? Suppose it really was a school for magic. Was it any good? What if he'd stumbled into some third-tier magical college by accident? He had to think practically. He didn't want to be committing himself to some community college of sorcery when he could have Magic Harvard or whatever."
"But now he felt like Pinocchio, a wooden boy who was made real. Or maybe it was the other way around, he'd been turned from a real boy into something else? Either way the change was for the better." -- which is echoed curiously in Book IV, when recovering Quentin discofvers that his right shoulder is now apparently made of fruitwood, and is actually referenced at least once as "his Pinocchio shoulder".
"He knew for a fact that one of the girls had managed to take over the plenary session of the national model UN and push through a motion sanctioning the use of nuclear weapons to protect a critically endangered species of turtle. This while representing Lesotho."
"Leonardo, Roger Bacon, Nostradamus, John Dee, Newton -- sure, all of them were mages of various stripes, but of relatively modest ability. The fact that they were famous in mainstream circles was just a strike against them. By the standards of magical society they'd fallen at the first hurdle: they hadn't had the basic good sense to keep their shit to themselves."
"On some level Quentin was hurt: I*f this was what Eliot wanted, why hadn't he come after Quentin? Though as much as he longed for Eliot's attention, he didn't know if he could have gone through with it. It was better this way. Eliot wouldn't have forgiven him for refusing."
"'You're a what again? A photomancer?'
'Phosphoromancer.'
'What can you do?'
'I'm not sure yet. I practiced some things over the summer. Focusing light, refracting it, bending it. [...]'
'Show me something.'
Alice turned shy. It didn't take much.
'I can hardly do anything.'
'Look, I don't even have a Discipline. I'm a nothingmancer. I'm a squatmancer.'
'They just don't know what it is yet. You have your little sparky thing.'
'Same difference. And don't make fun of my sparky thing. Now bend me some damn light.'"
re: getting the door to the Physical Kids cottage to open: "'It used to be you could say 'friend' in Elvish and it would let you in,' Josh said. 'Now too many people have read Tolkien.'"
"[The Beast] approached a ship's clock that hung at the back of the stage and slowly put his fist through it -- he didn't punch it, he forced his hand into its face, breaking the glass and snapping th ehands and crushing the mechanism inside until he was satisfied that it was destroyed. It was as if he thought he would hurt it more that way." (<-- And, in retrospect, understanding why he would lash out specifically against a clock, makes it even neater, of course.)
"He didn't know whether he'd committed the perfect crime or a crime so public and unspeakable that nobody could bring themselves to confront him about it in broad daylight."
"Mayakovsky senior was recruited from a remote Siberan location, a cluster of frozen Soviet blockhouses where local shamanic tradition had hybridized with sophisticated Muscovite practices brought there by gulag inmates." (I... kind of want to read fic of this.)
Alice: "I know. I get it. [...] That's what makes you different from the rest of us, Quentin. You actually still believe in magic. You do realize, right, that nobody else does? I mean, we all know magic is real. But you really believe in it. Don't you."
On the new Physical Kids:
"'I feel like an elderly docent,' Quentin said.
'I already forget their names,' Alice said. 'They're like quadruplets.'
'We should give them numbers. Tell them it's a tradition.'
'And then we could always call them by the wrong number. Freak them out. Or we could call them all the same thing. Alfred or something.'
'Even the girls?'
'Especially the girls.'"
"He carried a wand, which almost nobody at Brakebills did. It was considered slightly embarrassing, like training wheels, or a marital aid."
"And those nice, surprisingly Pottery Barn-y curtains, the color of the stems of plants. They were coarse-woven, but it wasn't the familiar, dperessing fake-authentic coarseness of high-end Earth housewares, which merely imitated the real coarseness of fabrics that were woven by hand out of genuine necessity [...] these were authentically coarse woven curtains, woven by people who didn't know any other way of making curtains, who didn't even know that their way was special, and whose way was therefore not discounted and emptied of meaning in advance."
Also, not really a quote per se, but although I'd heard the phrase I had not heard an explanation for the origin (apocryphal though it may be), so:
"Russell once gave a public lecture on the structure of the universe/ Afterward he was approached by a woman who told him that he was a very clever young man but much mistaken in his thinking, because everyone knew that the world was flat and sat on the back of a turtle. || When Russell asked her what the turtle was standing on, she replied, 'You're very clever, young man, very clever. But it's turtles all the way down."
In conclusion: parts of it reminded me more of my beloved Monday Starts Saturday than of Harry Potter and similar magic school narratives in flavor, though the satire is darker and a lot more Western/American and modern, of course. And I can definitely understand why Junot Diaz (of Oscar Wao) was blurbing it, too -- there's a similar flavor to that, too, though approaching it from a different direction and with different themes.
Also, I love that there's a Brakebills website.
21. Michelle Sagara, Cast in Silence -- eh. The last two or so were better written than the first couple, I thought, but this one was back to being SO annoyingly narrated that I almost gave up. SPOILERS! I think it's because the ratio of stuff happening that involves other people to Kaylin's introspection is too low, and I kind of hate Kaylin's narrative voice. The narration is just so... mumbly. Like, the opposite of crisp and clean. There are all these utterly pointless sentence fragments, and heaped-on clauses that don't add anything, and this sentence structure? It needs to die in a fire. Like, OK, once in a while it's fine. But it is so, SO criminally overused. Same with the "[X], for a value of [X] that included [Y]". It's kind of a cute construction if you use it once or twice. But like a dozen times per book? NOOO! Also, heartily sick of everyone raising a brow at everything. There are other facial expressions!
So, yeah, as you might have been able to tell, reading this book was kind of irritating. My favorite part of this series is the in-depth look at the various cultures that populate Elantra, because the world-building tends to be better than characterization or plot or, god help us, the writing style. This was the first, I think, book to take a departure from cycling through the races (unless the Towers now count as a race? or the fieflings?), and, consequently, it was pretty boring. Instead it focused of Kaylin's past, which I didn't feel any burning need to know more about (and I thought she was a total idiot to go back to Barren just because she didn't want Marcus to know her history; it didn't even feel like character-driven idiocy, it felt like an authorial excuse), and magic, which I find to be boring and impenetrable in this series.
I liked Morse, the tough fief enforcer lady who trained young Kaylin as an assassin (and I like the detail that Kaylin learned to kill people because she wanted to be able to kill Severn). I liked past!Nightshade, and especially his interaction with Tiamaris (I might have started shipping them a bit out of desperation from how boring everything else was). But no, see:
"I have often been criticized," [Nightshade] said, as he slid his perfect hand into the Dragon's wider palm, "for my impulsiveness."
"A trait, sadly, that we all have in common," Tiamaris replied.
Severn coughed.
I even kind of liked Barren, the false fieflord, in his last conversation with Tiamaris, because I find it neat (and rare) when cornered bad guys act with sense as opposed to having some kind of villainous breakdown. I've always liked Tiamaris, so I liked him all through this, but especially once he becomes fieflord and thus gains a hoard and is able to do things like actually assume his draconic shape and fly. So, the last couple of chapters of the book were actually enjoyable, oddly enough, though I don't think they really made up for the preceding boringness. And I can't say that I liked Illien, and I definitely didn't like Tara the Tower avatar, but their dysfunctional relationship -- and her finding exactly the kind of focused, all-consuming love that she was looking for in Tiamaris and his draconic concept of hoard -- were pretty neat touches.
Quotes:
"Kaylin's understanding of the Dragon term hoard wasn't exact, but time had made clear that it meant 'touch any of my stuff and die horribly.'"
Sannabalis, on the Dragon version of hubris: "But, as so many do who acquire power and the learning to ield it with greater and greater ease, we flew where we should not have flown, and we tried to acquire what we could not, in safety, hold."
Tiamaris: "I will not require your services in the capacity of assassin. If I believe someone merits death, I will kill them."
Definitely one of my least favorite in the series, but I do like the note on which it leaves off -- I'm intrigued by the idea of a Dragon fieflord (and his interaction with the Dragon Court), and also the revelation of Kaylin and past!Nightshade's encounter (which presumably holds true in the present timeline as well). So I'll keep reading, but I sure hope the next book is more enjoyable than this one...
22. Steven Brust, Issola (reread) -- it's been a serious while since I read this book (which I'd done only once), and I remembered very little of it except the central conflict and final spoiler. It was especially good to reread it fresh on the heels of Viscount of Adrilankha, since it's pretty clear they were written close together, as Vlad suddenly takes an interest in Morrolan's past. Spoilers from here on (This doesn't surprise me, actually, in in-universe terms. Because Vlad and Morrolan never actually seem to talk -- they banter and bait each other, and I suppose it's possible they do occasionally discuss witchcraft, but it's not like I could see them talking about their backgrounds. That would be actual conversation! But it's perfectly natural that Vlad can have that conversation with Teldra.)
I did find a couple of discrepancies which I thought interesting, and I'm wondering if they're of the intentional or unintentional kind, or the "close enough" kind. When talking about Morrolan's time in the east, Teldra says that he was calling himself "Sotetcsilleg" at the time, which is at odds with Paarfi. But I guess Miska could/would have called him that, and he's the one that brought Teldra to Morrolan? Or maybe Paarfi was just loath to miss an opportunity to make up something mildly denigrating about Morrolan, that could be it, too. Also, she says the Tri'nagore-worshipping villages Morrolan had put to the sword were Dragaeran villages (as opposed to Fenarian)... but weren't they actually Easterners' villages? Not Fenarian, but Eastern anyway? I mean, Teldra was not around when he actually did it, and upon his return he was more interested in understanding time zones than in talking about what had happened (at least according to Paarfi, who was, admittedly, probably making stuff up in this section as I don't exactly see Morrolan confiding to him about the experience), but still. Or was Teldra trying to make Vlad feel more comfortable with a little white lie? Also, unrelated to Morrolan, there's the comment Vlad makes: "I thought the Lavodes were disbanded before the Interregnum", to which Sethra says, "That is true" -- except of course it's not true at all, because the Lavodes fought against Adron (although not under Sethra's leadership). I suppose Sethra could just be saying that it's true that Vlad thinks so. I wouldn't put that past her...
I enjoyed reading Vlad's impressions of Blackwand and Pathfinder. It's interesting to me that the way Blackwand is described (arrogance, strength, desire towards destruction), she sounds a lot like Aliera, while Pathfinder seems to have a slightly more sedate personality (more patient, protective, inquisitive), perhaps more akin to Morrolan's, so that M and A's swords complement them the way they do each other, only with less arguement. (It also seems to lend credence to the idea that Pathfinder contains Drien's soul -- the gender ambiguity and stuff.) Also, there was some explanation/clarification for the thing that bothered me in Jhereg about them being able to take out Morrolan, as Verra explains re: killing the wielder of a Great Weapon: "So Morrolan told me. Yes, it can be done, by a judicious combination of sorcery, surprise, and more sorcery. But even then, had Morrolan not been returned to life, Blackwand would have continued to guard his soul. And it might have done far more than that; the Jhereg assassin was a fool."
There is one very weird bit in this book where Vlad thinks: "It suddenly flashed into my head to wonder if he [Morrolan] and Sethra were currently or ever had been lovers. Now that was an interesting thought, and one that would probably come back to me on many cold nights". So, uh... Vlad thinks about Morrolan's sex life now to keep himself warm at night? Is that what I just read? I kind of have no idea where Vlad is getting this speculation from, because it's plenty clear from Sethra's interaction with Morrolan, especially here, that she treats him the way one would a teenage nephew, who is pretty bright and almost an adult but still not nearly as grown-up as he thinks, and thus requires a lot of advice and occasional ribbing. Maybe Vlad's just thinking of the wrong Dragonlord? 'Cos I do continue to see possible chemistry between Sethra and Aliera, or at least can easily see them as two people who were once lovers but are now simply friends.
On that note, still feeling the Vlad/Morrolan, though not on the same levels as in Taltos. Vlad baiting him when Morrolan is shackled to the wall:
Morrolan was staring at me. "Vlad, you can't be thinking about it. Think! Verra, the Demon Goddess. Your ancestors have worshipped her--"
"Leave it alone, Morrolan."
"Leave it alone? She is my goddess, too. How can I let you destroy her to save me?"
I laughed. "How can you stop me?"
"Vlad--"
"Oh, be still, dammit."
And also: "I probably hurt him a little while I was doing it [working leather strips under the shackles], but, of course, the wouldn't give me the satisfaction of letting me know if I had." And on a similar note: "I contemplated giving Morrolan and Aliera a good, hard whack apiece, and tried to refrain from smiling." Wanting to see Morrolan beg in Taltos, the satisfaction of knowing whether he's hurting him, smiling at the thought of hitting him (OK, and Aliera), and playing mindgames with him while Morrolan is chained up. There is seriously some heavy duty S&M subtext going on here...
Oh, and Morrolan does get a bit of turnabout, at least:
Suddenly I wasn't having fun anymore. "I'd rather not touch the blade, if it's all the same to you," I said.
He seemed amused; maybe it was his turn to have fun. He said, "Well, I'm certainly not going to let you hold her."
"I--"
"Don't worry, she doesn't bite."
And then Morrolan dragging an unconscious Vlad to Dzur Mountain in a fireman's carry ("How did I get back to Dzur Mountain?" "Over my shoulder," said Morrolan) and bringing him jhereg ("I thought you might be missing her") and weapons ("Here, Vlad. [...] I thought you might like to restock, so I grabbed these from my armory. I don't know exactly what you like*, but one or two of these must be all right"), it's all quite adorable. (* Why, yes, I do have the urge to add "That's what she said!" to a lot of Morrolan-Vlad exchanges. Sue me.)
I've been thinking about this more, actually, and I think one of the reasons Vlad/Morrolan works for me better than Vlad and Morrolan as simply buddies -- although I have a hard time seeing it as anything more than UST, possibly UST that Vlad is in denial about and Morrolan is largely oblivious to -- is that the relationship between them has this weird mixture of intimacy and distance, from start to finish. Like, they nearly kill each other the first time they meet, and then save each other's lives a bunch of times, and then Vlad risks his life for Morrolan in the Paths of the Dead, and there's this battle-forged closeness between them on the one hand, and on the other hand they never seem to do normal friend stuff. Vlad disappears for years, walking out on newly revivified, barely conscious Morrolan who is struggling to speak, then reappears a number of years later, in Iorich, and it's pretty much like he never left. Morrolan barges in on him psionically (I noticed this in Yendi and Teckla, under very different circumstances), which nobody else seems to do, and Vlad never actually seems to mind (e.g. in Yendi, when Vlad and Cawti are about to stop practicing throwing knives: "'What the bleeding deviltries of Deathgate Falls to you-- Oh, Morrolan." "Bad time, Vlad?" "Could be worse. What is it?", or in Taltos, after Cawti walks out on him and he is walking the neighborhood, "Morrolan reached me psionically at some point in there, but claimed it wasn't important when I asked why, so I didn't find out what he wanted" -- this is pretty much right after the line "If Loiosh had said anything I'd probably have killed him" (which, for me, is the most chilling in the book)). And when Vlad walks out on Cawti (and it's not safe for him to be in the streets), he thinks about teleporting to Castle Black. They're basically always dropping in on each other and it doesn't matter what each is in the middle of or how much time has passed, and it's like the most normal thing in the world, and apparently for me that's a market of OTP-ness. It's very odd, and I can't quite put it into words, but there's something there that feels slightly different from just friendship.
Other Morrolan stuff: I found it very interesting that Morrolan very quickly guessed how Vlad and Teldra must have reached them ("The window in my tower. [...] He used Spellbreaker to find Pathfinder") while Verra (who'd given him the window... probably?) had to ask Vlad. Also, this passage is just so wonderfully Morrolan, and the difference between him and Vlad:
"Try Spellbreaker," said Morrolan. I looked at him. "On the chains," he said. "Try Spellbreaker."
[...]
"Can't hurt," I said.
"What are you worried about, Boss?"
"Looking ridiculous."
"It was his idea."
[He tries it and] Nothing else happened. I felt ridiculous. [...] Morrolan shrugged; evidently he didn't feel ridiculous.
That's one of my favorite things about Morrolan, actually -- as prideful as he is, he doesn't seem to mind being wrong, or corrected.
And: "Morrolan has always been better at understanding how objects work than how other beings are thinking." And: "[Morrolan] winced. It was obvious that he wanted to go exploring, and was damned curious to see our river of amorphia; it was equally obvious that he didn't think it was what he should do just then." Morrolan being his giant nerd self, awww, but working hard at being responsible!
And from Vlad's conversation with Teldra:
"The Lord Morrolan refused to be put in the position of defending his actions. He considers it undignified."
"So he'd rather everyone thought him a bloodthirsty butcher?"
"Yes."
"Yeah, I guess he would at that."
And also:
"What stopped him [Morrolan] from killing you?"
"His strong sense of self-interest combined with iron self-control."
"I don't believe that is entirely correct, Lord Taltos. I know him rather well, I think, and there are severe limits to his self-control, whereas there are no limits to his pride. Had you pushed him far enough, you would have faced a mortal contest."
And later, still from Vlad's conversations with Teldra, when Teldra points out that being a young Dragon "means seeing the world with one's self as the center" which means that "Morrolan is generous, and self-sacrificing, and always glad to be of help to a friend, but sometimes he sees things first from how they affect him. It means he will sometimes go into a situation wondering what he should do, rather than wondering what needs to be done" -- which is of course the same distinction the pyrologist draws for Khaavren in Viscount.
I did wonder at the example Teldra relates, about Morrolan, serving as division commander under Sethra and trying to give her suggestions. I suppose it would have happened after the levitation of Castle Black, during Zerika's march to Adrilankha? Sethra was Warlord, certainly, and Morrolan wanted to be... I guess there was some clean-up fighting in between the events of LoCB and SL, and Morrolan actually did pull those stunts, and Sethra thwapped him for it, and that's why he was relatively humble and also reluctant when she wanted to give him command of on part of the forces in the Battle of Adrilankha? But Paarfi seems to imply M was mainly holed up in Castle Black, studying magic.
And: "He licked his lips. I recognized that gesture -- I'd been there often enough myself, just before tyring something difficult and a little scary. || Sometimes it almost seemed as if Morrolan were human."
And: "The Goddess stood taller than Morrolan, and glared down at him. He put on his supercilious look and seemed unimpressed with her glare; if it was an act, it was a good one, and if it wasn't, he had a remarkable amount of confidence in himself. Or he was a complete fool, which I'd suspected for some years." (Heh, I kind of wonder if Morrolan is not faintly embarrassed now at the kind of Easterner-like worship he used to feel for Verra and trying to compensate for it. Although I'm not sure that's really his style.) I was also noticing that Verra seems to direct more asides to Morrolan than to other people, judging by the number of non-sequiturs from him Vlad hears. I wonder if that's significant of anything...
And of course there's the whole psychoanalysis of Morrolan and Aliera arguing, which leads Morrolan to smile self-consciously and Aliera to blush: "Besides, your arguments, as always, are stupid to begin with. Morrolan goes out of his way to be contentious toward Aliera because he idolizes Adron and therefore blieves his daughter ought to not only be his equal in all matters, but ought to do and say everythign exactly the way Morrolan imagines Adron would; and Aliera, of course, idolizes her big, powerful, brave cousin Morrolan, and so has a tantrum whenever he fails to live up to the Morrolan she's manufactured in her head." (Also, the idea of Morrolan fanboying Adron, while not surprising, is one I find vastly amusing. Perhaps because I was so head-over-heels for Adron myself after reading 500YA.)
I wonder at what point Teldra became Morrolan's "priestess". In Viscount, Arra had been his conduit to Verra, and he wasn't involved with any of the other gods, but of course things have changed... and Arra doesn't seem to be in the picture anymore. In any case, that was interesting to learn, considering that it doesn't come up anywhere in the Paarfi books.
Now that I've read 500YA, I cared a lot more about the revelation that Adron is still somewhere in there in the Lesser Sea of Chaos (and I find it sweet that Aliera still calls him Daddy).
Random stuff:
I had totally forgotten about this explanation for clapping vs knocking in Dragaeran society: "I will not insult you by explaining why, in a culture rich in sorcery and steeped in paranoia, it is a bad idea to touch the door of someone's home."
I also found it really neat that Sethra has remembered and used Timmer's method for tracking Vlad (through Loiosh) from Orca.
Quotes:
"Just because they really are out to get you doesn't mean you aren't paranoid."
On the plan for breaking Morrolan and Aliera out of the shackles: "I was convinced. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard Morrolan and Aliera agree on anything; how could I fail to go along."
Vlad, re: Morrolan's wizard's staff (that he mostly keeps transformed into a ring): "I suppose it is immensely powerful and you can do all sorts of amazing things with it?"
Morrolan: "Naturally."
"You know, Loiosh, if anyone had told me yesterday at this time that thirty hours later I would have rescued Morrolan and Aliera, nearly killed the Demon Goddess, and found myself trapped in a prison the size of the world, unable to decide if I was hoping to be saved or hoping not to be saved, I'd have said, 'Yeah, sounds about right.'"
"Your probably would have, Boss."
"I think this says something about my life choices."
25. Steven Brust, Teckla (reread) -- yeah, this one is still no fun. I think it's a really good book, and I respect it, especially for being fairly subtle except a bit at the very end, in Vlad's conversation with Kelly and Cawti -- but fun it's not. Spoilers The disintegration of Vlad and Cawti's marriage is still very well done. The torture Vlad undergoes and the aftermath (when Loiosh increasingly frantically attempt to speak to him and Vlad hears but does not respond) and his suicide attempt/conversation with Spellbreaker all hit me harder this time than I remember, as did Vlad's aborted plan to murder all of Kelly's group as a way of protecting Cawti. Vlad trying to figure out where he belongs, a continued trajectory from Jhereg (where he discoveres he was a Dragaeran in his past life and his self-explained reasons for becoming an assassin maybe aren't valid) and Yendi, was quite well done, but sad. Just, the whole thing is depressing.
I did like the fact that, whatever Brust's own politics may be, he did not present the revolutionists as being unequivocally right. Vlad's moral compass is, um, idiosyncratic, but Noish-Pa, who has always been the voice of wisdom, does not approve of how they're going about things either.
Since I've now read the Khaavern Romances, I was able to compare Paresh's story with what we get via Paarfi about Aerich, which is of course a lot less complimentary about Aerich (though Paresh seems to have borne Tazendra no ill will). I'm kind of impressed by how well the two connect, considering there were almost 20 years between the two books -- from Teckla (1987) to Sethra Lavode (2004) -- like, I'm impressed that when writing The Phoenix Guards in 1991 Brust decided to reuse the characters, or at least the names and fealty relationships from a single scene in Teckla. Unless he put those in later? There do seem to have been some changes made for these repackaged omnibus editions, because some of the errors I remember readin Brust talking about were no longer there, or at least I couldn't find them. Either way, pretty cool. (Lyorn Records suggests it's Paresh who is probably prevaricating in this one, because Aerich would not have been able to deflect a sorcerous attack. Interesting!) And I wonder if Vlad's decision to teach Svan some witchcraft for real had anything to do with meeting a Teckla sorcerer in Paresh.
It was also much more interesting to glimpse Khaavren among the Phoenix Guards patrolling South Adrilankha.
I was looking at the Dragaera timeline, and here's the calendar of events per that:
Vlad born in 222
Taltos -- 240
Yendi (Vlad and Cawti meet) -- 242
Jhereg/Teckla/Phoenix -- 243
Vlad Norathar born in 244
Issola/Dzur -- 248
Iorich -- 252
So Vlad and Cawti were only together for maybe over a year, less than two, and Vlad has known Morrolan and Aliera for about 3-4 years when he takes off at the end of Phoenix, comes back 4-5 years later for Issola, then another 4 years later for Iorich (unless they've seen each other meanwhile, of course). See what I mean up above? (I'm not counting Sethra because of the *spoiler* thing)
For my own records:
1.Jhereg (1983)
2.Yendi (1984)
3.Teckla (1987)
4.Taltos (1988)
5.Phoenix (1990)
6.Athyra (1993)
7.Orca (1996)
8.Dragon (1998)
9.Issola (2001)
10.Dzur (2006)
11.Jhegaala (2008)
12.Iorich (2010)
13.Tiassa (2011)
1.The Phoenix Guards (1991)
2.Five Hundred Years After (1994)
1.The Paths of the Dead (2002)
2.The Lord of Castle Black (2003)
3.Sethra Lavode (2004)
23. Dave Barry, I'll Mature When I'm Dead -- not one of his strongest books, but fun. I especially enjoyed the chapeters/columns on the death of newspapers and on Miami. I thought the last two columns -- on kid sports and "Father of the Groom" were heartfelt and all, but not really funny, like I expect Dave Barry to be. Which is fine, but not why I read him. And I have to admit, I got through Chapter 1 of the Twilight parody and gave up. I don't want to read Twilight -- I don't even want to read stuff that makes fun of Twilight by immitating it too precisely, so.
A couple of quotes I especially liked:
"What if, for example, all the Bluetooth phone earpieces in the world suddenly sprouted drill bits and bored into people's brains? | OK, that particular example would actually be fine. But you see my point, don't you?"
"[The Norwegian tourists'] hotel courtesy van was hijacked. This story got BIG in Norway, which does not have a lot of violent crime. If there were a TV crime show called CSI: Norway, most of the cases would involve improperly labeled herring."
24. Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing -- so it actually wasn't as bad as I'd been expecting. Bloody long -- I don't know that it really needed to be 800+ pages, but once I got past the first couple, it was fairly fast going, and I generally enjoyed myself. Spoilers!
Felicity is still the best part of the book. I thought this one was laying on Fee/Pippa a bit thick, but I still really enjoyed Fee's side of it -- the sort of courting gestures like giving Pippa the cloak, bringing her ostrich feathers so she could have her debut (that was very touching), playing the knight to her queen. I also liked the foreshadowing interaction with Dr Van Ripple and discussion of Oscar Wilde. There are just so many great details about Fee in this book -- wanting to turn a rock into a falcon, parading about in chainmail over her nightgown, writing her initial in the dirt with the tip of her fencing foil, plenty more, and I enjoyed them all immensely.
I wasn't sure I was going to like Ann's arc in this one, but I did -- first almost succeeding with the aid of magic to make her beautiful, backing away for a mixture of good and bad reasons (and Gemma being angry at her over that; "'You'll make a fine governess,' I said, like a slap"), and then taking the chance anyway with her own appearance and getting what she wanted. The singing in the street after missing the auditions was a bit too Disney movie, but I was glad to see how the whole thing played out.
Gemma... She is an interesting character, and after reading gogoratchet's impression that Gemma has ADHD I pretty much couldn't stop thinking of that when Gemma was coming up with her more non-sequiturish statements and thoughts. She's an engaging narrator, in any case, so those aspects were just fine, but I found it harder to root for her while she was so clearly misusing her magic, like making people trip and interfering with people's will and making people forget, and not even necessarily for good reasons. I did really like Gemma and Tom's sibling interaction (though I have to say, I find Tom a lot more sympathetic than Gemma does, especially when she tells him, "They don't want you; they want me", and I like the fact that Tom fairly readily embraces Gemma's magic after a demonstration of it (he doesn't share their father's tendency towards denial, e.g.), and I like Gemma's reaction upon learning Fee's secret ("I have questions I do not yet know how to ask: Has she always been this way? Does she feel this same affection for me? I have undressed before her. She has seen me. And I have seen her, have noted her beauty. Do I harbor these secret feelings for Felicity? Am I just as she is? How would I know if I were?"). I thought the Gemma we see at the end was way too... suddenly enlightened to be believable. I understand she lived through momentous things and learned stuff from it, but it just seemed like way too big a leap, especially when she was lecturing Mrs Nightwing.
I found it interesting that with both her present or erstwhile love interests, with Kartik and Simon, Gemma does something magically that verges on dubcon, although in very mild Victorian terms -- she makes Kartik think he is dreaming so he takes the libery of kissing her as he would not awake, and she makes Simon pay exclusive attention to her at the ball as a form of revenge against him and the family. I have to say, I'd rather liked Simon, and was sorry to see that his interest in her had been strategic, apparently. I was not particularly invested in Gemma's relationship with Kartik, though some moments of it were nicely done, so I didn't terribly care about the tree thing from that perspective, though it was a pretty WTF-y way to end Kartik's arc... like a loose end randomly tied up more than a natural development, it felt to me. It is neat that Gemma ends up single at the end, though she does have the magical/spiritual connection to Kartik still, and so do both her friends. That's got to be pretty rare for a YA book targeted at girls.
There was a lot of intrigue and weird goings on, and it made the plot interesting and confusing but I don't really read these for the magic or the plot so much as for the interaction between the girls. I did like the way Gemma gave her place to Circe at the end, and her reasoning ("I'll not have you wandering in the mists. Tpp dangerous."), and I liked the way Gemma's allies in the final battle included former opponents like Fowlson (who suddenly doesn't have nearly so grating an accent, heh), and Ms McCleethy, and Bessie. I guessed a little in advance that Eugenia Spence was the big bad, having been corrupted by the Tree, and the column creatures coming to life was nicely creepy, but I suspect I could've done with less of all that (and less of hanging around with Pippa's gang of factory girls and their progressively decaying castle) and a shorter book, honestly. There's a reason I tend not to read gothics.
Randomly, I quite liked Inspector Kent, who seems like a very decent fellow and says stuff like, "Tommyrot! My dear mother reared four boys, and it was woe unto any one of us who tried to fool her. She could have been a chief inspector, such were her talents. Someday there shall be women at Scotland Yard. Mark my words."
So, hey, I'm glad I finished up this trilogy. Felicity rocks, and the whole thing was pretty fun, if a trifle on the long side.