Reading roundup -- Soulless and The Name of the Wind
59. Gail Carriger, Soulless -- cute and mostly enjoyable, but I can't say I like it. Spoilers
It was while I was reading the last chapter and Queen Victoria saunters into the heroine's house and offers her a job as political advisor-cum-spy that I realized what this book reminded me of: that new Three Musketeers movie with ninja!Milady and aerial battles. Because it elicited the same "I don't care that this is ridiculous because I'm having fun" feelings in me with its overabundance of fun genres and general refuge in audacity.
It's a little odd, even, because it's not like Napoleonic Wars with dragons, say, is a less gleefully ridiculous premise than Victorian steampunk London with vampires and werewolves, but, while often quite funny, Temeraire takes its premise and then extends it more or less realistically, while Soulless is quite happy to be a romp and often a farce. Which is OK! But it makes it a lot harder to feel emotionally engaged because of that. Romps (and even farces) can be emotionally engaging -- a lot of the Miles books are romps, for instance, and much of Locke Lamora, e.g. and then there's Discworld, which is in a category of its own -- but I never felt like there was anything real at stake in this one. It was just passing the time having a bit of fun. Which is not a bad thing necessarily, but I can see myself happily reading this series without really caring about it.
Alexia is... I feel like she is meant to be a more entertaining, admirable, and sympathetic protagonist than I found her to be. A scientifically minded, forward spinster who lays about with her brass-tipped parasol, bosses people around, wants to do something useful with her life, and is furthermore voluptuous, dark-haired, and so on sounds quite perfect, but she never felt fully coherent to me. I think part of the problem, at least, is that she is meant to be so smart and then there are these situations where she is being improbably dense, presumably in order to heighten the tension, but it doesn't even work. Like, not recognizing MacDougall's voice at the club after she had spent several hours conversing with him. Or not realizing that she needed to wipe off the entire word on the golem's forehead, not just part of it. And, of course, the whole thing where she doesn't realize Lord Maccon likes her (which is probably just the convention of the genre, but doesn't make it any less ridiculous). There are possible explanations for all of it -- she was, after all, recovering from the shock of kidnapping and having generally a rough night, nobody in this lot seems to know what a golem is, and there is the in-book explanation of sorts that living with her family has made Alexia think that she is unloveable... But, she certainly doesn't seem to think that all of the time, and is secure in herself and with her friends and her American suitor, and she continues to be puzzled by Lord Maccon liking her even after he has made the physical part of his attraction clear to her. It just felt a bit of a jumble. But I did appreciate her scientific frame of mind, especially when she continued to think in those terms even while discovering aspects of Lord Maccon's anatomy.
The other characters were amusing, too. I liked Lord Maccon, who is precisely the sort of powerful man who finds himself in embarrassing circumstances that I find very enjoyable in my farces. I liked the way he just sort of long-sufferingly accepted Lord Akeldama's entire entourage flirting with/ogling him. In fact, I have to admit I would not be averse to reading Maccon/Akeldama fic XP Akeldama himself I'm more mixed on. There is certainly some poignancy there, underneath the stereotypical, ridiculous dandy, but I did find the surface rather grating, which made it harder to look past it. Biffy was amusing, as was Professor Lyle, and I liked Floote the butler, too. And MacDougall the American, even, especially the fact that after his courtship of Alexia didn't work out, he "married a veritable battle-ax of a woman and happily allowed himself to be bossed around for the remainder of his days."
The world-building is... eh. The central concept, of the supernatural set having more soul was pretty neat. The way the supernatural were integrated into society in Britain vs how they were looked on in the US (for supporting the South during the Civil War) was pretty cool, too, though vastly underexplored -- I felt like the anti-supernatural "terrorists" who were the culprits in this book rather came out of nowhere. The attempt to treat these things scientifically was interesting, and I wish there had been more of that. But, once again, the whole thing felt sort of thrown together, with added steampunkiness and golems. I suppose sequels might sketch things in a bit more satisfyingly, but not holding my breath.
I do continue to wonder about the octopuses...
I read the interview with the author at the end of the book, and was very amused to see that one of the influences she sited, in addition to Austen and P.G.Wodehouse, was Gerald Durrell.
I now have the sequel hanging out on my Kindle, and will be reading that next, I think. But I've heard the second book was not as neat as the first? Or the faults were more transparent? Anyway, we'll see.
60. Walter Moers, The Alchemist's Apprentice -- What a weird book. I enjoyed it, especially for the word-invention, all the more impressive knowing that it's a translation (although I suppose it's relatively easy to translate from German to English), but that was decidedly strange. Spoilers! I must admit I kind of grew to like Ghoolion, in all his evil and subsequent pathetic madness, and as for the rest, well, the pictures were cute, and the plot kept my interest, as did the food description. There are a couple of genuinely creepy moments, such as when Echo realizes (or so he thinks, anyway) that the bird he just ate was his friend Theodore, and the whole weird relationship between Echo and Ghoolion, both pet and master and victim and executioner. I don't know that I need to read more in this universe, but it was an interesting experience.
61. Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind -- First of all, I must thank all the folks on my flist who encouraged me to read this book, because, you were right, it is precisely the sort of thing I would enjoy. Which is not to say that I didn't have quibbles -- I did, and certain parts of the story worked a lot better for me than other parts -- but for a first novel it was very impressive and it was a highly enoyable book without any disclaimers at all. It was the first one in a long while that kept me up or holed up reading beyond my normal commute hours. (Well, I also needed to finish it quickly because it was overdue and I couldn't renew it, but the story was a greater motivation than a 10-cent fine a day.) SPOILERS!
My favorite part of the story is Kvothe's time at the University, unsurprisingly. I love love LOVE magic school/university stories. Hogwarts, Brakebills, Roke, NIIChAVO -- I'm all over that! And NotW is a really good magic university story. The University makes sense. It has traditions, some of them half-forgotten, and history, and problems (like Kvothe basically having to invent the concept of financial aid on the spot with his "less three talents" ition), colorful mentors and asshole teachers, interesting classes, friends and rivals, perils both academic/administrative and genuine life-in-danger perils, everything one can ask from a university story. OK, Hemme seemed a bit like Rothfuss decided to dial Snape to 11 (now with bonus random but very explicit misogyny!) and Ambrose as the rich, powerful student nemesis (who also forces himself on female students, apparently) was also a bit of a stock character, but I didn't really mind, because I enjoyed Kvothe facing off with them time after time, especially his impromptu lecture on introduction to sympathy and critiquing Ambrose's attempts at verse.
I really loved all the other masters -- Lorren, who is placid except when it comes to his books, a good guy, generally, but stodgy, but fair; Elxa Dal the sympathist, whom I would have liked to see more of (something in his description made me mentally envision him as my Kinetics professor, Dr I, who was a bit of a fun slave-driver with flair, too... possibly via some kind of subliminal linke to Kristobal Junta, now that I think about it... IDEK. But for some weird reason I am totally imagining Elxha Dal and Kilvin as the Junta and Fedor Simeonovich of the Univesity. The similarity of Kilvin's name to Fedor Simeonovich's last name may have something to do with that, but I really can't get rid of that vibe, in spite of nothing whatsoever supporting it /o\); Kilvin the artificer/engineer ("If one student in ten had half his fire I'd teach with a whip and chair instead of chalk and slate"); the Chancellor, who seems a lot more in possession of a sense of humour than one would expect an administrator to be (too bad we didn't get to see him actually teaching Linguistics); and my favorite -- Elodin the Namer, totally crazy but so very entertaining. The chapter where Kvothe is chasing him to get him to take him on as a student was probably my favorite in the book -- Elodin sending him for pinecones while he runs away, taking him to visit the on-campus loonie-bin, challenging him to step off the roof and, when Kvothe does, "Congratulations," he said. '"That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen." His expression was a mix of awe and disbelief. "Ever."' and "Elodin made it clear that anyone stupid enough to jump off a roof was too reckless to be allowed to hold a spoon in his presence, let alon study something as 'profound and volatile' as naming."
The student characters are OK, too, but not as central. I liked Simmon and Wilem, but we're definitely not talking Hogwarts Trio or even the Physical kids from The Magicians -- Kvothe's very much doing his own thing, and occasionally forgets about or neglects his friends, who have their own lives outside of his orbit, which I actually liked and found more realistic, especially for Kvothe, who grew up as an only child who spent most of his time with grown-ups and then spent years in solitude in the forest and Tarbean.
Maybe my favorite thing about this book is the magic. I love the fact that it's a skill (that requires both talent and work) that must be learned and refined, that it requires memorization and practice, that it is based on mathematics and physics and chemistry (which are essentially prerequisites for getting into the University, judging by the admissions process), that it -- this really filled me with joy when I read that law of sympathy -- obeys the laws of Thermodynamics, and suffers from losses due to imperfect energy transfer and stuff. You have no idea how happy that makes me, you guys. (Although I hope that now that Kvothe is a Re'lar he'll learn about entropy, too, because there's more to energy than heat/enthalpy. Also, apparently they don't know about the basis of magnetism yet, or at least Kvothe doesn't. ) I loved the scientific aspect of magic (or, at least, sympathy) in this universe, although it did have the side-effect that I kept stopping to try and see if I could answer the questions Kvothe got during admissions or that come up during the book, like how much energy Kilvin had to reroute to the heater eater (hee! :D Magical heat exchangers! :DDD) during the Fishery fire, or what's in Kilvin's various lamps, or what bassal might be (I guess it's magnesium maybe? which is light for a metal, sort of silvery, and burns in air once you light it). Also, I kept wracking my brains about the bone-tar, because at first it sounded like HF (the seep into your body and eat your bones thing), but you mostly find it as aqueous solution, which is clear, though sort of oily-looking. HF is a gas when not in solution, and I guess you could cool it down enough that it would be a liquid (googles boiling point -- 19.5 C), but also you would never ever keep it in glass because it's one of the few things that etches glass, and the bone-tar was in a glass container. I'm almost certainly overthinking this, but if anyone knows what real chemical, if any, bone-tar is supposed to be, please tell me!
But, ahem, I digress. I really loved the University part of the story, even though towards the end the "Kvothe's going to get expelled! D: Oh wait, he gets promoted instead! :D" thing was starting to get a little familiar. Although I did think it was good that even when Kvothe got rewarded for things he "should've" gotten expelled for, there were still consequences for him. Not that I advocate whipping in academic institutions, but there were consequences, you know? So often there aren't, for the Speshul protagonist.That was the other thing I liked about Kvothe-at-University. He is very bright, exceptionally bright -- but people don't fawn on him for it. There is some resentment and jealousy from the students he jumps ranks on, there's the enmity with Ambrose. There's also -- even though Ambrose I think might be the only one to say it outright -- like Quentin in Brakebills, Kvothe has come to a place where just about everyone is exceptional, and being special in the outside world is not a guarrantee of continuing to be special here (though Kvothe, of course, does). There are people who, through experience and patient study, do actually know better than Kvothe, like Manet. And, even though Kvothe joins the University really early and advances really quickly, he is not the brightest star the University has ever seen -- right there is Elodin, who joined even younger (although Kvothe probably was ready to join at that age, according to Ben, he just had his life disrupted by the Chandrian and the stint in Tarbean), became full Arcanist and Chancellor at some impossibly early age -- and then had to be put away in a padded room for the safety of himself and others. So that was pretty neat. And, as bright as he is, Kvothe makes mistakes, takes on too heavy a load, does less well than he might have through pettiness or arrogance or other priorities, as well as through circumstances not really in his control, like Hemme's enmity and being barred from the Archives.
So, right, anyway, magic and the University were my favorite part of the story. I also enjoyed reading about Kvothe's childhood with the troupe and informal apprenticeship with Abenthy, complete with him being a smartass in the way of many precocious children. I thought it was quite telling where the beginnings of mastering Alar -- "It was the most difficult thing I had ever done" -- took him "almost all afternoon" XD. I generally liked Ben, and his relationship with Kvothe, and I hope the two of them get to meet again. I wish there had been more shown of Kvothe's parents and the troupe, or, rather, that I had walked away from it with a different feel than Kvothe's father always joking around and his mother being all gentle and thoughtful in her instruction. It totally makes sense, since we only see them through Kvothe's story, and he was quite young when they died, and a lot is probably still walled off behind the wall built up around the trauma, but I wanted to get to know them better. I guess the parentage/genetics of brilliant outliers is just really interesting to me.
I can't say that I was nearly as invested in Denna or Kvothe's relationship with her. I thought their adventures with the denner-addicted dracchus were neat, but more for the dracchus than the two of them. I love that the dragons are herbivores because they would require too much meat to survive otherwise, that the fire is part of a mating display and they're also conditioned to put it out, and that there's discussion, though no answer, to how dragons breathe fire -- both the source of the flammable substance (methane, here, so it makes sense that it burns blue) and the spark to light it (if electric eels can do it, why not dragons). I also really liked Denna and Kvothe trying to calculate a lethal dose of denner for th dracchus, taking into account weight and possible built-up immunity and all kinds of other things from guesses -- and that it didn't seem to have worked.
As for Denna herself... eh. I'm not nearly as intrigued by or attracted to her as Kvothe is, so it was hard for me to feel invested. And despite everything that Deoch had said about how few options are open to a family-less woman like Denna, and how her charisma could well be a curse, I'm still not really sold on her or her behaviour. There is another thing when it comes to Kvothe and Denna, and it's that the "they're both in love with each other but each thinks it's unrequited" trope is one of my pet peeves. I will say that it's better justified here than most other places -- Kvothe knows Denna's track record, which does strongly seems to suggest that chasing after Denna is a pretty good way to get her to dislike and avoid you, and there seems to be a fair bit of trauma in her, given how she talks about men touching her in situations where she is not in control, so a totally inexperienced kid like Kvothe can certainly be forgiven for proceeding very carefully -- or, well, not at all, really -- and, with his actor's training, I suspect he can be good enough at hiding his feelings that Denna could genuinely be fooled into thinking Kvothe doesn't think of her that way (although this I have a harder time believing, tbh). I do like the fact that Denna is good at poking holes in Kvothe's suppositions, that she may not have his magical or scientific training, but in terms of analysis and adapting to situations she may well be his equal. And I liked her teaching Kvothe how to use a knife ("I can't count the men who have tried to seduce me away from my virtue by teaching me how to defend it", and Kvothe's subsequent quip about whether she was doing the same thing). And I enjoyed the way Denna occasionally points out to Kvothe that he is being patronizing ("Why don't you just tell me? Don't try to tease me into some sort of sudden burst of understanding like you're my schoolmaster"). But the relationship is so central to the book and to Kvothe, clearly, and I just don't feel its attraction, which makes reading about Kvothe looking for Denna and pining for Denna and thinking and talking about Denna rather boring.
I also have sort of general undecided feelings about women in NotW. There are some, which is good, and the scarcity of them at the University is quite believable. And the women we do meet all seem like impressive, interesting women -- Denna, of course; Devi that Arcanist-turned-loan-shark; Fela the sculptor who gets taught by Elodin, something Kvothe tried for and couldn't get; Mola the doctor (I forget the in-universe term) who keeps patching up Kvothe; even Auri, the feral and possibly crazy waif. They always seem to have a point of advantage vs Kvothe, teasing him and so on... but he always seems to be doing the rescuing even so. Which I suppose is par for the course in a rise-of-a-hero story, since one of the things NotW is trying to show is how Kvothe came by a saving people thing, from adopting Ben on the road to the incident in Tarbean where he explicitly chose to do nothing to saving Fela's life at the Fishery (and, earlier, liberating her from Ambrose's unwelcome advances) to saving a whole town from the dragon to placating a terrified girl with a magical placebo. But, I don't know... I like my heroism to be more evenly distributed among characters, to be honest. And also, am I spacing, or are there really no occurrences where Kvothe rescues someone other than a woman? (And I don't think helping Ben when he was a child really counts.)
Then we come to the parts of the story that I liked least. The framing story actually wasn't something I liked very much. The narration feels pretentious here -- which it sometimes does in the other sections, too, but since that's Kvothe narrating his own story, and he is very conscious of narrating and was raised on drama, it's a lot less jarring there than here. I like Bast a lot, both as the happy-go-lucky sort he pretends to be and the glimpse of him we get in the last chapter, when he explains that he is puppet-mastering the Chronicler coming to Waystone Inn and what he will do if the Chronicler isn't compliant. (Also, please tell me this fandom is shipping Kvothe/Bast like crazy, as that was by far the most obvious ship I saw. I mean, come on: "A note? You sneak out and leave me a note? [...] What am I, some dockside whore?") The Chronicler is an interesting character, and I liked the stories the characters are telling at the end, the legends that have grown up around Kvothe and how different they are from the true story Kvothe is telling, and what similarities remain (although I have to say I felt like not enough time had passed -- since Chronicler is still alive and Kvothe is still a relatively young man -- for quite this much diffusion; something just didn't feel quite right about those stories, but I do like the idea of what that was trying to do). I also liked Kvothe calling himself Kote now (which is mentioned in passing in Kilvin's quote after the Fishery fire means "disaster") and his sword Folly. But overall, I was not invested in either spider demons or whatever was going on in that merenary, and I found the villagers boring, and I can't say that, even having read the story, I am super-curious to see the reason for Kvothe's current funk.
I just realized I haven't actually talked about Kvothe himself, oops. XP I do like Kvothe. Well, anyway, I like Kvothe the precocious trouper kid learning magic (and the wake his background as an actor gives showmanship flare to his later experience at the University as well, like when he uses a stage trick to get the class to applaud him after the "guest lecture" on sympathy) and Kvothe the University student who knows just how bright he is and is proud despite (and because of) his poverty and orchestrates his notoriety, who has a sharp tongue and can wield it in his own protection and the protection of others, but doesn't really know when to shut up. He is the kind of exceptionally clever person that I can see doing really stupid, disastrous things, which is wonderful for plot -- out of pride/pettiness or thinking he can talk himself out of trouble later or even just sheer fondness for theatrics; he reminded me a bit of Miles Vorkosigan in this way, and also Tyrion, and he also reminded me of A from my Magnum Opus, which is always fun. But Kvothe the poor orphaned urchin in Tarbean I found boring, and I'm not sure that section needed to be as long as it was, unless the point was just to have him orphaned at a really early age but not meet Denna/enter the University until he was in his mid-teens. It was fine, and not totally extraneous to the plot -- the lock-picking and roof-roaming did come in handy later -- but it was my least favorite section of the book. And Kvothe after whatever has happened in the next two books of backstory is also not very interesting to me, at least just yet. I always prefer stories of magical prodigies coming into their own to stories of what happens after they've burnt out or screwed up or accomplished whatever was their great task (the Earthsea books taught me that for sure, though I do still love older Ged who comes back to settle down with Tenar -- just not as much as young Ged chasing the evil he unleased with a rat on his shoulder), but even so -- the innkeeper Kvothe, even with lightning occasionally flashing in his eyes, even bantering with Bast on occasion, is just kind of dull. Which I know is Bast's point, pretty much, but it's hard for me to think of the flashback!Kvothe and the innkeeper as the same character (perhaps it requires more Alar than I possess :P), and I just don't care about innkeeper!Kvothe.
Another part of the story I didn't really care about was the whole Chandrian thing. It feels almost like it had been transplanted from an entirely different fantasy -- a less interesting one. Man with no face, man with goat eyes, wholesale slaughter -- meh. The metal rusting and wood rotting is pretty creepy, but overall I can't muster much interest in the Chandrian, which is too bad, as I suppose there will be a lot more of that in the sequels.
Just a couple more points to wrap up my thoughts on the book. I enjoyed the worldbuilding outside of the magic, too. The book gives a feel for a far-flung civilization and varied culture quite gracefully, without over-explaining anything. There are expressions ("how is the road to Tinue", "I've not seen the king in Vintas either", etc.) that work like the 'cats of Queen Beruthiel' references that I love so much in my world-building. There are multiple languages and greetings and dialects and customs (like the whole discourse on how one kisses a lady's hand where, or Simmon trying to explain Sovoy being handsy with a serving girl as cultural differences -- unsuccessfuly), and I loved the fact that the University is a multi-lingual community, that Wilem makes mistakes in the Commonwealth tongue, and that when something urgent needs to be explained to Kilvin, Wilem switches into their common language. I also loved the fact that Kvothe makes a mistake in naming his horse, and a tinker points it out to him (that whole interlude with the horse was pretty funny, and I was also amused that Kvothe spent a whole bunch of time bargaining for and describing a horse that then disappears from the story).
On the subject of language, one of my pet peeves is English puns that still seem to work even though the characters are presumed to be speaking a different language in the second-world setting. I forget what they're supposed to be speaking in the Commonwealth, and I guess it's never explicitly said that it *isn't* English, but the English puns still threw me out of the story every time -- the whole jackass/Jakis thing, and Auri's names for everything in the Underthing (Belows/Billows, Vault, the loonie bin being called the Rookery because "it's wher eyou go if you're a-ravin'", etc.) I do love puns in general, so I was slightly torn, because I enjoyed these on their merits, just had a hard time seeing how they fit into the world-building. But ah well. The other thing I didn't like about the book from a language perspective was the occasional accents, because, IMO, phonetic accents are never a good idea. Oh, and I enjoyed the bits of songs and poetry and children's rhymes, too. Pretty much all of them except the Chandrian rhyme, but especially the little rhyme about tinkers and Bast's oddly-rhymed song.
I was less impressed with the religion we get to see, because it seemed like a pretty straightforward take on Christianity, complete with god-the-father-and-son, a Virgin Mary figure, and the self-scrificing messiah. But religion interests me a lot less than language, so I didn't really care.
Other random moments I liked: Kvothe checking Chronicler's ability to take dictation, including made-up words like "eggoliant", and Fela's account of the "holy war" about how to shelve things in the Archives. Also the three most important rules of the chemist: "Label clearly. Measure twice. Eat elsewhere." And the saying "there are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man." Also, "fishwiving" is a great verb/gerund. Some quotes I particularly enjoyed:
"Waterside is where people are poor. That makes them beggars, thieves, and whores. hillside is where people are rich. That makes them solicitors, politicians, and courtesans."
"I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left."
"It is a sprung rhythm," [Ambrose] said, his voice stiff and offended. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."
"Spring?" I burst out with an incredulous laugh. "I understand that if I saw a horse with a leg this badly 'sprung,' I'd kill it out of mercy, then burn its poor corpse for fear the local dogs might gnaw on it and die."
"Some of my Arcanum bunkmates taught me a card game called dogsbreath. I returned the favor by giving an impromptu lesson in psychology, probability, and manual dexterity. I won almost two whole talents before they stopped inviting me back to their games."
"Dammit boy, I hope you're as good as you seem to think you are. I could use someone else around here with Illien's fire." He ran a hand through his own red hair to clarify his double meaning.
"I hope this place is as good as everyone seems to think it is," I said earnestly. "I need a place to burn."
And that's it, basically. I'm really eager to start Wise Man's Fear, which I saw around the library a whole bunch but is now nowhere to be seen, alas.
It was while I was reading the last chapter and Queen Victoria saunters into the heroine's house and offers her a job as political advisor-cum-spy that I realized what this book reminded me of: that new Three Musketeers movie with ninja!Milady and aerial battles. Because it elicited the same "I don't care that this is ridiculous because I'm having fun" feelings in me with its overabundance of fun genres and general refuge in audacity.
It's a little odd, even, because it's not like Napoleonic Wars with dragons, say, is a less gleefully ridiculous premise than Victorian steampunk London with vampires and werewolves, but, while often quite funny, Temeraire takes its premise and then extends it more or less realistically, while Soulless is quite happy to be a romp and often a farce. Which is OK! But it makes it a lot harder to feel emotionally engaged because of that. Romps (and even farces) can be emotionally engaging -- a lot of the Miles books are romps, for instance, and much of Locke Lamora, e.g. and then there's Discworld, which is in a category of its own -- but I never felt like there was anything real at stake in this one. It was just passing the time having a bit of fun. Which is not a bad thing necessarily, but I can see myself happily reading this series without really caring about it.
Alexia is... I feel like she is meant to be a more entertaining, admirable, and sympathetic protagonist than I found her to be. A scientifically minded, forward spinster who lays about with her brass-tipped parasol, bosses people around, wants to do something useful with her life, and is furthermore voluptuous, dark-haired, and so on sounds quite perfect, but she never felt fully coherent to me. I think part of the problem, at least, is that she is meant to be so smart and then there are these situations where she is being improbably dense, presumably in order to heighten the tension, but it doesn't even work. Like, not recognizing MacDougall's voice at the club after she had spent several hours conversing with him. Or not realizing that she needed to wipe off the entire word on the golem's forehead, not just part of it. And, of course, the whole thing where she doesn't realize Lord Maccon likes her (which is probably just the convention of the genre, but doesn't make it any less ridiculous). There are possible explanations for all of it -- she was, after all, recovering from the shock of kidnapping and having generally a rough night, nobody in this lot seems to know what a golem is, and there is the in-book explanation of sorts that living with her family has made Alexia think that she is unloveable... But, she certainly doesn't seem to think that all of the time, and is secure in herself and with her friends and her American suitor, and she continues to be puzzled by Lord Maccon liking her even after he has made the physical part of his attraction clear to her. It just felt a bit of a jumble. But I did appreciate her scientific frame of mind, especially when she continued to think in those terms even while discovering aspects of Lord Maccon's anatomy.
The other characters were amusing, too. I liked Lord Maccon, who is precisely the sort of powerful man who finds himself in embarrassing circumstances that I find very enjoyable in my farces. I liked the way he just sort of long-sufferingly accepted Lord Akeldama's entire entourage flirting with/ogling him. In fact, I have to admit I would not be averse to reading Maccon/Akeldama fic XP Akeldama himself I'm more mixed on. There is certainly some poignancy there, underneath the stereotypical, ridiculous dandy, but I did find the surface rather grating, which made it harder to look past it. Biffy was amusing, as was Professor Lyle, and I liked Floote the butler, too. And MacDougall the American, even, especially the fact that after his courtship of Alexia didn't work out, he "married a veritable battle-ax of a woman and happily allowed himself to be bossed around for the remainder of his days."
The world-building is... eh. The central concept, of the supernatural set having more soul was pretty neat. The way the supernatural were integrated into society in Britain vs how they were looked on in the US (for supporting the South during the Civil War) was pretty cool, too, though vastly underexplored -- I felt like the anti-supernatural "terrorists" who were the culprits in this book rather came out of nowhere. The attempt to treat these things scientifically was interesting, and I wish there had been more of that. But, once again, the whole thing felt sort of thrown together, with added steampunkiness and golems. I suppose sequels might sketch things in a bit more satisfyingly, but not holding my breath.
I do continue to wonder about the octopuses...
I read the interview with the author at the end of the book, and was very amused to see that one of the influences she sited, in addition to Austen and P.G.Wodehouse, was Gerald Durrell.
I now have the sequel hanging out on my Kindle, and will be reading that next, I think. But I've heard the second book was not as neat as the first? Or the faults were more transparent? Anyway, we'll see.
60. Walter Moers, The Alchemist's Apprentice -- What a weird book. I enjoyed it, especially for the word-invention, all the more impressive knowing that it's a translation (although I suppose it's relatively easy to translate from German to English), but that was decidedly strange. Spoilers! I must admit I kind of grew to like Ghoolion, in all his evil and subsequent pathetic madness, and as for the rest, well, the pictures were cute, and the plot kept my interest, as did the food description. There are a couple of genuinely creepy moments, such as when Echo realizes (or so he thinks, anyway) that the bird he just ate was his friend Theodore, and the whole weird relationship between Echo and Ghoolion, both pet and master and victim and executioner. I don't know that I need to read more in this universe, but it was an interesting experience.
61. Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind -- First of all, I must thank all the folks on my flist who encouraged me to read this book, because, you were right, it is precisely the sort of thing I would enjoy. Which is not to say that I didn't have quibbles -- I did, and certain parts of the story worked a lot better for me than other parts -- but for a first novel it was very impressive and it was a highly enoyable book without any disclaimers at all. It was the first one in a long while that kept me up or holed up reading beyond my normal commute hours. (Well, I also needed to finish it quickly because it was overdue and I couldn't renew it, but the story was a greater motivation than a 10-cent fine a day.) SPOILERS!
My favorite part of the story is Kvothe's time at the University, unsurprisingly. I love love LOVE magic school/university stories. Hogwarts, Brakebills, Roke, NIIChAVO -- I'm all over that! And NotW is a really good magic university story. The University makes sense. It has traditions, some of them half-forgotten, and history, and problems (like Kvothe basically having to invent the concept of financial aid on the spot with his "less three talents" ition), colorful mentors and asshole teachers, interesting classes, friends and rivals, perils both academic/administrative and genuine life-in-danger perils, everything one can ask from a university story. OK, Hemme seemed a bit like Rothfuss decided to dial Snape to 11 (now with bonus random but very explicit misogyny!) and Ambrose as the rich, powerful student nemesis (who also forces himself on female students, apparently) was also a bit of a stock character, but I didn't really mind, because I enjoyed Kvothe facing off with them time after time, especially his impromptu lecture on introduction to sympathy and critiquing Ambrose's attempts at verse.
I really loved all the other masters -- Lorren, who is placid except when it comes to his books, a good guy, generally, but stodgy, but fair; Elxa Dal the sympathist, whom I would have liked to see more of (something in his description made me mentally envision him as my Kinetics professor, Dr I, who was a bit of a fun slave-driver with flair, too... possibly via some kind of subliminal linke to Kristobal Junta, now that I think about it... IDEK. But for some weird reason I am totally imagining Elxha Dal and Kilvin as the Junta and Fedor Simeonovich of the Univesity. The similarity of Kilvin's name to Fedor Simeonovich's last name may have something to do with that, but I really can't get rid of that vibe, in spite of nothing whatsoever supporting it /o\); Kilvin the artificer/engineer ("If one student in ten had half his fire I'd teach with a whip and chair instead of chalk and slate"); the Chancellor, who seems a lot more in possession of a sense of humour than one would expect an administrator to be (too bad we didn't get to see him actually teaching Linguistics); and my favorite -- Elodin the Namer, totally crazy but so very entertaining. The chapter where Kvothe is chasing him to get him to take him on as a student was probably my favorite in the book -- Elodin sending him for pinecones while he runs away, taking him to visit the on-campus loonie-bin, challenging him to step off the roof and, when Kvothe does, "Congratulations," he said. '"That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen." His expression was a mix of awe and disbelief. "Ever."' and "Elodin made it clear that anyone stupid enough to jump off a roof was too reckless to be allowed to hold a spoon in his presence, let alon study something as 'profound and volatile' as naming."
The student characters are OK, too, but not as central. I liked Simmon and Wilem, but we're definitely not talking Hogwarts Trio or even the Physical kids from The Magicians -- Kvothe's very much doing his own thing, and occasionally forgets about or neglects his friends, who have their own lives outside of his orbit, which I actually liked and found more realistic, especially for Kvothe, who grew up as an only child who spent most of his time with grown-ups and then spent years in solitude in the forest and Tarbean.
Maybe my favorite thing about this book is the magic. I love the fact that it's a skill (that requires both talent and work) that must be learned and refined, that it requires memorization and practice, that it is based on mathematics and physics and chemistry (which are essentially prerequisites for getting into the University, judging by the admissions process), that it -- this really filled me with joy when I read that law of sympathy -- obeys the laws of Thermodynamics, and suffers from losses due to imperfect energy transfer and stuff. You have no idea how happy that makes me, you guys. (Although I hope that now that Kvothe is a Re'lar he'll learn about entropy, too, because there's more to energy than heat/enthalpy. Also, apparently they don't know about the basis of magnetism yet, or at least Kvothe doesn't. ) I loved the scientific aspect of magic (or, at least, sympathy) in this universe, although it did have the side-effect that I kept stopping to try and see if I could answer the questions Kvothe got during admissions or that come up during the book, like how much energy Kilvin had to reroute to the heater eater (hee! :D Magical heat exchangers! :DDD) during the Fishery fire, or what's in Kilvin's various lamps, or what bassal might be (I guess it's magnesium maybe? which is light for a metal, sort of silvery, and burns in air once you light it). Also, I kept wracking my brains about the bone-tar, because at first it sounded like HF (the seep into your body and eat your bones thing), but you mostly find it as aqueous solution, which is clear, though sort of oily-looking. HF is a gas when not in solution, and I guess you could cool it down enough that it would be a liquid (googles boiling point -- 19.5 C), but also you would never ever keep it in glass because it's one of the few things that etches glass, and the bone-tar was in a glass container. I'm almost certainly overthinking this, but if anyone knows what real chemical, if any, bone-tar is supposed to be, please tell me!
But, ahem, I digress. I really loved the University part of the story, even though towards the end the "Kvothe's going to get expelled! D: Oh wait, he gets promoted instead! :D" thing was starting to get a little familiar. Although I did think it was good that even when Kvothe got rewarded for things he "should've" gotten expelled for, there were still consequences for him. Not that I advocate whipping in academic institutions, but there were consequences, you know? So often there aren't, for the Speshul protagonist.That was the other thing I liked about Kvothe-at-University. He is very bright, exceptionally bright -- but people don't fawn on him for it. There is some resentment and jealousy from the students he jumps ranks on, there's the enmity with Ambrose. There's also -- even though Ambrose I think might be the only one to say it outright -- like Quentin in Brakebills, Kvothe has come to a place where just about everyone is exceptional, and being special in the outside world is not a guarrantee of continuing to be special here (though Kvothe, of course, does). There are people who, through experience and patient study, do actually know better than Kvothe, like Manet. And, even though Kvothe joins the University really early and advances really quickly, he is not the brightest star the University has ever seen -- right there is Elodin, who joined even younger (although Kvothe probably was ready to join at that age, according to Ben, he just had his life disrupted by the Chandrian and the stint in Tarbean), became full Arcanist and Chancellor at some impossibly early age -- and then had to be put away in a padded room for the safety of himself and others. So that was pretty neat. And, as bright as he is, Kvothe makes mistakes, takes on too heavy a load, does less well than he might have through pettiness or arrogance or other priorities, as well as through circumstances not really in his control, like Hemme's enmity and being barred from the Archives.
So, right, anyway, magic and the University were my favorite part of the story. I also enjoyed reading about Kvothe's childhood with the troupe and informal apprenticeship with Abenthy, complete with him being a smartass in the way of many precocious children. I thought it was quite telling where the beginnings of mastering Alar -- "It was the most difficult thing I had ever done" -- took him "almost all afternoon" XD. I generally liked Ben, and his relationship with Kvothe, and I hope the two of them get to meet again. I wish there had been more shown of Kvothe's parents and the troupe, or, rather, that I had walked away from it with a different feel than Kvothe's father always joking around and his mother being all gentle and thoughtful in her instruction. It totally makes sense, since we only see them through Kvothe's story, and he was quite young when they died, and a lot is probably still walled off behind the wall built up around the trauma, but I wanted to get to know them better. I guess the parentage/genetics of brilliant outliers is just really interesting to me.
I can't say that I was nearly as invested in Denna or Kvothe's relationship with her. I thought their adventures with the denner-addicted dracchus were neat, but more for the dracchus than the two of them. I love that the dragons are herbivores because they would require too much meat to survive otherwise, that the fire is part of a mating display and they're also conditioned to put it out, and that there's discussion, though no answer, to how dragons breathe fire -- both the source of the flammable substance (methane, here, so it makes sense that it burns blue) and the spark to light it (if electric eels can do it, why not dragons). I also really liked Denna and Kvothe trying to calculate a lethal dose of denner for th dracchus, taking into account weight and possible built-up immunity and all kinds of other things from guesses -- and that it didn't seem to have worked.
As for Denna herself... eh. I'm not nearly as intrigued by or attracted to her as Kvothe is, so it was hard for me to feel invested. And despite everything that Deoch had said about how few options are open to a family-less woman like Denna, and how her charisma could well be a curse, I'm still not really sold on her or her behaviour. There is another thing when it comes to Kvothe and Denna, and it's that the "they're both in love with each other but each thinks it's unrequited" trope is one of my pet peeves. I will say that it's better justified here than most other places -- Kvothe knows Denna's track record, which does strongly seems to suggest that chasing after Denna is a pretty good way to get her to dislike and avoid you, and there seems to be a fair bit of trauma in her, given how she talks about men touching her in situations where she is not in control, so a totally inexperienced kid like Kvothe can certainly be forgiven for proceeding very carefully -- or, well, not at all, really -- and, with his actor's training, I suspect he can be good enough at hiding his feelings that Denna could genuinely be fooled into thinking Kvothe doesn't think of her that way (although this I have a harder time believing, tbh). I do like the fact that Denna is good at poking holes in Kvothe's suppositions, that she may not have his magical or scientific training, but in terms of analysis and adapting to situations she may well be his equal. And I liked her teaching Kvothe how to use a knife ("I can't count the men who have tried to seduce me away from my virtue by teaching me how to defend it", and Kvothe's subsequent quip about whether she was doing the same thing). And I enjoyed the way Denna occasionally points out to Kvothe that he is being patronizing ("Why don't you just tell me? Don't try to tease me into some sort of sudden burst of understanding like you're my schoolmaster"). But the relationship is so central to the book and to Kvothe, clearly, and I just don't feel its attraction, which makes reading about Kvothe looking for Denna and pining for Denna and thinking and talking about Denna rather boring.
I also have sort of general undecided feelings about women in NotW. There are some, which is good, and the scarcity of them at the University is quite believable. And the women we do meet all seem like impressive, interesting women -- Denna, of course; Devi that Arcanist-turned-loan-shark; Fela the sculptor who gets taught by Elodin, something Kvothe tried for and couldn't get; Mola the doctor (I forget the in-universe term) who keeps patching up Kvothe; even Auri, the feral and possibly crazy waif. They always seem to have a point of advantage vs Kvothe, teasing him and so on... but he always seems to be doing the rescuing even so. Which I suppose is par for the course in a rise-of-a-hero story, since one of the things NotW is trying to show is how Kvothe came by a saving people thing, from adopting Ben on the road to the incident in Tarbean where he explicitly chose to do nothing to saving Fela's life at the Fishery (and, earlier, liberating her from Ambrose's unwelcome advances) to saving a whole town from the dragon to placating a terrified girl with a magical placebo. But, I don't know... I like my heroism to be more evenly distributed among characters, to be honest. And also, am I spacing, or are there really no occurrences where Kvothe rescues someone other than a woman? (And I don't think helping Ben when he was a child really counts.)
Then we come to the parts of the story that I liked least. The framing story actually wasn't something I liked very much. The narration feels pretentious here -- which it sometimes does in the other sections, too, but since that's Kvothe narrating his own story, and he is very conscious of narrating and was raised on drama, it's a lot less jarring there than here. I like Bast a lot, both as the happy-go-lucky sort he pretends to be and the glimpse of him we get in the last chapter, when he explains that he is puppet-mastering the Chronicler coming to Waystone Inn and what he will do if the Chronicler isn't compliant. (Also, please tell me this fandom is shipping Kvothe/Bast like crazy, as that was by far the most obvious ship I saw. I mean, come on: "A note? You sneak out and leave me a note? [...] What am I, some dockside whore?") The Chronicler is an interesting character, and I liked the stories the characters are telling at the end, the legends that have grown up around Kvothe and how different they are from the true story Kvothe is telling, and what similarities remain (although I have to say I felt like not enough time had passed -- since Chronicler is still alive and Kvothe is still a relatively young man -- for quite this much diffusion; something just didn't feel quite right about those stories, but I do like the idea of what that was trying to do). I also liked Kvothe calling himself Kote now (which is mentioned in passing in Kilvin's quote after the Fishery fire means "disaster") and his sword Folly. But overall, I was not invested in either spider demons or whatever was going on in that merenary, and I found the villagers boring, and I can't say that, even having read the story, I am super-curious to see the reason for Kvothe's current funk.
I just realized I haven't actually talked about Kvothe himself, oops. XP I do like Kvothe. Well, anyway, I like Kvothe the precocious trouper kid learning magic (and the wake his background as an actor gives showmanship flare to his later experience at the University as well, like when he uses a stage trick to get the class to applaud him after the "guest lecture" on sympathy) and Kvothe the University student who knows just how bright he is and is proud despite (and because of) his poverty and orchestrates his notoriety, who has a sharp tongue and can wield it in his own protection and the protection of others, but doesn't really know when to shut up. He is the kind of exceptionally clever person that I can see doing really stupid, disastrous things, which is wonderful for plot -- out of pride/pettiness or thinking he can talk himself out of trouble later or even just sheer fondness for theatrics; he reminded me a bit of Miles Vorkosigan in this way, and also Tyrion, and he also reminded me of A from my Magnum Opus, which is always fun. But Kvothe the poor orphaned urchin in Tarbean I found boring, and I'm not sure that section needed to be as long as it was, unless the point was just to have him orphaned at a really early age but not meet Denna/enter the University until he was in his mid-teens. It was fine, and not totally extraneous to the plot -- the lock-picking and roof-roaming did come in handy later -- but it was my least favorite section of the book. And Kvothe after whatever has happened in the next two books of backstory is also not very interesting to me, at least just yet. I always prefer stories of magical prodigies coming into their own to stories of what happens after they've burnt out or screwed up or accomplished whatever was their great task (the Earthsea books taught me that for sure, though I do still love older Ged who comes back to settle down with Tenar -- just not as much as young Ged chasing the evil he unleased with a rat on his shoulder), but even so -- the innkeeper Kvothe, even with lightning occasionally flashing in his eyes, even bantering with Bast on occasion, is just kind of dull. Which I know is Bast's point, pretty much, but it's hard for me to think of the flashback!Kvothe and the innkeeper as the same character (perhaps it requires more Alar than I possess :P), and I just don't care about innkeeper!Kvothe.
Another part of the story I didn't really care about was the whole Chandrian thing. It feels almost like it had been transplanted from an entirely different fantasy -- a less interesting one. Man with no face, man with goat eyes, wholesale slaughter -- meh. The metal rusting and wood rotting is pretty creepy, but overall I can't muster much interest in the Chandrian, which is too bad, as I suppose there will be a lot more of that in the sequels.
Just a couple more points to wrap up my thoughts on the book. I enjoyed the worldbuilding outside of the magic, too. The book gives a feel for a far-flung civilization and varied culture quite gracefully, without over-explaining anything. There are expressions ("how is the road to Tinue", "I've not seen the king in Vintas either", etc.) that work like the 'cats of Queen Beruthiel' references that I love so much in my world-building. There are multiple languages and greetings and dialects and customs (like the whole discourse on how one kisses a lady's hand where, or Simmon trying to explain Sovoy being handsy with a serving girl as cultural differences -- unsuccessfuly), and I loved the fact that the University is a multi-lingual community, that Wilem makes mistakes in the Commonwealth tongue, and that when something urgent needs to be explained to Kilvin, Wilem switches into their common language. I also loved the fact that Kvothe makes a mistake in naming his horse, and a tinker points it out to him (that whole interlude with the horse was pretty funny, and I was also amused that Kvothe spent a whole bunch of time bargaining for and describing a horse that then disappears from the story).
On the subject of language, one of my pet peeves is English puns that still seem to work even though the characters are presumed to be speaking a different language in the second-world setting. I forget what they're supposed to be speaking in the Commonwealth, and I guess it's never explicitly said that it *isn't* English, but the English puns still threw me out of the story every time -- the whole jackass/Jakis thing, and Auri's names for everything in the Underthing (Belows/Billows, Vault, the loonie bin being called the Rookery because "it's wher eyou go if you're a-ravin'", etc.) I do love puns in general, so I was slightly torn, because I enjoyed these on their merits, just had a hard time seeing how they fit into the world-building. But ah well. The other thing I didn't like about the book from a language perspective was the occasional accents, because, IMO, phonetic accents are never a good idea. Oh, and I enjoyed the bits of songs and poetry and children's rhymes, too. Pretty much all of them except the Chandrian rhyme, but especially the little rhyme about tinkers and Bast's oddly-rhymed song.
I was less impressed with the religion we get to see, because it seemed like a pretty straightforward take on Christianity, complete with god-the-father-and-son, a Virgin Mary figure, and the self-scrificing messiah. But religion interests me a lot less than language, so I didn't really care.
Other random moments I liked: Kvothe checking Chronicler's ability to take dictation, including made-up words like "eggoliant", and Fela's account of the "holy war" about how to shelve things in the Archives. Also the three most important rules of the chemist: "Label clearly. Measure twice. Eat elsewhere." And the saying "there are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man." Also, "fishwiving" is a great verb/gerund. Some quotes I particularly enjoyed:
"Waterside is where people are poor. That makes them beggars, thieves, and whores. hillside is where people are rich. That makes them solicitors, politicians, and courtesans."
"I also felt guilty about the three pens I'd stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left."
"It is a sprung rhythm," [Ambrose] said, his voice stiff and offended. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."
"Spring?" I burst out with an incredulous laugh. "I understand that if I saw a horse with a leg this badly 'sprung,' I'd kill it out of mercy, then burn its poor corpse for fear the local dogs might gnaw on it and die."
"Some of my Arcanum bunkmates taught me a card game called dogsbreath. I returned the favor by giving an impromptu lesson in psychology, probability, and manual dexterity. I won almost two whole talents before they stopped inviting me back to their games."
"Dammit boy, I hope you're as good as you seem to think you are. I could use someone else around here with Illien's fire." He ran a hand through his own red hair to clarify his double meaning.
"I hope this place is as good as everyone seems to think it is," I said earnestly. "I need a place to burn."
And that's it, basically. I'm really eager to start Wise Man's Fear, which I saw around the library a whole bunch but is now nowhere to be seen, alas.