Reading roundup
53. The Way of the Wizard, edited by John Joseph Adams -- pretty good collection. One of the things I was impressed by is the mix of famous and new-to-me names, the number of female authors in the anthology (just a little less than half), and the number of non-Caucasian names (still a distinct minority, but more than one normally sees). Spoilers for individual storis
"In the Lost Lands", George R.R. Martin -- not a bad little story, atmospheric and creepy, with a neat twist, but I still far prefer his Westeros stuff (and I don't know that short fiction plays to his strengths).
"Family Tree", David Barr Kirtley -- the central idea (an entire family living on an expanding tree that's in tune with the growth of the family) i quite neat! The resolution felt fitting, but I enjoyed this story less than I would have otherwise because the protagonist is (intentionally) pretty unlikeable.
"John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner", Susanna Clarke -- as much as I found Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell long and tedious and couldn't finish it, I find Clarke's short stories set in the same universe and written in the same style utterly charming. This was my favorite one yet, because the surly charcoal burner is hilarious, and the Raven King is such a prat, and the put-upon saints are also really funny. I grinned through this entire story.
"Wizard's Apprentice", Delia Sherman -- I keep forgetting what this story was even though I actually liked it. It's about a boy escaping an abusive home to become a wizard. It was... heartwarming, I guess? And I liked Nick having to learn magic by completing mundane but impossible tasks. But clearly the story overall was pretty forgettable.
"The Sorcerer Minus", Jeffrey Ford -- this was a story with a rat in it as one of the important characters, and I still didn't like it. Whatever it was trying to do didn't work for me.
"Life So Dear or Peace So Sweet", C.C.Finlay -- eh. The American Revolutionary War with witches setting could be interesting, but either it was the style, or the fact that the story fits within a larger canon I'm not familiar with, but it just didn't do much for me. The magic (Scripture-based) is kind of neat, but not in a way I could really appreciate, I didn't care about the characters, and I saw the twist coming a long way off. So, yeah, didn't do much for me.
"Card Sharp", Rajan Khanna -- now this was cool, unusual magic I could appreciate! It's a short story, but exciting and even a little bit touching, and the magic in it (deck of cards based) is really neat.
"So Deep That the Bottom Could Not be Seen", Genevieve Valentine -- this was an interesting one, but kind of mixed. I really liked the idea it was trying to explore -- what happens to magicians that draw their magic from nature in a world of climate change and species extinction -- and I appreciated the fact that it wasn't anvilicious or preachy in its message. I liked the main character, an Inuit not-really-shaman, and the other natural magicians. What I didn't like is how the opposition magicians were a caricature (seriously, Maleficio?) or the protagonist's ploy and how improbably it seemed to work. If not for that, it could've been one of my favorite stories in the collection. And I still really like this line: "If they had to call their spells from the grass, we'd still have grass."
"The Go-Slow", Nnedi Okorafor -- the setting was interesting, and the glimpse of mythology that is totally unfamiliar to me, but I don't have much to say about it as a story.
"Too Fatal a Poison", Krista Hoeppner Leahy -- story narrated by one of Odysseus's men who were turned into pigs by Circe, one who liked it a bit too much. Interesting idea, pretty evocative writing, but not a story that spoke to me particularly, or one that I especially liked.
"Jamaica", Orson Scott Card -- huh. I actually really enjoyed reading this story -- which is part for the course with OSC's short stories -- but I didn't like it very much. I kind of liked Jamaica and his mother and their relationship a lot more than after all the secrets started coming out. It's unsatisfying, for me, anyway, when the eucatastrophe results in identities and relationships I like less, with nothing really there to offset it.
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice", Robert Silverberg -- the only story in this collection that left a weird taste in my mouth. For one thing, I don't get the point of it, other than that the sad-sack protagonist finally got to sleep with his hot wizard teacher. Is it some kind of weird semi-masochistic wish-fulfillment? I liked Halabant, and I kind of liked the student smittenly bumbling along, and I think I would've enjoyed the story if the outcome had been anything other than what it was. As it is... distastefully puzzled.
"The Secret of Calling Rabbits", Wendy N. Wagner -- story didn't do much for me (I think the opening blurb way, way oversold its complexity), but I hadn't seen the twist coming, and that was actually kind of neat.
"The Wizards of Perfil", Kelly Link -- didn't reread, having read it elsewhere.
"How to Sell the Ponti Bridge," Neil Gaiman -- didn't reread, having just read it elsewhere
"The Magician and the Maid and Other Stories", Christie Yant -- the twist in this one was visible so far off... and other than that, I didn't think there was a whole lot to like in it.
"Winter Solstice", Mike Resnick -- I think till now I've only read humorous pieces by Resnick, which this story in no way is. Knowing he had written it because a family member had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's made it a lot more poignant to me, but it was a neat story in itself, too. I found myself especially touched by its Arthur.
"The Trader and the Slave," Cinda Williams Chima -- I read the first book of the canon from which this story comes, so while the characters were not familiar to me (maybe I forgot about them, admittedly), some of the concepts were. Anyway, I didn't find Linda very interesting, but "Renfrew" is very much my sort of character, powerful and sort of ruthless in pursuit of his own ends (which turn out to be a lot more noble than they originally seem, but that doesn't really matter to me).
"Cerile and the Journeyer", Adam-Troy Castro -- I found the central idea of the story pretty neat, but the execution rather bland.
"Counting the Shapes," Yoon Ha Lee -- I really, really wanted to like this story, because it's about magic as math, essentially, but... it's an OK story, but no more than that. I found the typical epic fantasy trappings sort of at odds with the style of magic, and none of the characters resonated with me, and even the magic wasn't that interesting. Eh.
"Endgame", Lev Grossman -- I just really like Grossman's writing. This was a pretty cool piece of Magicians canon, and I liked it even better before Quentin showed up, because Poppy was cool. Quote: "Being a magician, it turned out, wasn't so much like it was in the books. You thought there'd be a Sauron or a White Witch or a Voldemort waiting for you when you graduated, but you know what? Those fuckers could never be bothered to show up."
"Street Wizard," Simon R. Green -- this story is all setting, basically -- nothing in the way of plot actually happens. But the setting is great (except for the mention of aliens, those felt a bit out of left field), and the writing is great, and I liked the periodic meetings with Red and the banter. Despite nothing really happening, this was one of the most enjoyable pieces for me.
"Mommy Issues of the Dead", T.A.Pratt -- I prefer Marla Mason in ensemble pieces, but this was fun enough, and I enjoyed the look at Viscarro's family life. And that is one of my favorite Frost poems.
"One-Click Banishment", Jeremiah Tolbert -- this was a ton of fun! Magic as hacking, basically, told very entertainingly in forum posts by Hidr. The central plot involved an evil EULA and the big bad is defeated in the same way. Along the way there is fighting off the MAA (Magical Association of Atlantis), allusions to pop/net culture, including RickRolling, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and hijinks galore. Totally gimmicky, but one of my favorite pieces nevertheless, because the gimmick works.
"The Ereshkigal Working", Jonathan L. Howard -- I felt like this one was trying too hard to sell me on the protagonist as anti-hero. There are a couple of nice lines -- "'There is a brief period before this plauge will spread, and the world as we know it is lost forever. I need that world, and I will not stand idly by or run while there is the slightest chance of preserving it.' Copeland grimaced. 'How do you make something heroic sound so selfish?'" -- but I couldn't really follow why the final trick worked while just killing the guy wouldn't (that is, I didn't understand what difference it would make to the magic), and I didn't really feel like delving deeper to figure it out, either.
"Feeding the Feral Children", David Farland -- creepy, but not really my thing. And it felt like there was a bit much going on for a short story, with the opening and closing POV's by Yan, who never felt developed as a character to me. But the story did feature a simile alluding to a jerboa, which is kind of a neat first for me.
"The Orange-Tree Sacrifice", Vylar Kaftan -- a vignette, grimdark but (I guess) ultimately triumphant, told pretty much like a fairytale or a myth. I guess it worked OK for that, but it's not really my sort of thing.
"Love Is the Spell That Casts Out Fear", Desirina Boskovich -- I'm actually not sure this one's fantasy at all. Rather, there's a real-world story about a girl who is molested by her youth pastor and a parallel fantasy story about a female wizard who has to deal with an incubus who has been draining the girls in her charge. I found the real world story quite flat (this is a weighty subject, but I don't think it's served well by lines like, "I trusted you. We all trusted your." and "If true love waits, then why couldn't you?"; I get that she's a teenager, but still), and the parallel story rather amateurish, which it probably should be, since it sounds like Hannah herself is writing it, but doesn't really work as well as a story, then. I guess it's one of those stories where I can respect the intent, I just don't think it does a very good job of carrying it out, at least for someone with no personal resonance with the issue at hand.
"El Regalo", Peter S. Beagle -- so, there's a reason Peter Beagle is an acclaimed short story writer. This was one of the longer stories in the collection, but it was also pretty much the only one that made me feel for the characters. Even the bit players felt very vivid (I really liked Mr Luke, for instance, and also that both parents were competent and perceptive rather than merely conveniently absent), and the peril felt real, and I liked both Angie and Marvyn a lot, and the sibling relationship which felt very true to me, bickering and lording it over each other but ultimately willing to risk their lives for each other. El Viejo was scary but fascinating, the magic was neat, and I really liked the other worldbuilding touches, and the sort of background diversity in the cast -- that Mr Luke is Korean and Mrs Luke is not (she can speak Spanish, and has green eyes, not sure what that suggests she could be), and Angie's crush is Greek-Irish, and she has an Indian friend.
"The Word of Unbinding", Ursula LeGuin -- I'm sure I read this before, but it must've been ages ago. It's... LeGuin. Beautifully written, sort of fundamentally kind while clearly acknowledging the darkness in the world. Timeless and classy, as lodessa once summarized her writing.
"The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria", John R. Fultz -- oh, hey, there was another story that left a weird taste in my mouth. The first couple of sections are brimming with used bookshop porn, which was actually great. But then it gets into how Jeremiach the dreamer whose marriage crumbled (his wife didn't think he was man enough because he made less money than her, and also she cheated on him, and then tried to guilt-trip him into staying) is actually Jeremach of Oorg (XP), powerful philosopher/wizard or Athyria who ends up saving the world. So, the cheating wife was apparently all part of unreality, but she's such a sad stereotype (and the only other woman in the story, the merfolk queen Celestia's only role is to look beautiful at first and to be helpful by giving Jeremach stuff) that, yeah, I didn't like this one much.
"The Secret of the Blue Star", Marion Zimmer Bradley -- I think this is actually the first thing I've ever read by MZB (yeah, I know), and it was, eh, okay. I guess for 1979, it's actually pretty impressive -- a cross-dressing mage who is apparently at least bisexual. But as far as the story itself, eh. To conceal the secret, the writing is very stilted, and the lack of pronouns is still very noticeable. Actually, I think there is one, maybe two stray pronouns in the text, but that could be because of how poorly edited this last story was -- there were a lot of other typo type things. As for the story itself, yeah, not a whole lot there. And the setting (Thieves' World) didn't intrigue me either.
Stories I really enjoyed: "El Regalo", in a class of its own. Also "Endgame", "One-Click Banishment", "Street Wizard", "John Uskglass and the Cambrial Charcoal Burner", and a rung below that, "Card Sharp" and "Winter Solstice".
Stories I enjoyed reading but not without quibbles: "Family Tree", "Jamaica", "So Deep that the Bottom Could Not Be Seen"
Stories that I liked well enough, but not on par with my favorite pieces by the same authors: "The Word of Unbinding" (LeGuin), "Mommy Issues of the Dead" (T.A.Pratt), "In the Lost Lands" (GRRM).
54. Libba Bray, Going Bovine -- I saw this book in the library a bunch of times while keeping an eye out for AGATB and passed on it, but recently I saw it on someone's GoodReads list and decided to give it a shot (ambyr, I appear to have enjoyed it a lot more than you did. But then, I did like Catcher in the Rye also :P). After all, I've read some of Libba Bray's short stories set in the modern world and thought they were stronger, in terms of writing, than the Gemma Doyle books, though, of course, it's difficult to compare short stories and novels in any other way. So, having read her modern world novel now... I still think the writing is better. I really enjoyed reading the book. I think it delivered on the rather tricky thing it set out to do, and did so with a minimum of heavy-handedness and some elegance even. But I find it difficult to feel satisfied with it because I am not resigned. HUGE, BOOK-DEFINING SPOILERS
Because the premise of the book is: Cameron, a slacker loser kid who insulates himself from life and from caring about others contracts mad cow disease, which is incurable. He is visited by an angel/hallucination who sends him off on a quest to save the universe and find a cure for his conditions, fueled by a magic ticket to Disneyworld that buys him two weeks in which to do these things. He runs away from the hospital with Gonzo, a dwarf from his school with an overprotective mother, who is consequently terrified of everything from toilet paper to eating out), and they have all sorts of adventures getting from Texas to New Orleans to Orlando, aided by the angel Dulcie, a garden gnome who is actually Balder, and chased by the police, fire giants set on destroying the universe, and the sinister Snow Globe Wholesalers people. At one point Cameron encounters a wishing tree and makes his wish -- "to live". Interspersed with these advetnures are glimpses of the hospital, the nurse Glory, Cameron's family. So, there's a pretty good indication that everything that's happening to Cameron other than that is a coma dream, but it does feel immediate and interesting and it's also jazzed up a bit in glancing discussions about Schroedinger's Cat and how there are multiple realities that collapse into one. And at the end Cameron find Dr X, his hope for a cure, and discovers -- I thought this was a really neat, effective twist, with the groundwork and foreshadowing for it very well laid -- that Dr X's "cure" is nothing more than stasis, the antithesis of life. Which he fights against, and then there's a glimpse of the hospital reality and the respirator being switched off, and a really well done "follow the light" moment.
And the thing is, it works. The ending is poignant, and there are some glimpsed points of hope and continuity, which don't alleviate the tragedy but elevate it above sheer bleakness, and an in-book answer for how Cameron's wish to live is "sort of" carried out -- he packs more life into the two weeks of coma dream than into the preceding years of his real life. And it's kind of the same for the reader, which I think was a really neat touch, an effective echo -- we just read almost 500 pages, invested in Cameron's survival and saving the universe when it turns out that none of that was (probably) real and he dies anyway. It's not a waste because the book was still an exciting ride and we got to be there with Cameron while he learned some things, so it wasn't for nothing, but it's also not a happy ending by a long shot. And I'm pretty impressed that the book went there. But, still, not resigned.
It took me a little while to figure out what the book was reminding me of, and then it clicked: Passage by Connie Willis. Unsurprisingly, since it takes place in the same sort of mental space, but there are the same weird connections of the unconscious mind, things happening across several layers of consciousness. The fact that this book reminded me of Passage suggests it was quite well done.
I found a lot of things about the book poignant without being heavy-handed: Cameron's spacey mother who is the one who makes the hardest decision, the straying, distant father who turns out not to be so distant after all, the glimpse of Jenna's little girl named after Cameron, Balder's funeral. About the only thing that didn't quite work for me on this note -- it felt overextended -- was the time spent at the beach, waiting for Balder's ship. I also quite liked the way Gonzo was handled. He's a dwarf and, as it turns out later, though that, too, had some groundwork laid for it, into guys, and he didn't feel like an Issue or a token minority cast member or anything like that -- those were just more things he was, like a germaphobe and a gamer, part of his identity but not the only part. There are also all these unremarked-on allusions the Don Quixote (which makes sense, both because Cameron had been reading Don Quixote for school and because of the not-real and pointless-or-not? adventures he is having. There's the Chevy Rocinante they buy, and Dulcie is pretty clearly short for Dulcinea. I liked that.
55. Death's Excellent Vacation, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner -- this was the first book I read on my Kindle, and it worked pretty well. Spoilers for individual stories
"Two Blondes", Charlaine Harris -- Sookie and Pam on a roadtrip is an awesome idea. The story itself did not quite live up to the promise, and I could've done without them having to act as strippers, but it was still kind of fun to see the two of them teaming up. I especially liked the little dowtime moments on the way over -- Pam and Sookie having the Dixie Chicks in common, Pam tweaking Eric about Sookie enjoying the Mucho Macho strongman competition and Eric reacting predictably, and so on.
"The Boys Go Fishing", Sarah Smith -- I really liked this one. It's lyrical and sad and hopeful and not overwrought, part superhero story (in a way that reminded me of Watchmen), part fantasy. The philosophical bits are interesting without being ostentatiously deep or trite, but I especially liked it for several quotes and poignant scenes -- Mr Green changing his face to that of his younger self to be half-recognized for a moment by his dying wife, "He's wearing a too-loose Red Sox cap turned backward and a Red Sox jacket much too big for him. The effect is oddly dangerous, as if he's about to spring back to a much bigger size," the boy/girl shapeshifter, "Maybe all kinds of magic exist. Somewhere in a cave, a family of werewolves is reading old Green Force comics and saying, 'Of course he isn't real.' Ghosts are reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and saying what you're a metaphor for" and "But perhaps to be superhuman you need to have been human once, and failed".
"One for the Money", Jeaniene Frost -- meh. Special vampire spouses who babysit a bratty heiress. Yawn.
"Meanwhile, Far Across the Caspian Sea...", Daniel Stashower -- another story I really liked. The vacation theme was the most tenuous, and there wasn't much in terms of plot, but the characters were amusing, the setting was great, and the writing was a lot of fun. Possibly my favorite in the collection. Lots of fun quotes: "He waited a moment as if I might suddenly recall that I had gone to Princeton after all. I shook my head." and "take several bulky packets of material from the research department and turn them into a smooth, lulling sort of prose, in much the same way that blocks of cheddar are emulsified into Cheez Whiz." And "'Mr.Clarke--' he bagan. 'Jeff,' I said. 'Please call me Jeff.' He looked at me with what appeared to be genuine curiosity. 'Whatever for?'" And Kate and Brian are hilarious, my favorit thing about the story: "'And supposedly there are vampires in the Rockies that suck blood through their noses. They stick their noses into the victim's ear. How cool is that?' 'I vant to sneef your bluh-ud.' Brian was on his third beer now." And: "'You think he is going to take you under his wing or something. You want him to sponsor you for membership in the League of Pompous Dickwads.' 'Mr. Clarke,' said Brian, imitating Palgrave's vaguely British accent, 'the packet of clippings and scrap material you have gathered on the Union fortification at City Point has been deemed sufficiently anal by our board of directors. It is my pleasure to present you with a Pompous Dickwad badge and decoder ring.' 'Asinus asinum fricat,' Kate said. 'The ass rubs the ass.'"
"The Innsmouth Nook", A.Lee Martinez -- a humorous story, and it was funny enough but I thought it was trying a little hard. The idea is cute (a struggling New England inn gets its customers from among the sea monsters). The gay buddy-of-protagonist
"Safe and Sound", Jeff Abbott -- another vampire story, centered around an unscrupulous TV journalist personality that makes Rita Skeeter look like an ethics role model, even though there's a perfunctory attempt to add some nuance to her. But the twist, if it's meant to be a twist, is predictable, and the main character is despicable, and I didn't think too much of this one, except for the brief cameo by the Sint Pieter police chief).
"Seeing is Believing", L.A.Banks -- cute but forgettable. Young orphaned psychic trying to make ends meet and save money for school meets young man cursed to turn into a Newfie, together they defeat the sorceress who killed their parents, blah blah blah. It's cute, and it's neat that the protagonists are PoC, which is introduced in a natural way, and that the girl has a gay brother, which is in no way remarked upon, just is. But the "twist" was clear from pretty much the beginning and nothing spectacular happened.
"The Perils of Effrijim", Katie Macalister -- meh. This one's narrated by a demon who likes being a dog. The jokes are quite juvenile, carried on too long, and really not that funny in the first place. Didn't work for me, though I suppose it was a light enough read.
"Thin Walls", Christopher Golden -- more horror than anything, this story is recent widower meets and narrowly escapes being consumed by a succubus. I guess it was adequately creepy, but horror is not my thing, and I thought Tim seeing the succubus in action actually detracted from the creepiness because it sort of veered over into the ridiculous. Sex is pretty ridiculous in general, horror movie-ing it up doesn't make it less so. The end result was more icky than scary. For me, anyway. Maybe a guy would feel differently.
"The Heart Is Always Right", Lilith Saintcrow -- I liked this one. The story is narrated by a gargoyle who rescues a girl and stuff that happens afterwards. I really enjoyed the narration, the implied worldbuilding, and even the twist felt fairly believable and not super obvious, though it made perfect sense in retrospect.
"The Demon in the Dunes", Chris Grabenstein -- kind of an interesting idea, well executed. The spectre of the protagonist years later and dying of cancer was a bit much, OK, but the story worked for me as a whole. I enjoyed the writing and the way the present-day situation is slowly revealed. It's a bit gimmicky, but, once again, in a way that I thought worked pretty well. And there were some neat bits of description, like the "small bikini spotted with Wonder-Bread-wrapper-colored polka dots".
"Home from America", Sharan Newman -- a story of the Leprechaun diaspora. Yes, really. I enjoyed it, more for the idea than for the execution, but still, and the ending is nicely creepy. Favorite line: "Some old fart tells me my ancestors were shoemaking slaves instead of heroes." And: "His head's been so stuffed with fairy tales that he couldn't cope with real fairies."
"Pirate Dave's Haunted Amusement Park", Toni L.P. Kelner -- another cute story. The magic is way handwavy (I don't believe for a moment that a werewolf can turn into a chihuahua), but other than that it was amusing. The whodunit being tied to Dave's vampire nature was neat, and I liked the way Joyce actually used her marketing degree for something. Oh, and I was totally tickled that the bad guy is dressed as a ninja when he engages in sabotage (yes, I'm easily amused :P)
Something I noticed with this crop of stories is how many featured a background gay character. The friend in "Innsmouth Nook", the bouncer on the island in "Safe and Sound", the brother in "Seeing is Believing". That was fairly neat.
I really liked "Meanwhile, Far Across the Caspian Sea...", liked "The Boys Go Fishing" and "The Heart Is Always Right", thought "The Demon in the Dunes" was pretty cool, and enjoyed certain aspects of "Home from America" and "Pirate Dave's". "Innsmouth Nook" and "Seeing is Believing" had cute aspects. "Two Blondes" was about what I've come to expect from Sookie short stories (not much, I think they are weaker and more problematic than the novels), and didn't think much of the rest ("Thin Walls" [not my thing], "Effrijim", and "Safe and Sound", and "One for the Money").
56. Mean Streets, -- eh. I skipped the Jim Butcher story, having already read it, and can't say that the other three were worth picking up the book. One was enjoyable, one had its moment but ultimately disappointed me, and one just sort of sat there not doing a thing for me. Oh well.
"The Warrior", Jim Butcher -- skipped this one as I've read it before.
"The Difference a Day Makes", Simon Green -- I had been expecting more from this one based on the "Street Wizard" story of his I read. Some of the worldbuilding detail was nice, like Dead Boy and his car of the future, but overall the whole thing seemed to build up to this climax that was supposed to be full of horror and just sort of fizzled to me. Oh well. I did enjoy the introductory bit about the case involving tracking down a client's imaginary friend who was having an affair with the guy's wife. More of that sort of thing and less computer sex would've been nice.
"The Third Death of the Little Clay Dog", Kat Richardson -- this one was better. The mystery was a bit too piled on, but I liked the interaction between Harper and Miguel/Micky, and the Day of the Dead detail was just neat -- it's nice to have a fantasy story in a more unusual setting like that. My favorite thing, though, may have been the fact that the protagonist has a pet ferret named Chaos. Sadly, the ferret does not participate in the action.
"Noah's Orphans", Thomas E. Sniegoski -- about two thirds of the way through, I thought I was going to quit, because neither the character nor the setting nor the plot were working for me. I think I only kept reading because of a vague foe yay vibe between Remy/Remiel (an angel gone native) and Sariel, a fallen angel. Anyway, I finished it, but, for a story that's basically a reluctant angel investigates Noah's murder in the present day, it was pretty dull. Remy's dialogue with his lab was cute, but that's not a lot to carry the story. Also, "seraphim" used as the singular will never stop bugging me.
Having read both of the short story collections back to back, another thing that jumped out at me was how everybody seemed to be dying of cancer in them, which was a much less encouraging trend to notice than the gay characters one...
57. Francesca Lia Block, Necklace of Kisses -- I never expected to read a book about Weetzie Bat's midlife crisis, but I'm kind of glad one exists, because I'm certainly not going to read literary fiction/"chick lit" books about this stuff, and there's not a whole lot of SFF on the subject. Spoilers
I enjoyed the Weetzie Bat books, to a point. I don't know if I overdozed on them, or if Cherokee is just not as interesting as her mother, but after a while I wasn't enjoying them much anymore and had to take a break. And then I spotted this one in the Kindle books list at the library and had to give it a shot.
It's interesting. Still with the magical feel of the original, mostly, but pretty different, as it should be. 40s Weetzie seemed to have a lot less life in her, even with the rhinestone toenails and named clothes... I was just missing the verve. And I don't know that I felt like what was required for her to get her groove back was kissing a mermaid, a singing hermaphrodite, a Faerie, and a satyr, but I did like that in the end those kisses are transferred to Max. I found Max's (secret agent lover man's) arc, dealing with post-9/11 depression, more poignant, actually, and I loved the line that resolved it: "Waking from his two-year-long September, he pressed his lips to hers". The thing with Weetzie that did resonate with me was her looking back on being a mother in the early years now that her children were grown, and the relationship between her and her daughters. But it was also interesting to see her just as a woman in her 40's now, no longer able to live on "raw fish, chocolate, and beer". It was also interesting to get an update on the characters from the earlier books, to hear that Slinkster dog had died and that Witch Baby was studying at Cal (naturally) and Cherokee at UCSB, and Max quit smoking.
And then, of course, there are other people's stories, the Korean women who came to the US because one of them was the product of rape by an American, and the silk-making woman who fought off an attacker, Shelley the mermaid, etc. There's a proper modern dark fairy-tale feel to them, anchored in reality and modern life, and the little kid fiddling with a bottle of silver nail polish turning into attempted protection against malevolent Fairies, and the (much lighter) fairy tale wedding was lovely, too. These books always have a numinous quality to them, to use Weetzie's own favorite word, and I was pleased that it carried forward into a book about a grown-up, middle-aged Weetzie.
58. Jacqueline Carey, Naamah's Blessing -- So I wrote about how this one went very fast for me, which the Kushiel books normally don't, but I did run into a snag in the last quarter. I still enjoyed what I was reading, but the pacing was weird all of a sudden, and then there was a million endings. SPOILERS
I had been apprehensive about Moirin's return to Terre D'Ange, because I didn't like that part of the first book very much (except for Raphael, who I knew wouldn't be there), but I generally enjoyed it, mostly thanks to Balthasar Shahrizai, who secured his position of one of my favorite characters in the Moirin trilogy in this book (previously, he hadn't even been on my radar; Moirin talked about meeting him before and misjudging him, and I was like, when did that happen?) Balthasar was great (I particularly enjoyed his flirting with Bao, which Bao didn't seem to mind), and I liked the fact that Duc Rogier (the regent) was a good man sinking into ambition, power corrupts kind of deal, and the complication with Moirin's father having been his companion and being caught in the middle. Oh, and I liked Denis (whose death I mourn; he was such a loveable nerd, with his plans for the Panama canal) and Lianne the King's Poet, who is clever, and not shy about it, and admits to being a coward though she professionally yearns to live through grandiose things.
I thought Desiree was... well. I thought she was written way too grown-up even for a precocious child, but mostly, everyone talked about how she was willful and pouty like Jehane and... she was just a normal kid? Not even a badly behaved one? And, like, actually acting a lot more reasonably than Jehane as an adult, in absolute terms? So that was rather WTF-y for me. But I did continue to really love Bao's interaction with children, including Desiree. I'm kind of sad that the trilogy ends with Moirin's decision to get pregnant, and we never get to actually see Bao and his fat babies. He would clearly be such a wonderful dad!
Speaking of which, I continue to like Bao more and more with each book. I especially liked his answer to Rousse in response to "what do the lot of you know about navigating rivers?" "Quite a bit, actually. There are mighty rivers in Chi'in. [...] But doubtless not as much as you, lord captain" [after Moirin kicked him] and "Ask me when I've taken a look at the Emperor's youngest wife" and pointing out that Terra Nova was not uninhabited before the Aragonians came, and in general being awesome.
And I suppose I should talk about Morin somewhere, too. One of the little details I liked about her in this book is that even while she's dealing with earth-shaking events, she continues to worry about small stuff in nature, like making sure she doesn't kill a plant for demonstration because it won't have enough water, or being concerned that siphoning off all the ants from the jungles destroys the ecosystem.
Also, I never had a particularly high opinion of Daniel, but what the hell, emotionally abandoning his child, abandoning his duties, and committing suicide to leave his tiny daughter as heir with the man he had come to distrust especially on the subject of said daughter still as regent? Loss and grief and depression and whatever you want, but I can have no sympathy for someone who does that.
So, OK, that was Terre D'Ange. I think JC writes really good travelogues, and I enjoyed the ocean journey and the trek through Terra Nova. I thought there was a decent balance struck with the Aragonians, where theyir attitudes about the natives are despicable and their attitudes about D'Angelines are no great shakes, either, but they are not outright villains. I liked the fact that the journey was fraught with sufficient peril and loss to be fairly believable.
I thought the portrayal of the Terra Nova natives was better than !India, although didn't feel nearly as well-rounded as the Tatars. I did think the whole Moirin reforming religious practices wherever she goes thing was actually worse than !India even, because there, at least, it was not a single-handed accomplishment, whereas here the Nahuatl emperor apparently switched from human sacrifice to offerings of flowers and honey to the goddess of desire because Moirin is really, really good in bed. >.> In fairness, there was some hand-waviness about how they'd been talking about it for awhile with advisers and needign the strength of numbers, making alliances rather than raids, but it still basically read like Moirin single-handedly overturning barbaric religious practices. I will also admit that this was slightly offset by Bao actually having to commit human sacrifice and Moirin being complicit in it, and coming to the realization that the locals were allowed to use their own mythology to defend themselves. But still, not my favorite aspect of these books, and here it is again.
I thought the sharade enacted at the end, pretending Thierry was dead, did not so much make organic sense as was a ploy to heighten the tension, but at least it didn't last as long as I feared, and Balthasar played his role admirably. And all of the stuff in Alba frankly bored me. Like she was really going to kill off Bao at this point. And, of course, it had been pretty clear for a while whose job Moirin would take over.
The weird thing for me about this book was Raphael. I actually really, really liked Raphael in the first book. Not as a person, you understand -- his treatment of Moirin was pretty terrible, from ignoring her wishes to putting her in danger to finally blackmailing her with saving her father's life, but I found him a fascinating character, and I was looking forward to more of him in this book after the break in Curse. I loved the glimpse of him at Jehane's deathbed, still trying to save her after Daniel gave up hope. Raphael as Lord of the Ants was... weird. Creepy (especially for me, OMG, swarming ants are a thing that really freaks me out), and occasionally absurd (like the fact that he's learned to produce ant phermones to communicate with them, and Moirin witnessing him standing there, nostrils twitching, as he "listens" to the ants), and that was a nice way to use the Chekhov's gun of the gift of ant speech from the first book (I'm kind of impressed if JC had the series planned out that far in advance). I liked the fact that he'd done a great, world-altering thing in innoculating the Nahuatl agains the pox but did not consider this a triumph because he dismissed them as bloodthirsty savages. I also liked the fact that he was clearly mad but not entirely mad, that the old Raphael was still in there somewhere, that he wouldn't turn from his course because Jehane couldn't stay with him but that he backed off his Replacement Goldfish scheme with Desiree with apparent sincerity (and not just to make sure Moirin stayed alive to aid him), that he realized his folly at the very end (even though I think his last words were rather too bland). I also liked that both Raphael and Moirin herself blamed her not being there to lend her gift for Jehane's death (not that I think it's her fault, but it's a believable reaction for them both).
Random note: So, Montrevan oath. Phedre totally was the one to make up the name in order to tweak Barquiel's nose, Y/N? I mean, Delaunay's original oath was secret, so it could not have been called the Montrevan oath back then, and I don't see Imriel or Sidonie caring about Delaunay that much, having never met the guy.
Upon completion of the Moirin trilogy, I have to say it still feels totally random and discombobulated to me. For all that Moirin keeps remarking how far she's come, I didn't really see any character growth as such. She's been exposed to other cultures and learned a bunch of stuff about the Tao an mudras and languages, but I don't really feel like she's changed that much.
But, anyway, I enjoyed it. Hey folks who've read it and had reaction posts, link me?
"In the Lost Lands", George R.R. Martin -- not a bad little story, atmospheric and creepy, with a neat twist, but I still far prefer his Westeros stuff (and I don't know that short fiction plays to his strengths).
"Family Tree", David Barr Kirtley -- the central idea (an entire family living on an expanding tree that's in tune with the growth of the family) i quite neat! The resolution felt fitting, but I enjoyed this story less than I would have otherwise because the protagonist is (intentionally) pretty unlikeable.
"John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner", Susanna Clarke -- as much as I found Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell long and tedious and couldn't finish it, I find Clarke's short stories set in the same universe and written in the same style utterly charming. This was my favorite one yet, because the surly charcoal burner is hilarious, and the Raven King is such a prat, and the put-upon saints are also really funny. I grinned through this entire story.
"Wizard's Apprentice", Delia Sherman -- I keep forgetting what this story was even though I actually liked it. It's about a boy escaping an abusive home to become a wizard. It was... heartwarming, I guess? And I liked Nick having to learn magic by completing mundane but impossible tasks. But clearly the story overall was pretty forgettable.
"The Sorcerer Minus", Jeffrey Ford -- this was a story with a rat in it as one of the important characters, and I still didn't like it. Whatever it was trying to do didn't work for me.
"Life So Dear or Peace So Sweet", C.C.Finlay -- eh. The American Revolutionary War with witches setting could be interesting, but either it was the style, or the fact that the story fits within a larger canon I'm not familiar with, but it just didn't do much for me. The magic (Scripture-based) is kind of neat, but not in a way I could really appreciate, I didn't care about the characters, and I saw the twist coming a long way off. So, yeah, didn't do much for me.
"Card Sharp", Rajan Khanna -- now this was cool, unusual magic I could appreciate! It's a short story, but exciting and even a little bit touching, and the magic in it (deck of cards based) is really neat.
"So Deep That the Bottom Could Not be Seen", Genevieve Valentine -- this was an interesting one, but kind of mixed. I really liked the idea it was trying to explore -- what happens to magicians that draw their magic from nature in a world of climate change and species extinction -- and I appreciated the fact that it wasn't anvilicious or preachy in its message. I liked the main character, an Inuit not-really-shaman, and the other natural magicians. What I didn't like is how the opposition magicians were a caricature (seriously, Maleficio?) or the protagonist's ploy and how improbably it seemed to work. If not for that, it could've been one of my favorite stories in the collection. And I still really like this line: "If they had to call their spells from the grass, we'd still have grass."
"The Go-Slow", Nnedi Okorafor -- the setting was interesting, and the glimpse of mythology that is totally unfamiliar to me, but I don't have much to say about it as a story.
"Too Fatal a Poison", Krista Hoeppner Leahy -- story narrated by one of Odysseus's men who were turned into pigs by Circe, one who liked it a bit too much. Interesting idea, pretty evocative writing, but not a story that spoke to me particularly, or one that I especially liked.
"Jamaica", Orson Scott Card -- huh. I actually really enjoyed reading this story -- which is part for the course with OSC's short stories -- but I didn't like it very much. I kind of liked Jamaica and his mother and their relationship a lot more than after all the secrets started coming out. It's unsatisfying, for me, anyway, when the eucatastrophe results in identities and relationships I like less, with nothing really there to offset it.
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice", Robert Silverberg -- the only story in this collection that left a weird taste in my mouth. For one thing, I don't get the point of it, other than that the sad-sack protagonist finally got to sleep with his hot wizard teacher. Is it some kind of weird semi-masochistic wish-fulfillment? I liked Halabant, and I kind of liked the student smittenly bumbling along, and I think I would've enjoyed the story if the outcome had been anything other than what it was. As it is... distastefully puzzled.
"The Secret of Calling Rabbits", Wendy N. Wagner -- story didn't do much for me (I think the opening blurb way, way oversold its complexity), but I hadn't seen the twist coming, and that was actually kind of neat.
"The Wizards of Perfil", Kelly Link -- didn't reread, having read it elsewhere.
"How to Sell the Ponti Bridge," Neil Gaiman -- didn't reread, having just read it elsewhere
"The Magician and the Maid and Other Stories", Christie Yant -- the twist in this one was visible so far off... and other than that, I didn't think there was a whole lot to like in it.
"Winter Solstice", Mike Resnick -- I think till now I've only read humorous pieces by Resnick, which this story in no way is. Knowing he had written it because a family member had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's made it a lot more poignant to me, but it was a neat story in itself, too. I found myself especially touched by its Arthur.
"The Trader and the Slave," Cinda Williams Chima -- I read the first book of the canon from which this story comes, so while the characters were not familiar to me (maybe I forgot about them, admittedly), some of the concepts were. Anyway, I didn't find Linda very interesting, but "Renfrew" is very much my sort of character, powerful and sort of ruthless in pursuit of his own ends (which turn out to be a lot more noble than they originally seem, but that doesn't really matter to me).
"Cerile and the Journeyer", Adam-Troy Castro -- I found the central idea of the story pretty neat, but the execution rather bland.
"Counting the Shapes," Yoon Ha Lee -- I really, really wanted to like this story, because it's about magic as math, essentially, but... it's an OK story, but no more than that. I found the typical epic fantasy trappings sort of at odds with the style of magic, and none of the characters resonated with me, and even the magic wasn't that interesting. Eh.
"Endgame", Lev Grossman -- I just really like Grossman's writing. This was a pretty cool piece of Magicians canon, and I liked it even better before Quentin showed up, because Poppy was cool. Quote: "Being a magician, it turned out, wasn't so much like it was in the books. You thought there'd be a Sauron or a White Witch or a Voldemort waiting for you when you graduated, but you know what? Those fuckers could never be bothered to show up."
"Street Wizard," Simon R. Green -- this story is all setting, basically -- nothing in the way of plot actually happens. But the setting is great (except for the mention of aliens, those felt a bit out of left field), and the writing is great, and I liked the periodic meetings with Red and the banter. Despite nothing really happening, this was one of the most enjoyable pieces for me.
"Mommy Issues of the Dead", T.A.Pratt -- I prefer Marla Mason in ensemble pieces, but this was fun enough, and I enjoyed the look at Viscarro's family life. And that is one of my favorite Frost poems.
"One-Click Banishment", Jeremiah Tolbert -- this was a ton of fun! Magic as hacking, basically, told very entertainingly in forum posts by Hidr. The central plot involved an evil EULA and the big bad is defeated in the same way. Along the way there is fighting off the MAA (Magical Association of Atlantis), allusions to pop/net culture, including RickRolling, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and hijinks galore. Totally gimmicky, but one of my favorite pieces nevertheless, because the gimmick works.
"The Ereshkigal Working", Jonathan L. Howard -- I felt like this one was trying too hard to sell me on the protagonist as anti-hero. There are a couple of nice lines -- "'There is a brief period before this plauge will spread, and the world as we know it is lost forever. I need that world, and I will not stand idly by or run while there is the slightest chance of preserving it.' Copeland grimaced. 'How do you make something heroic sound so selfish?'" -- but I couldn't really follow why the final trick worked while just killing the guy wouldn't (that is, I didn't understand what difference it would make to the magic), and I didn't really feel like delving deeper to figure it out, either.
"Feeding the Feral Children", David Farland -- creepy, but not really my thing. And it felt like there was a bit much going on for a short story, with the opening and closing POV's by Yan, who never felt developed as a character to me. But the story did feature a simile alluding to a jerboa, which is kind of a neat first for me.
"The Orange-Tree Sacrifice", Vylar Kaftan -- a vignette, grimdark but (I guess) ultimately triumphant, told pretty much like a fairytale or a myth. I guess it worked OK for that, but it's not really my sort of thing.
"Love Is the Spell That Casts Out Fear", Desirina Boskovich -- I'm actually not sure this one's fantasy at all. Rather, there's a real-world story about a girl who is molested by her youth pastor and a parallel fantasy story about a female wizard who has to deal with an incubus who has been draining the girls in her charge. I found the real world story quite flat (this is a weighty subject, but I don't think it's served well by lines like, "I trusted you. We all trusted your." and "If true love waits, then why couldn't you?"; I get that she's a teenager, but still), and the parallel story rather amateurish, which it probably should be, since it sounds like Hannah herself is writing it, but doesn't really work as well as a story, then. I guess it's one of those stories where I can respect the intent, I just don't think it does a very good job of carrying it out, at least for someone with no personal resonance with the issue at hand.
"El Regalo", Peter S. Beagle -- so, there's a reason Peter Beagle is an acclaimed short story writer. This was one of the longer stories in the collection, but it was also pretty much the only one that made me feel for the characters. Even the bit players felt very vivid (I really liked Mr Luke, for instance, and also that both parents were competent and perceptive rather than merely conveniently absent), and the peril felt real, and I liked both Angie and Marvyn a lot, and the sibling relationship which felt very true to me, bickering and lording it over each other but ultimately willing to risk their lives for each other. El Viejo was scary but fascinating, the magic was neat, and I really liked the other worldbuilding touches, and the sort of background diversity in the cast -- that Mr Luke is Korean and Mrs Luke is not (she can speak Spanish, and has green eyes, not sure what that suggests she could be), and Angie's crush is Greek-Irish, and she has an Indian friend.
"The Word of Unbinding", Ursula LeGuin -- I'm sure I read this before, but it must've been ages ago. It's... LeGuin. Beautifully written, sort of fundamentally kind while clearly acknowledging the darkness in the world. Timeless and classy, as lodessa once summarized her writing.
"The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria", John R. Fultz -- oh, hey, there was another story that left a weird taste in my mouth. The first couple of sections are brimming with used bookshop porn, which was actually great. But then it gets into how Jeremiach the dreamer whose marriage crumbled (his wife didn't think he was man enough because he made less money than her, and also she cheated on him, and then tried to guilt-trip him into staying) is actually Jeremach of Oorg (XP), powerful philosopher/wizard or Athyria who ends up saving the world. So, the cheating wife was apparently all part of unreality, but she's such a sad stereotype (and the only other woman in the story, the merfolk queen Celestia's only role is to look beautiful at first and to be helpful by giving Jeremach stuff) that, yeah, I didn't like this one much.
"The Secret of the Blue Star", Marion Zimmer Bradley -- I think this is actually the first thing I've ever read by MZB (yeah, I know), and it was, eh, okay. I guess for 1979, it's actually pretty impressive -- a cross-dressing mage who is apparently at least bisexual. But as far as the story itself, eh. To conceal the secret, the writing is very stilted, and the lack of pronouns is still very noticeable. Actually, I think there is one, maybe two stray pronouns in the text, but that could be because of how poorly edited this last story was -- there were a lot of other typo type things. As for the story itself, yeah, not a whole lot there. And the setting (Thieves' World) didn't intrigue me either.
Stories I really enjoyed: "El Regalo", in a class of its own. Also "Endgame", "One-Click Banishment", "Street Wizard", "John Uskglass and the Cambrial Charcoal Burner", and a rung below that, "Card Sharp" and "Winter Solstice".
Stories I enjoyed reading but not without quibbles: "Family Tree", "Jamaica", "So Deep that the Bottom Could Not Be Seen"
Stories that I liked well enough, but not on par with my favorite pieces by the same authors: "The Word of Unbinding" (LeGuin), "Mommy Issues of the Dead" (T.A.Pratt), "In the Lost Lands" (GRRM).
54. Libba Bray, Going Bovine -- I saw this book in the library a bunch of times while keeping an eye out for AGATB and passed on it, but recently I saw it on someone's GoodReads list and decided to give it a shot (ambyr, I appear to have enjoyed it a lot more than you did. But then, I did like Catcher in the Rye also :P). After all, I've read some of Libba Bray's short stories set in the modern world and thought they were stronger, in terms of writing, than the Gemma Doyle books, though, of course, it's difficult to compare short stories and novels in any other way. So, having read her modern world novel now... I still think the writing is better. I really enjoyed reading the book. I think it delivered on the rather tricky thing it set out to do, and did so with a minimum of heavy-handedness and some elegance even. But I find it difficult to feel satisfied with it because I am not resigned. HUGE, BOOK-DEFINING SPOILERS
Because the premise of the book is: Cameron, a slacker loser kid who insulates himself from life and from caring about others contracts mad cow disease, which is incurable. He is visited by an angel/hallucination who sends him off on a quest to save the universe and find a cure for his conditions, fueled by a magic ticket to Disneyworld that buys him two weeks in which to do these things. He runs away from the hospital with Gonzo, a dwarf from his school with an overprotective mother, who is consequently terrified of everything from toilet paper to eating out), and they have all sorts of adventures getting from Texas to New Orleans to Orlando, aided by the angel Dulcie, a garden gnome who is actually Balder, and chased by the police, fire giants set on destroying the universe, and the sinister Snow Globe Wholesalers people. At one point Cameron encounters a wishing tree and makes his wish -- "to live". Interspersed with these advetnures are glimpses of the hospital, the nurse Glory, Cameron's family. So, there's a pretty good indication that everything that's happening to Cameron other than that is a coma dream, but it does feel immediate and interesting and it's also jazzed up a bit in glancing discussions about Schroedinger's Cat and how there are multiple realities that collapse into one. And at the end Cameron find Dr X, his hope for a cure, and discovers -- I thought this was a really neat, effective twist, with the groundwork and foreshadowing for it very well laid -- that Dr X's "cure" is nothing more than stasis, the antithesis of life. Which he fights against, and then there's a glimpse of the hospital reality and the respirator being switched off, and a really well done "follow the light" moment.
And the thing is, it works. The ending is poignant, and there are some glimpsed points of hope and continuity, which don't alleviate the tragedy but elevate it above sheer bleakness, and an in-book answer for how Cameron's wish to live is "sort of" carried out -- he packs more life into the two weeks of coma dream than into the preceding years of his real life. And it's kind of the same for the reader, which I think was a really neat touch, an effective echo -- we just read almost 500 pages, invested in Cameron's survival and saving the universe when it turns out that none of that was (probably) real and he dies anyway. It's not a waste because the book was still an exciting ride and we got to be there with Cameron while he learned some things, so it wasn't for nothing, but it's also not a happy ending by a long shot. And I'm pretty impressed that the book went there. But, still, not resigned.
It took me a little while to figure out what the book was reminding me of, and then it clicked: Passage by Connie Willis. Unsurprisingly, since it takes place in the same sort of mental space, but there are the same weird connections of the unconscious mind, things happening across several layers of consciousness. The fact that this book reminded me of Passage suggests it was quite well done.
I found a lot of things about the book poignant without being heavy-handed: Cameron's spacey mother who is the one who makes the hardest decision, the straying, distant father who turns out not to be so distant after all, the glimpse of Jenna's little girl named after Cameron, Balder's funeral. About the only thing that didn't quite work for me on this note -- it felt overextended -- was the time spent at the beach, waiting for Balder's ship. I also quite liked the way Gonzo was handled. He's a dwarf and, as it turns out later, though that, too, had some groundwork laid for it, into guys, and he didn't feel like an Issue or a token minority cast member or anything like that -- those were just more things he was, like a germaphobe and a gamer, part of his identity but not the only part. There are also all these unremarked-on allusions the Don Quixote (which makes sense, both because Cameron had been reading Don Quixote for school and because of the not-real and pointless-or-not? adventures he is having. There's the Chevy Rocinante they buy, and Dulcie is pretty clearly short for Dulcinea. I liked that.
55. Death's Excellent Vacation, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner -- this was the first book I read on my Kindle, and it worked pretty well. Spoilers for individual stories
"Two Blondes", Charlaine Harris -- Sookie and Pam on a roadtrip is an awesome idea. The story itself did not quite live up to the promise, and I could've done without them having to act as strippers, but it was still kind of fun to see the two of them teaming up. I especially liked the little dowtime moments on the way over -- Pam and Sookie having the Dixie Chicks in common, Pam tweaking Eric about Sookie enjoying the Mucho Macho strongman competition and Eric reacting predictably, and so on.
"The Boys Go Fishing", Sarah Smith -- I really liked this one. It's lyrical and sad and hopeful and not overwrought, part superhero story (in a way that reminded me of Watchmen), part fantasy. The philosophical bits are interesting without being ostentatiously deep or trite, but I especially liked it for several quotes and poignant scenes -- Mr Green changing his face to that of his younger self to be half-recognized for a moment by his dying wife, "He's wearing a too-loose Red Sox cap turned backward and a Red Sox jacket much too big for him. The effect is oddly dangerous, as if he's about to spring back to a much bigger size," the boy/girl shapeshifter, "Maybe all kinds of magic exist. Somewhere in a cave, a family of werewolves is reading old Green Force comics and saying, 'Of course he isn't real.' Ghosts are reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and saying what you're a metaphor for" and "But perhaps to be superhuman you need to have been human once, and failed".
"One for the Money", Jeaniene Frost -- meh. Special vampire spouses who babysit a bratty heiress. Yawn.
"Meanwhile, Far Across the Caspian Sea...", Daniel Stashower -- another story I really liked. The vacation theme was the most tenuous, and there wasn't much in terms of plot, but the characters were amusing, the setting was great, and the writing was a lot of fun. Possibly my favorite in the collection. Lots of fun quotes: "He waited a moment as if I might suddenly recall that I had gone to Princeton after all. I shook my head." and "take several bulky packets of material from the research department and turn them into a smooth, lulling sort of prose, in much the same way that blocks of cheddar are emulsified into Cheez Whiz." And "'Mr.Clarke--' he bagan. 'Jeff,' I said. 'Please call me Jeff.' He looked at me with what appeared to be genuine curiosity. 'Whatever for?'" And Kate and Brian are hilarious, my favorit thing about the story: "'And supposedly there are vampires in the Rockies that suck blood through their noses. They stick their noses into the victim's ear. How cool is that?' 'I vant to sneef your bluh-ud.' Brian was on his third beer now." And: "'You think he is going to take you under his wing or something. You want him to sponsor you for membership in the League of Pompous Dickwads.' 'Mr. Clarke,' said Brian, imitating Palgrave's vaguely British accent, 'the packet of clippings and scrap material you have gathered on the Union fortification at City Point has been deemed sufficiently anal by our board of directors. It is my pleasure to present you with a Pompous Dickwad badge and decoder ring.' 'Asinus asinum fricat,' Kate said. 'The ass rubs the ass.'"
"The Innsmouth Nook", A.Lee Martinez -- a humorous story, and it was funny enough but I thought it was trying a little hard. The idea is cute (a struggling New England inn gets its customers from among the sea monsters). The gay buddy-of-protagonist
"Safe and Sound", Jeff Abbott -- another vampire story, centered around an unscrupulous TV journalist personality that makes Rita Skeeter look like an ethics role model, even though there's a perfunctory attempt to add some nuance to her. But the twist, if it's meant to be a twist, is predictable, and the main character is despicable, and I didn't think too much of this one, except for the brief cameo by the Sint Pieter police chief).
"Seeing is Believing", L.A.Banks -- cute but forgettable. Young orphaned psychic trying to make ends meet and save money for school meets young man cursed to turn into a Newfie, together they defeat the sorceress who killed their parents, blah blah blah. It's cute, and it's neat that the protagonists are PoC, which is introduced in a natural way, and that the girl has a gay brother, which is in no way remarked upon, just is. But the "twist" was clear from pretty much the beginning and nothing spectacular happened.
"The Perils of Effrijim", Katie Macalister -- meh. This one's narrated by a demon who likes being a dog. The jokes are quite juvenile, carried on too long, and really not that funny in the first place. Didn't work for me, though I suppose it was a light enough read.
"Thin Walls", Christopher Golden -- more horror than anything, this story is recent widower meets and narrowly escapes being consumed by a succubus. I guess it was adequately creepy, but horror is not my thing, and I thought Tim seeing the succubus in action actually detracted from the creepiness because it sort of veered over into the ridiculous. Sex is pretty ridiculous in general, horror movie-ing it up doesn't make it less so. The end result was more icky than scary. For me, anyway. Maybe a guy would feel differently.
"The Heart Is Always Right", Lilith Saintcrow -- I liked this one. The story is narrated by a gargoyle who rescues a girl and stuff that happens afterwards. I really enjoyed the narration, the implied worldbuilding, and even the twist felt fairly believable and not super obvious, though it made perfect sense in retrospect.
"The Demon in the Dunes", Chris Grabenstein -- kind of an interesting idea, well executed. The spectre of the protagonist years later and dying of cancer was a bit much, OK, but the story worked for me as a whole. I enjoyed the writing and the way the present-day situation is slowly revealed. It's a bit gimmicky, but, once again, in a way that I thought worked pretty well. And there were some neat bits of description, like the "small bikini spotted with Wonder-Bread-wrapper-colored polka dots".
"Home from America", Sharan Newman -- a story of the Leprechaun diaspora. Yes, really. I enjoyed it, more for the idea than for the execution, but still, and the ending is nicely creepy. Favorite line: "Some old fart tells me my ancestors were shoemaking slaves instead of heroes." And: "His head's been so stuffed with fairy tales that he couldn't cope with real fairies."
"Pirate Dave's Haunted Amusement Park", Toni L.P. Kelner -- another cute story. The magic is way handwavy (I don't believe for a moment that a werewolf can turn into a chihuahua), but other than that it was amusing. The whodunit being tied to Dave's vampire nature was neat, and I liked the way Joyce actually used her marketing degree for something. Oh, and I was totally tickled that the bad guy is dressed as a ninja when he engages in sabotage (yes, I'm easily amused :P)
Something I noticed with this crop of stories is how many featured a background gay character. The friend in "Innsmouth Nook", the bouncer on the island in "Safe and Sound", the brother in "Seeing is Believing". That was fairly neat.
I really liked "Meanwhile, Far Across the Caspian Sea...", liked "The Boys Go Fishing" and "The Heart Is Always Right", thought "The Demon in the Dunes" was pretty cool, and enjoyed certain aspects of "Home from America" and "Pirate Dave's". "Innsmouth Nook" and "Seeing is Believing" had cute aspects. "Two Blondes" was about what I've come to expect from Sookie short stories (not much, I think they are weaker and more problematic than the novels), and didn't think much of the rest ("Thin Walls" [not my thing], "Effrijim", and "Safe and Sound", and "One for the Money").
56. Mean Streets, -- eh. I skipped the Jim Butcher story, having already read it, and can't say that the other three were worth picking up the book. One was enjoyable, one had its moment but ultimately disappointed me, and one just sort of sat there not doing a thing for me. Oh well.
"The Warrior", Jim Butcher -- skipped this one as I've read it before.
"The Difference a Day Makes", Simon Green -- I had been expecting more from this one based on the "Street Wizard" story of his I read. Some of the worldbuilding detail was nice, like Dead Boy and his car of the future, but overall the whole thing seemed to build up to this climax that was supposed to be full of horror and just sort of fizzled to me. Oh well. I did enjoy the introductory bit about the case involving tracking down a client's imaginary friend who was having an affair with the guy's wife. More of that sort of thing and less computer sex would've been nice.
"The Third Death of the Little Clay Dog", Kat Richardson -- this one was better. The mystery was a bit too piled on, but I liked the interaction between Harper and Miguel/Micky, and the Day of the Dead detail was just neat -- it's nice to have a fantasy story in a more unusual setting like that. My favorite thing, though, may have been the fact that the protagonist has a pet ferret named Chaos. Sadly, the ferret does not participate in the action.
"Noah's Orphans", Thomas E. Sniegoski -- about two thirds of the way through, I thought I was going to quit, because neither the character nor the setting nor the plot were working for me. I think I only kept reading because of a vague foe yay vibe between Remy/Remiel (an angel gone native) and Sariel, a fallen angel. Anyway, I finished it, but, for a story that's basically a reluctant angel investigates Noah's murder in the present day, it was pretty dull. Remy's dialogue with his lab was cute, but that's not a lot to carry the story. Also, "seraphim" used as the singular will never stop bugging me.
Having read both of the short story collections back to back, another thing that jumped out at me was how everybody seemed to be dying of cancer in them, which was a much less encouraging trend to notice than the gay characters one...
57. Francesca Lia Block, Necklace of Kisses -- I never expected to read a book about Weetzie Bat's midlife crisis, but I'm kind of glad one exists, because I'm certainly not going to read literary fiction/"chick lit" books about this stuff, and there's not a whole lot of SFF on the subject. Spoilers
I enjoyed the Weetzie Bat books, to a point. I don't know if I overdozed on them, or if Cherokee is just not as interesting as her mother, but after a while I wasn't enjoying them much anymore and had to take a break. And then I spotted this one in the Kindle books list at the library and had to give it a shot.
It's interesting. Still with the magical feel of the original, mostly, but pretty different, as it should be. 40s Weetzie seemed to have a lot less life in her, even with the rhinestone toenails and named clothes... I was just missing the verve. And I don't know that I felt like what was required for her to get her groove back was kissing a mermaid, a singing hermaphrodite, a Faerie, and a satyr, but I did like that in the end those kisses are transferred to Max. I found Max's (secret agent lover man's) arc, dealing with post-9/11 depression, more poignant, actually, and I loved the line that resolved it: "Waking from his two-year-long September, he pressed his lips to hers". The thing with Weetzie that did resonate with me was her looking back on being a mother in the early years now that her children were grown, and the relationship between her and her daughters. But it was also interesting to see her just as a woman in her 40's now, no longer able to live on "raw fish, chocolate, and beer". It was also interesting to get an update on the characters from the earlier books, to hear that Slinkster dog had died and that Witch Baby was studying at Cal (naturally) and Cherokee at UCSB, and Max quit smoking.
And then, of course, there are other people's stories, the Korean women who came to the US because one of them was the product of rape by an American, and the silk-making woman who fought off an attacker, Shelley the mermaid, etc. There's a proper modern dark fairy-tale feel to them, anchored in reality and modern life, and the little kid fiddling with a bottle of silver nail polish turning into attempted protection against malevolent Fairies, and the (much lighter) fairy tale wedding was lovely, too. These books always have a numinous quality to them, to use Weetzie's own favorite word, and I was pleased that it carried forward into a book about a grown-up, middle-aged Weetzie.
58. Jacqueline Carey, Naamah's Blessing -- So I wrote about how this one went very fast for me, which the Kushiel books normally don't, but I did run into a snag in the last quarter. I still enjoyed what I was reading, but the pacing was weird all of a sudden, and then there was a million endings. SPOILERS
I had been apprehensive about Moirin's return to Terre D'Ange, because I didn't like that part of the first book very much (except for Raphael, who I knew wouldn't be there), but I generally enjoyed it, mostly thanks to Balthasar Shahrizai, who secured his position of one of my favorite characters in the Moirin trilogy in this book (previously, he hadn't even been on my radar; Moirin talked about meeting him before and misjudging him, and I was like, when did that happen?) Balthasar was great (I particularly enjoyed his flirting with Bao, which Bao didn't seem to mind), and I liked the fact that Duc Rogier (the regent) was a good man sinking into ambition, power corrupts kind of deal, and the complication with Moirin's father having been his companion and being caught in the middle. Oh, and I liked Denis (whose death I mourn; he was such a loveable nerd, with his plans for the Panama canal) and Lianne the King's Poet, who is clever, and not shy about it, and admits to being a coward though she professionally yearns to live through grandiose things.
I thought Desiree was... well. I thought she was written way too grown-up even for a precocious child, but mostly, everyone talked about how she was willful and pouty like Jehane and... she was just a normal kid? Not even a badly behaved one? And, like, actually acting a lot more reasonably than Jehane as an adult, in absolute terms? So that was rather WTF-y for me. But I did continue to really love Bao's interaction with children, including Desiree. I'm kind of sad that the trilogy ends with Moirin's decision to get pregnant, and we never get to actually see Bao and his fat babies. He would clearly be such a wonderful dad!
Speaking of which, I continue to like Bao more and more with each book. I especially liked his answer to Rousse in response to "what do the lot of you know about navigating rivers?" "Quite a bit, actually. There are mighty rivers in Chi'in. [...] But doubtless not as much as you, lord captain" [after Moirin kicked him] and "Ask me when I've taken a look at the Emperor's youngest wife" and pointing out that Terra Nova was not uninhabited before the Aragonians came, and in general being awesome.
And I suppose I should talk about Morin somewhere, too. One of the little details I liked about her in this book is that even while she's dealing with earth-shaking events, she continues to worry about small stuff in nature, like making sure she doesn't kill a plant for demonstration because it won't have enough water, or being concerned that siphoning off all the ants from the jungles destroys the ecosystem.
Also, I never had a particularly high opinion of Daniel, but what the hell, emotionally abandoning his child, abandoning his duties, and committing suicide to leave his tiny daughter as heir with the man he had come to distrust especially on the subject of said daughter still as regent? Loss and grief and depression and whatever you want, but I can have no sympathy for someone who does that.
So, OK, that was Terre D'Ange. I think JC writes really good travelogues, and I enjoyed the ocean journey and the trek through Terra Nova. I thought there was a decent balance struck with the Aragonians, where theyir attitudes about the natives are despicable and their attitudes about D'Angelines are no great shakes, either, but they are not outright villains. I liked the fact that the journey was fraught with sufficient peril and loss to be fairly believable.
I thought the portrayal of the Terra Nova natives was better than !India, although didn't feel nearly as well-rounded as the Tatars. I did think the whole Moirin reforming religious practices wherever she goes thing was actually worse than !India even, because there, at least, it was not a single-handed accomplishment, whereas here the Nahuatl emperor apparently switched from human sacrifice to offerings of flowers and honey to the goddess of desire because Moirin is really, really good in bed. >.> In fairness, there was some hand-waviness about how they'd been talking about it for awhile with advisers and needign the strength of numbers, making alliances rather than raids, but it still basically read like Moirin single-handedly overturning barbaric religious practices. I will also admit that this was slightly offset by Bao actually having to commit human sacrifice and Moirin being complicit in it, and coming to the realization that the locals were allowed to use their own mythology to defend themselves. But still, not my favorite aspect of these books, and here it is again.
I thought the sharade enacted at the end, pretending Thierry was dead, did not so much make organic sense as was a ploy to heighten the tension, but at least it didn't last as long as I feared, and Balthasar played his role admirably. And all of the stuff in Alba frankly bored me. Like she was really going to kill off Bao at this point. And, of course, it had been pretty clear for a while whose job Moirin would take over.
The weird thing for me about this book was Raphael. I actually really, really liked Raphael in the first book. Not as a person, you understand -- his treatment of Moirin was pretty terrible, from ignoring her wishes to putting her in danger to finally blackmailing her with saving her father's life, but I found him a fascinating character, and I was looking forward to more of him in this book after the break in Curse. I loved the glimpse of him at Jehane's deathbed, still trying to save her after Daniel gave up hope. Raphael as Lord of the Ants was... weird. Creepy (especially for me, OMG, swarming ants are a thing that really freaks me out), and occasionally absurd (like the fact that he's learned to produce ant phermones to communicate with them, and Moirin witnessing him standing there, nostrils twitching, as he "listens" to the ants), and that was a nice way to use the Chekhov's gun of the gift of ant speech from the first book (I'm kind of impressed if JC had the series planned out that far in advance). I liked the fact that he'd done a great, world-altering thing in innoculating the Nahuatl agains the pox but did not consider this a triumph because he dismissed them as bloodthirsty savages. I also liked the fact that he was clearly mad but not entirely mad, that the old Raphael was still in there somewhere, that he wouldn't turn from his course because Jehane couldn't stay with him but that he backed off his Replacement Goldfish scheme with Desiree with apparent sincerity (and not just to make sure Moirin stayed alive to aid him), that he realized his folly at the very end (even though I think his last words were rather too bland). I also liked that both Raphael and Moirin herself blamed her not being there to lend her gift for Jehane's death (not that I think it's her fault, but it's a believable reaction for them both).
Random note: So, Montrevan oath. Phedre totally was the one to make up the name in order to tweak Barquiel's nose, Y/N? I mean, Delaunay's original oath was secret, so it could not have been called the Montrevan oath back then, and I don't see Imriel or Sidonie caring about Delaunay that much, having never met the guy.
Upon completion of the Moirin trilogy, I have to say it still feels totally random and discombobulated to me. For all that Moirin keeps remarking how far she's come, I didn't really see any character growth as such. She's been exposed to other cultures and learned a bunch of stuff about the Tao an mudras and languages, but I don't really feel like she's changed that much.
But, anyway, I enjoyed it. Hey folks who've read it and had reaction posts, link me?