Reading roundup
Wow, it's been a while since my last one of these...
4. Sergei Lukyanenko, Last Watch -- yeah, Twilight Watch is definitely my favorite of the four. Last Watch was fairly disappointing actually, coming as it did after TW, even though on its own merits I think it was probably better than Day Watch. The three stories didn't feel as connected, and the only one of the three I really liked was the middle one. Spoilers!
I was all excited about the first one when Semyon went with Anton to Scotland to investigate... and then he basically didn't do anything except hang out briefly with an old buddy, buy souveniers and serve to show how much more powerful Anton has become. Really disappointing. It was interesting to see Galya again, but I'm sad that she died.
The second story I enjoyed more, mostly for Afandi and the local color. The way it's really not clear until the final reveal whether Afandi is really Rustam playing dumb with great aplomb or something else was really neat, and I just liked his character in general. I liked the sleepy, friendly backwater Watches, and the way they're totally unprepared for real fighting, getting to see a Light Other discroporate (or whatever the English word would be) after realizing the slaughter he committed. The revelation of what the Beloye Marevo (White... uh?) spell does was also quite interesting, though, as with most of these things, the revelation was not quite as horrible as the hinted awfulness of what it did back in the previous book. But plenty awful still. The thing that marred my enjoyment of the middle story is the reveal that Edgar is one of the antagonists (which I hoped would turn out to be a red herring, but didn't). Not just because I really like Edgar, enjoyed the fact that he had been a Dark Other without being particularly unpleasant and just generally liked his polite, reserved demeanor, but also because of how it was handled. In order to give him motivation to hunt for the MacGuffin, he had to get married offscreen, apparently between books, and lose his wife in a similar manner. That's just not good storytelling. Also, as a Mage who'd been around for over a century, who lost his original family and got over it, I find it a little hard to believe that losing another person -- even a witch, whom he could expect to live the same span as he -- would cause him to take such drastic measures. Edgar just really doesn't strike me as the drastic measures type.
This disappointment continued into the last story, where Edgar coninued to act... oddly, threatening nuclear strikes and so on. I also had problems with what the antagonist triumverate was revealed to be. So it starts out as, a Light Other, a Dark Other, and a member of the Inquisition are working together on this! Which is a nicely symmetric idea. And then it turns out that the member of the Inquisition is a former Dark Other, and the Light Other is also a former Dark Other. Now, don't get me wrong! I loved seeing Arina again -- she is one of my favorite characters in the series, despite her late introduction. And I like the idea that Dark and Light others of the highest order can flip sides, because it reinforces how thin the line is between Light and Dark, and especially for those who've been around for a long time, for those Dark Others who realize they can't just randomly unleash their powers pettily and the Light Others who have to do terrible things in pursuit of their noble big-picture goals. I could even readily see Arina switching sights -- she seemed fairly Light Other-like in helping the kiddies in TW and even earlier, in her actions with the communism experiments and what motivated them. But what's the point of making your triumverate Light + Dark + Inquisition if everyone on it will have been a Dark Other initially? I feel like it undermines whatever point the triumverate could've been making int he first place. As for the last member of the triumvirate: I did think Saushkin-the-elder was pretty well set up, starting with the first story, and his motivation is believable. But: In Twilight Watch, Kostya is surprised that Anton had not heard of the Saushkin cocktail and makes it sound like it's gotten to be fairly common knowledge in the vampiric community, and yet Kostya's own father had no idea what it was and ended up murdering all those people? I just couldn't suspend my disbelief for that.
I also didn't like the final reveal about the circular layers of Twilight, and where dead Others go, and basically all of the new worldbuilding introduced in the end here that wasn't the reveal about Dark and Light Others flipping sides. Too... "zaumno". (Although in looking through my notes, I noticed that there was a hint about the seventh level of Twilight being the same as the real world in the Beloye Marevo spell -- Merlin claimed that it would throw those enveloped in it onto the seventh level, and Rustam (and maybe Geser, then?) thought he got it wrong when they remained in the real world, but apparently he did not.
And I thought the addition of technology and spell-protected mundanes to the mix of opposition made the book less interesting overall, even though it's probably a natural idea. I did like Anton trying to use his greater familiarity with modern technology (e.g. cell phones) against the older, more experienced mages for whom it's a mysterious black box.
So, anyway that was mostly complaints, but I did like some things about this book. I like Nadya, the way she is very much a little kid despite her awesome powers, outing vampires in a typical "kids saying embarrassing things in public" way and turning Anton's vodka into water. I liked Afandi, as I said above, and I liked Bruce, the High Vampire of Edinburgh, who looks like he should be playing Dorian Gray, and the taxi driver in Uzbekistan with a degree in psychology. I liked Zavulon's continued fanboying of Gesar and collection of magnets. I liked Las continuing to screw around with pranks despite his Light Other status. I liked Semyon trying to be politically correct about "basmachi" with Alisher ("Nu, mozhet oni nynche u vas ne basmachi, a narodnye geroi..."). And I quite liked Merlin, especially his answer to Nadya: ("Ya i byl volshebnik". "Horoshij ili plohoj?" "Raznyj.")
I liked Anton's description of new Others doing everything with magic because they can, even though doing things without magic is easier and more efficient. I liked Egor's reappearance, and Thomas trying to set him up to be there in case Light needs a Mirror, just in case. I liked the very cynical take on Arthuriana, where Arthur is not the rightful king but a handy pawn who can be kept distracted with knightly toys, and Mordred may or may not be related to him but could be made to believe the story.
As always, one of my favorite aspects of the series is references to Ponedelnik, like Anton envisioning an exhibit with "Pravyj glaznoj (rabochij) zub vampira". There are other references, too, to Others finding Saruman and Gandalf's duel in the LotR movie funny because they were using staffs, Svetlana explaining to Nadya that Anton fights evil people "like Harry Potter", references to Earthsea, even, and Pratchett. It was also kind of neat that the book made references to the Night Watch movie. I caught the one about Egor, dreaming that Anton is his father, but Wiki helped out with Semyon's dream about Zavulon standing in the way of his car.
5. Sarah Rees Brennan, Demon's Covenant
6. Sarah Rees Brennan, Demon's Surrender -- So I finally finished the series! And I keep waffling about whether to write about them together or separately and I don't know, but let's try it like this. Spoilers for both books! Major ones!
I liked Covenant a lot. It had a lot of Alan in it, who is my favorite character hands down (though I wouldn't have said "no" to more). It also had a lot of Jamie, which I also enjoyed, as he is one of my favorites, too. I wasn't expecting to like Mae's narration, because I didn't find her particularly interesting in the first book -- I didn't dislike her, but had no strong feelings about her either way -- but I actually liked her quite a lot as a narrator, though she won't be joining my favorite characters hall of fame. I really liked her relationship with Jamie. I also liked the way she gives Seb a chance without forgiving him for his bullying of Jamie and stands by her word despite complications with Nick and Alan. And even though I adore Alan, I like that my manipulating her and not trusting her Alan basically loses his chance. I guess what I mean overall is, I like that Mae is very clear and very unapologetic about who she is, she has a clear code for herself and abides by it, goes for what she wants and makes no excuses about it -- and all this while being tiny and pink-haired. I like the fact that Mae is uninterested in and helpless around babies and "It occurred to her that this might be why women went for men who were good with kids: It meant they wouldn't have to be." I like the way she likes food and doesn't care if she weighs a few extra pounds if it means she gets to enjoy it, and the way she is also hopeless about cooking. And, of course, how could I not like a character who has a T-shirt quoting Dorothy Parker's "Resume".
I really, really didn't think I could be won over to Nick/Mae, and I don't think I am exactly, but I do think the book handles it as well as it could be handled. Mae's attraction to Nick is understandable, and Nick's continued attempts to see her and Alan together make perfect sense, and I thought the revelation of Nick's habit of displacing feelings (which he doesn't think he's supposed to have) onto Alan was perfectly set up with the camping story and the "Alan doesn't like new people" bit, so that when Mae's understanding coalesced, it felt both perfect and suprising. I don't know, though, how I feel about it after Nick used his mark to force Mae to leave him. On the one hand, his actions are quite understandable, because he's lost pretty much his worle world. On the other hand, Mae said, "I won't forgive you for this", and, I don't know. The pearl removes Nick's ability to do it again, and I do think second chances can be acceptable
Speaking of Nick, I liked the way this book continued to develop him despite no longer being from his point of view. The father's diary helped, and the insertions didn't even seem particularly clunky. I especially liked the way Nick seems to have made peace with the revelation of his nature: "I'm not human. I never was, and I never will be. We don't work in the same way you do, we don't feel or think the same, and I don't want to. Why should I? What's so great about you people? You spend your whole lives in a stupid emotional mess, and then you die. You torture each other and you don't even mean to." The conflict between his nature and what he would sometimes (not often, as he himself says) would want to be, for Alan, and then for Mae, continues to be very interesting, and the other revelations about him, like:
"'I--' said Nick, his voice halting. 'I don't mind it as much when -- when people touch me. Some people."
[...]
'Because you trust them not to hurt you?' Mae asked tentatively.
'No,' Nick said, his voice harsh. 'Because I'd let them hurt me.'"
Nick's humanity or lack thereof continues to be nicely complex, with no easy answers.
I was looking forward to more Jamie, and we did get more Jamie, but I didn't notice too much about him, apparently, looking at where my bookmarks are. I did like his speech about coming out as a magician: "It's not the same! Being gay doesn't hurt anybody. This does!"
The stand-out character for me in this book, though, was Annabel, Mae and Jamie's mother. First, I kind of love that she showed up in the books at all. Mae and Jamie are all-but-abandoned by their parents in the first book, or at least that's how it comes across, and I was expecting more of the same and was glad that wasn't the case. Annabel is not very motherly, inept at a lot of things, uncomfortable with her children -- and yet badass, with her fencing and her heels and mastery of unfamiliar situations. I thought it was believable that she would run off after Jamie's demonstration -- because, uh, that was not the best way to spring that revelation on her, possibly -- and, of course, that she came back and defended her children, and went with them to fight at the end. I didn't expect her to die and was really sorry when she did -- but I do think it was an effective death, and did important things in setting up important character things for Mae (who ends up killing Celeste in reveng) and especially Jamie, who ends up accepting his mother's killer into his Circle in Surrender because the killing has to stop or it never will. When I read ambyr's Goodreads review, she mentioned something about Annabel that I felt as well -- that this was the way I was hoping the mother/child relationship in the Killer Unicorn books would play out, instead of Lilith just becoming a flat bad guy sort of person.
I didn't think the twist/surprise ending was nearly as effective or shocking (or logical) as the one in Lexicon. Which is OK, because you certainly can't do that every book, but it did make the climax feel like a bit of a letdown. I never believed Alan would bind Nick's powers fully, and wasn't sure why Mae would believe such a thing.
Quotes:
Mae: "Well, speaking as a feminist, I'm glad that women can lead -- uh, groups of unspeakable magical evil."
"Yes," Alan said gravely. "It'd be shocking if the evil magicians were sexist. For one thing, that would mean they were stupid, and having stupid enemies would be a terrible blow to my manly pride."
(And, in an echo of this quote, I also liked the bit where it turns out that Celeste's best fighter is a woman and Mae feels ashamed for having assumed it was a man.)
"Nicholas Ryves, ladies and gentlemen, Mae thought. The only person in the world who could make a matchmaking scheme sound like a death threat."
Moving on to Surrender.
My biggest problem with Surrender is that I saw the big reveal coming from the beginning and lots of things didn't make particular sense to me because of that. Like, I never for a moment believed that Jamie accepting Nick's mark meant that he could control Nick -- it was always my assumption that Nick was playing along, biding his time until the moment was right to strike at the heart of the Circle. But... why wait that long? There were a couple of moments where I thought they could have pulled off the same reveal and had at least as good a shot at victory as they did at the end before various horrible things happened. There probably are various valid reasons, but they were not apparent to me, and so I was mainly thinking, "What are you waiting for?" It just felt drawn out to reach the final reveal rather than organic.
Oddly enough, I was less dubious about Sin's narration of the third book than I was about Mae's before I started, and I liked her voice a lot. I thought she and her siblings were a neat addition to the various explorations of the sibling theme that these books present, with Nick and Alan and Mae and Jamie. I liked how confident she was about the things she did well while being aware of her limitations. I liked her relationship with Nick, even though it was founded on things that I don't understand/care about, like fighting and dancing -- maybe because it's nice to have someone who relates to Nick through things that he cares about, as opposed to things they want to make him care about.
I am really, really conflicted about her relationship with Alan. Not because I'm jealous (Alan is my favorite character and all, but in a non-fictional universe I would run far, far away, because that boy's got Issues), and not because I wanted Alan to end up with Mae (I did root for them in Covenant, but when it became clear how deeply his general Yendi-like nature bothered her in the context of a potential relationship, that was definitely a decision I could respect). There were things about Alan and Sin that were really great. One of my favorite scenes in the series as a whole is the one where, after their impromptu performance at the boat they have a... well, lies tennis match, basically, that goes like this:
"I was doing a chemistry experiement. I'm so sorry the noise disturbed you; I'm in some advanced classes, and sometimes when I'm studying I lose track of time."
Sin slipped her knife out of her pocket and showed it to him. "This? It's a prop. I do a dance with it." She paused significantly. "A belly dance."
"And that sound was a car backfiring. My brother's keen on cars, you see. Don't worry. I'll have a word with him."
"Of course I remember you from the last Market," Sin said, restroing her knife to her pocker. "Who could forget you?"
"Actually," Alan said, earnst and clear-eyed, "this is my first time playing poker."
I could very readily see them as very good friends after that point. I could even see how Sin's subconscious antagonism because of Alan's limp and her reliance on grace for safety in demon dancing would blossom into infatuation when she saw Alan taking care of her siblings, because Alan has been shown to be mad for babies and taking care of people from the very beginning. Alan interpreting her advances as attempted gratitude (because he has odd but believable self-confidence issues) and Sin being pissed off when he makes that clear were good. But I just don't see it as Sudden True Love, like the book seems to want it to be. Joking around pals, life of crime partners, OK. Cosmic connection or whatever -- not so much. And I felt like the book was pulling for the latter. Although, of course, it's told in Sin's POV, and maybe she was just blinded by love into thinking that -- I guess we don't know what she's like in relationships with people who are good to her, as Alan certainly is. Although I did find this scene quite poignant, regardless:
"Come here," she said. "Lie to me." [...]
"Cynthia," he murmured, fingers still brushing her cheek, making her shiver. "I'm not lying."
Sin closed her eyes and tucked her cheek into the curve of his neck and against his pillow.
"Yeah," she whispered. "Just like that."
I liked Sin and Mae's relationship, back from the second book and in this one as well. Actually, in Covenant, I thought Mae and Sin had way more chemistry than Mae with any of her male suitors. I'm generally not interested in femmeslash, but I sure hope it is a popular ship in this fandom. I like the way the various ways in which Mae has privilege that she may or may not be aware of enters into the relationship, too, but doesn't get in the way of it. The whole thing with the pearl and competition for leading the Goblin Market was... strange, though. I mean, Meris is basically crazy and demon-possessed when she suggests it, and it seems like the sort of thing a demon-possessed person would suggest, but the fact that Sin and Mae go along with it is a little weird. I like that it's acknowledged but doesn't actually get in the way of their friendship, and, to be honest, I don't get the appeal of the Goblin Market (it was my least favorite part in the first book and I didn't particularly care in these two either), so I also didn't care who won, but, eh. Mae being amazingly awesome at it all of a sudden was also a little too convenient. Maybe it would've been more believable if we'd seen it from her POV, with struggles and uncertainty and getting advice from people who have actually been around for a while, but from the outsdie view it just seemed odd.
Jamie and Seb seen through the eyes of Sin were not nearly as interesting, which was a pity, because I liked Jamie and Seb in Mae's POV, and Jamie even in Nick's. I liked Matthias the acerbic piper, although his parents being a lesbian couple at least one of whom is deaf or mute, and the late revelation that he himself is Asian did feel like it crossed over a bit into token minority representation -- all of those things are awesome; having all of them show up in half a page feels rather shoehorn-y, though.
Let me say a couple more words about Alan, whom I loved a whole lot starting with book 1 and more and more. I love that Alan is a pathological Chessmaster. That his thing about taking care of people is also pathological -- and that he realizes he's crazy. I also like that both of the girls he's interested in romantically, Mae and Sin, understand how crazy he is, and Sin even verbalizes it: "I think you're all right. [...] I mean, you know, irredeemably messed up, but in a charming way." I LOVE his relationship with Nick, of course, which is the linchpin of this series, the way he both takes care of Nick and protects him and knows he has to control him.
Some other general thoughts about the series: I liked that Alan didn't want his leg to be fixed by magic, and that when Nick insists on it as part of a bargain (which totally makes sense that he would), it's not a permanent "fix". On a similar note, that Jamie's hand doesn't magically grow back and he has to learn to deal with it (in a very Jamie-like fashion, of course)
Quotes:
"Love always costs more than you can afford to pay. And it's always worth the price." (This sounded almost Bujoldian to me, like something Cordelia would say.)
Sin: "I mean, we're friends too, aren't we?" She laughed a little.
Nick blinked. "No."
Sin stared at him. "What?"
"I've already got one," Nick told her.
"You've already got one--friend?" Sin asked slwoly.
Nick nodded. "He's a lot of trouble. I don't think I can deal with any more."
"Alan, bereft of any current opportunity to help someone, had already got out his keys."
"I don't have deal breakers," Alan said. "I look on tempests, and am never shaken."
"Shakespeare?"
His eyes brightened. "You know the poem?"
"No," said Sin. "I know your quoting voice."
"She had never thought of Matthias as having parents. She supposed it was logical, most people had them, but Matthias liked music so much more than people, she would hardly have been surprised to learn his father was a flute and his mother a music stand."
Randomly, I find it quite confusing that the people on the covers of book 2 and 3 are not the people narrating the books, and, in fact, that the person on the cover of book 2 (in my edition) is narrating book 3. Not that I have any objections to Alan on the cover of Surrender.
7. Terry Pratchett, Snuff -- the last couple of Discworld books I've been approaching apprehensively, and Snuff was no exception. But this was the first book since at least Thud! where I didn't finish reading it with some kind of bittersweet feeling about the shadow book that I could have seen Pterry writing at his prime. I just really enjoyed Snuff with no reservations, and I was really, really happy about that. Spoilers galore!
Vimes was in top form (and while his relationship with the Summoning Dark was quite different from what it was in Thud!, it made sense to me that he would have assimilated it to some degree, or come to this kind of symbiosis with whatever it is). Sybil was wonderful, not being fazed by Nobby's goblin girlfriend or the propsect of Young Sam eating snails because there's nothing poisonous in this country for a snail to eat (though it was quite shocking to hear her refer to Lady Rust as a bitch. Not to her face, of course -- "there's such a thing as manners"). Young Sam was both adorable and bright and very believably a little boy, being overwhelmed by toys in the Ramkin nursery, and obsessed with poo, and effortlessly charming the ladies. The extra focus on Willikins didn't do much for me, but there were some funny and neat moments there, especially in his interaction with Vimes, especially in talking about his father, and Willikins provoking Feeney by taking a shot at his mum from the crowd. Stratford was a decent Pterry villain, and I loved Vimes's trick with the sabotaged crossboew. The goblin stuff was handled with more deftness, I think, than in Unseen Academicals. I especially liked the Ankh-Moprpork goblins encountered by the Watch, Billy and his grandmother, but Tears of the Mushroom was also very neat, and I liked the addition of Miss Beedle the writer and her mother's story of being "rescued" from the goblins that raised her. (I also liked how her focus on bodily excretions in her writing is likely related to her exposure to gobins.) And I'm glad she wasn't trying to teach the goblins to be human, but I'm not sure what I think of her "teaching them how to be goblins, clever goblins". I don't think that's what she's actually doing -- she is helping teach goblins to come across in ways that other people can more readily accept -- but that's still a rather odd way to put it.
There were a couple of things that did strike me as odd or a little bit off. Vetinari has definitely been a bit different in the last couple of books, in a way that I have a hard time fitting in my mental construct of Vetinari. Getting upset (for him) about crosswords and apparently being moved to tears by music? Hmmm. I also enjoyed the Watch cameos less than I normally do, but as they played only a minor role, I was OK with that. And it was neat to find out that Cheery has a bit of a crush on Carrot, though she realizes he's spoken for. And I note Wee Mad Arthur is back from his sabbatical, all Feeglified but back with the Watch.
For how much the "Pride and Prejudice" reference featured in fan reactions, I was expecting it to be more prominent in the book, but it was pretty funny for a throwaway gag. I also quite enjoyed the running gag with Vimes butchering the Bhangbhangduc words when talking to Feeney, and the trout stream joke. I rather liked Colonel Charles Makepeace and his unrequited friendship for potted shrimp and other crustaceans, and Vimes's view on jodhpurs ("no man should meet a copper if he is wearing trousers that make his legs look as though he has just burgled a house full of silverware and shoved it hastily down his trousers", and "Most of the time I've got nothing against horses, and then I come down very firmly against horses, and then I'm shot up in the air again so that once more I have nothing against horses". And "Obliged to you, sire, and I surely hope you won't take it amiss if I say that we generally talk about port and starboard?" "Wouldn't know about that, Gastric, never drank starboard."
The fight on the Wonderful Fanny in the middle of a flood/tidal wave was quite impressive. I'm not sure what I think Stinky is, but I guess it doesn't really matter.
Quotes:
"You've killed people?"
Vimes: "I like to think I did my best not to, and on the whole I've been good at that."
Stoner: "I have no knowledge whatsoever of any goblins being dispossessed of their accommodations lately, as the chief constable appears to believe."
Vimes: "I congratulate you on your careful ignorance, Mr Stoner."
Vimes: "[A]nd so I'm going to give the orders and I want you to do exactly what I tell you, okay?"
Vimes: "Are you waiting for something, Feeney?"
Feeney: "I didn't wish to interrupt you, commander, and as you say, you are in charge, but I was waiting until you said something I wanted to hear."
V: "Oh yes? Such as?"
F: "Well, sire, to begin with I'd like to hear you say that it's time to mount up and get out of here really fast because the water is rising and soon the alligators will wake up."
"I'll take that order as a given, then, shall I?" shouted Feeney as he sped after Vimes.
Vimes: "All right, Chief Constable Upshot, I'm still in charge, but I agree to respect your local knowledge."
Wee Mad Arthur: "I hope I did what ye would have done, commander?"
Vimes: "No, constable, you did not do what I would have done, which is fortunate, because if you had, then you would be in front of me on a charge for using brutally excessive force in the execution of your duties."
8. Jonathan Kellerman, Mystery -- I never have a whole lot to say about the Kellerman books, except that I do continue enjoying them. This one had a lot of Alex and Robin being together in it, which I like, and even a tiny bit of Rick in the background, which, ditto. Major spoilers, including the whodunit! The character Alex meets over the course of his investigations are my favorite, usually. In this one, my very favorite character was actually Leona, so I was a bit sorry to see that she turned out to be the murderer (though that does not, actually, make her less awesome, and possibly more), but I also liked the clueless waiter, the businessladies behind SukRose.net, Lori and Divana and their weird relationship. Oh, and then there was the thread with Gretchen and Chad, which was unexpected, but I guess did fit in with the theme of mothers doing their best by their children, constructively despite deep personality flaws, like Gretchen, or murderously, like Leona. It's been a while since we've had a book with some kind of medical-type mystery, and the superfecundation thing, in the form of twins from different fathers, showed up here. Also, I was amused by the real crime techs grumbling about CSI-type shows, and everybody using Craigslist for everything.
9. Libba Bray, Beauty Queens -- I picked up the book primarily because it was by Libba Bray (whose modern-set stories I actually enjoy more than the Gemma Doyle trilogy, despite my love for Fee), and also because the premise mad it sound a lot like Lord of the Flies retold with girls. Which is not unintentional, of course -- LotF actually gets namechecked by the characters towards the end ("Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place wher eno one's watching them so they can be who they really are"). It was a much more "message" book than I had been expecting, but the message was handled with enough humour and nuance that I didn't mind, and I wouldn't have guessed that was possible. So, in all, I'm quite pleased with the book. Spoilers from here on. Major ones!
The premise is, well, LotF with beauty queens (they even have a conch stand-in in a baton), plus stuff. A plane with the 50 Miss Teen Dream USA contestants crashes on an island. Many of the girls die. The remaining ones have to fend for themselves. Instead of turning against each other and hunting pigs and/or their fellows, being away from society allows the girls to grow, realize their own and each other's strengths, understand better what they want rather than following the expectations of their parents, trainers, or society, and so on. There are also flamboyant reality TV pirates who end up shipwrecked on the island after the girls have basically settled it, and a secret base run by the Corporation (the same omnipresent sinister corporation that featured in Going Bovine, I guess?), and Ladybird Hope, past Miss Dream winner and pageant sponsor who is actually behind the plane crash and is also dealing arms to a third-world dictator and planning to assassinate him and run for president, and occasional commercial breaks. The Ladybird Hope and MoMo B. ChaCha storyline is broad parody and I thought it was the weakest (and fairly unnecessary) part of the book. The commercial breaks / messages from the Corporation are also pretty broad, but packed a lot more punch for me, and were just more fun ("Sweet Sixteen Gone Wrong (Wednesdays 10 p.m. EST): Will Special let her manicurist inject her with yak's urine? Heidi flips out when Heather schedules her dress-fitting party on the same day as Heidi's pre-party modeling lessons. Z'anay has a tanning mishap. Dazzle chooses a small dog to match her dress."). I'm not really sure what the purpose of the pirates was, except to show how the girls regressed in the presence of boys and to give Adina some difficult character growth moments, but I'm glad Petra found someone who appreciates her. Really, for me, the plot was just an excuse to get to know these girls and their relationships with each other... so, not dissimilar to the Gemma Doyle books, in that way.
All of the girls we get to know well were interesting and different and all of them had flaws and strengths. Adina Greenberg, Miss New Hampshire (who wanted Robert Frost for her state symbol), is the first one we meet, and so I started out thinking of her as the Ralph to Taylor's Jack, but it's fortunately not that simple. Adina is in the pageant in order to write an expose (she is a journalism student), and she's smart, and a feminist, but not a very good leader (at first) and not always a very good friend (Petra calls her out on this at one point: "Just because you're funny doesn't mean you get to be cruel"), though she does learn how to be better at both over the course of the book. And she has to come to terms with and respect the things she personally finds demeaning and abhorrent, like makeovers and purity rings, that are important to other girls and therefore valid personal choices. There's Shanti Singh, who is a valley girl who wants to be a DJ (and also the head of a Fortune 500 company) but who drives herself to perfection in "respectable" pursuits instead (because "winning was easy and addictive; the more she won, the more she felt she couldn't risk failure"), and whose schtick is her Indian background, because her Soviet handler tells her that "everbody loves a happy assimilation story". There's African-American Nicole Ade, who wanted to be a doctor, and whose Laker Girl mother pushes her into using beauty products like hair relaxer and skin-bleaching cream. There's Mary Lou Novak, a "wild girl" who wears a purity ring because she's afraid of her own sexuality and thinks others will be too. There's Jennifer Huberman, who got into the pageant through a program for at-risk youths, and is a lesbian and a comic book nerd and good with mechanical things. There's her crush, Sosie Simmons, who is hearing impaired and tired of being a happy "overcoming adversity" story and "sweet deaf girl mascot", and lives to dance. And there's Petra, who is transgender and used to be a boy band idol, and is in the pageant in order to earn enough money to transition. Laid out that way, it sounds like Minority Bingo (even relatively mainstream Adina is Jewish and, if I read that correctly, has a gay father), but it's actually not, at all, because all of the girls are well developed characters who have plenty of traits and histories beyond their minority status, and get their own POVs, and have relationships with each other. And I'm not the best judge of this, but I thought the book managed to say things about sexism and racism and homophobia and gender and disability in ways that were sufficiently subtle but also quite powerful.
It did bug me somewhat that there are girls on the island who don't get that treatment. We do get to see quite a lot of Tiara, who starts out looking just like a dumb blonde, but reveals a skill at interior decorating and, more importantly, being a good friend (I really liked her friendship with Petra) and a valuable ally -- she is used to being underestimated and dismissed but can be counted on when it counts. She does get a bit of a POV, but she doesn't get a dossier, like the other main characters, which I thought was sort of unfortunate -- it seems to send the message that she had nothing of value to say which in itself is dismissive. There's also stuff going on with Tiara that I wish had been explored more -- parents push her into the pageant thing since she's a baby, telling her that they're doing it for her, because she enjoys it, and some of her numbers as highly questionable, though performed with a Christian spin. This in itself is borderline child abuse, but I wonder if something overt was going on, too (her under-the-influence-of-berries story about the stuffed dinosaur ("One night, I found him under the covers, down, you know, there. [...] I think he did the nasty to me.") sounded sort of suspicious. Also, I was left wondering whether Tiara has a learning disability (which was, interestingly, the one minority status not overtly checked) or is left ignorant because nobody bothers to teach her (until Petra comes along) -- she's pretty, so who cares what she learns, she's set for life.
But, anyway, Tiara does get some development and POV, but Brittani, Miss Alabama, the other "dumb blonde" does not, and, in fact, even in the post-series write-up is a soap opera actress and accidentally married a European prince. Oh, wait, she has a third nipple, which is her one distinguishing characteristic beyond being a dumb blonde. And then there are Miss New Mexico, Miss Ohio, Miss Arkansas, and Miss Montana, who never get much differentiation, and seem to be mostly there to have more people in the cast and for the gag where they are all four named Caitlin Ashley. I realize the book already had a large cast, but I found it rather odd that a book which focused on girls discovering their strengths and exploring the various ways and trials of being female still had a cast of largely non-differentiated backup players.
I was really concerned that Taylor, Miss Texas and the voice of the "establishment" early on, was going to end up in the same boat, dismissed for not being "different" enough, but I was quite happy with the way Taylor was treated. She starts out as an alpha female and someone who idolizes Ladybird Hope and parrots all kinds of patriotic and Miss Dream mumbo-jumbo, but along with that, and her crazy dedication to the pageant, where she insists on the girls practicing their talent routines so they'd be ready to compete when they are rescued, Taylor is undeniably badass ("I am my own weapon, Miss New Hampshire"), a capable leader (Adina tries to channel her when she has to assume the responsibilities of leader), and has valuable experience. She also gets a dossier and her own backstory, both of which are both impressive and heartbreaking. And I was afraid that Taylor's general father would end up as part of the broad parody troupe, but he is actually treated quite respectfully, as a single father backed her interest in pageants, and his flashback exchange with Taylor was actually one of the most poignant moments in the book for me: "It isn't fair!" "No, it isn't, baby. Not by a mile. The world's only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay here, in your little cave, that's one less fighter on the side of fair." (I'm totally tearing up even just typing this up.) I wish Taylor hadn't gone crazy, but she continued to be a formidable force, treated with respect by the narrative even after she'd gone round the bend, and the last glimpse of her, sort of Eden-like (but better, with a snake draped around her shoulders), was hopeful, so I'm OK with that I guess. (In case you can't tell, Taylor was my favorite character in this, and I was bummed that she didn't clear the melee round to compete in chickfight, as I can't think of a better candidate, girls with actual magic nonwithstanding.)
Characters aside, there were a couple of plot things that I saw coming a million miles away, like Ladybirt Hope being the Boss, and also Petra being trans (but not with the first mention that could have tipped one off, the scene with little Petra playing with her mother's beauty products and asking "Will I be beautiful like you someday?"), but that was OK, because, as I said, plot is not really the point.
So, anyway, I really enjoyed this book, and it's one of those where I wish more people I knew had read it because I want to talk about it, or at least hear what other people have to say.
In progress: Name of the Wind (reached a part I'm enjoying less and got stuck), God's War (reached a part I'm enjoying less and got stuck, even though I'm more than halfway through). I also just finished Goliath and just started Crucible of Gold
4. Sergei Lukyanenko, Last Watch -- yeah, Twilight Watch is definitely my favorite of the four. Last Watch was fairly disappointing actually, coming as it did after TW, even though on its own merits I think it was probably better than Day Watch. The three stories didn't feel as connected, and the only one of the three I really liked was the middle one. Spoilers!
I was all excited about the first one when Semyon went with Anton to Scotland to investigate... and then he basically didn't do anything except hang out briefly with an old buddy, buy souveniers and serve to show how much more powerful Anton has become. Really disappointing. It was interesting to see Galya again, but I'm sad that she died.
The second story I enjoyed more, mostly for Afandi and the local color. The way it's really not clear until the final reveal whether Afandi is really Rustam playing dumb with great aplomb or something else was really neat, and I just liked his character in general. I liked the sleepy, friendly backwater Watches, and the way they're totally unprepared for real fighting, getting to see a Light Other discroporate (or whatever the English word would be) after realizing the slaughter he committed. The revelation of what the Beloye Marevo (White... uh?) spell does was also quite interesting, though, as with most of these things, the revelation was not quite as horrible as the hinted awfulness of what it did back in the previous book. But plenty awful still. The thing that marred my enjoyment of the middle story is the reveal that Edgar is one of the antagonists (which I hoped would turn out to be a red herring, but didn't). Not just because I really like Edgar, enjoyed the fact that he had been a Dark Other without being particularly unpleasant and just generally liked his polite, reserved demeanor, but also because of how it was handled. In order to give him motivation to hunt for the MacGuffin, he had to get married offscreen, apparently between books, and lose his wife in a similar manner. That's just not good storytelling. Also, as a Mage who'd been around for over a century, who lost his original family and got over it, I find it a little hard to believe that losing another person -- even a witch, whom he could expect to live the same span as he -- would cause him to take such drastic measures. Edgar just really doesn't strike me as the drastic measures type.
This disappointment continued into the last story, where Edgar coninued to act... oddly, threatening nuclear strikes and so on. I also had problems with what the antagonist triumverate was revealed to be. So it starts out as, a Light Other, a Dark Other, and a member of the Inquisition are working together on this! Which is a nicely symmetric idea. And then it turns out that the member of the Inquisition is a former Dark Other, and the Light Other is also a former Dark Other. Now, don't get me wrong! I loved seeing Arina again -- she is one of my favorite characters in the series, despite her late introduction. And I like the idea that Dark and Light others of the highest order can flip sides, because it reinforces how thin the line is between Light and Dark, and especially for those who've been around for a long time, for those Dark Others who realize they can't just randomly unleash their powers pettily and the Light Others who have to do terrible things in pursuit of their noble big-picture goals. I could even readily see Arina switching sights -- she seemed fairly Light Other-like in helping the kiddies in TW and even earlier, in her actions with the communism experiments and what motivated them. But what's the point of making your triumverate Light + Dark + Inquisition if everyone on it will have been a Dark Other initially? I feel like it undermines whatever point the triumverate could've been making int he first place. As for the last member of the triumvirate: I did think Saushkin-the-elder was pretty well set up, starting with the first story, and his motivation is believable. But: In Twilight Watch, Kostya is surprised that Anton had not heard of the Saushkin cocktail and makes it sound like it's gotten to be fairly common knowledge in the vampiric community, and yet Kostya's own father had no idea what it was and ended up murdering all those people? I just couldn't suspend my disbelief for that.
I also didn't like the final reveal about the circular layers of Twilight, and where dead Others go, and basically all of the new worldbuilding introduced in the end here that wasn't the reveal about Dark and Light Others flipping sides. Too... "zaumno". (Although in looking through my notes, I noticed that there was a hint about the seventh level of Twilight being the same as the real world in the Beloye Marevo spell -- Merlin claimed that it would throw those enveloped in it onto the seventh level, and Rustam (and maybe Geser, then?) thought he got it wrong when they remained in the real world, but apparently he did not.
And I thought the addition of technology and spell-protected mundanes to the mix of opposition made the book less interesting overall, even though it's probably a natural idea. I did like Anton trying to use his greater familiarity with modern technology (e.g. cell phones) against the older, more experienced mages for whom it's a mysterious black box.
So, anyway that was mostly complaints, but I did like some things about this book. I like Nadya, the way she is very much a little kid despite her awesome powers, outing vampires in a typical "kids saying embarrassing things in public" way and turning Anton's vodka into water. I liked Afandi, as I said above, and I liked Bruce, the High Vampire of Edinburgh, who looks like he should be playing Dorian Gray, and the taxi driver in Uzbekistan with a degree in psychology. I liked Zavulon's continued fanboying of Gesar and collection of magnets. I liked Las continuing to screw around with pranks despite his Light Other status. I liked Semyon trying to be politically correct about "basmachi" with Alisher ("Nu, mozhet oni nynche u vas ne basmachi, a narodnye geroi..."). And I quite liked Merlin, especially his answer to Nadya: ("Ya i byl volshebnik". "Horoshij ili plohoj?" "Raznyj.")
I liked Anton's description of new Others doing everything with magic because they can, even though doing things without magic is easier and more efficient. I liked Egor's reappearance, and Thomas trying to set him up to be there in case Light needs a Mirror, just in case. I liked the very cynical take on Arthuriana, where Arthur is not the rightful king but a handy pawn who can be kept distracted with knightly toys, and Mordred may or may not be related to him but could be made to believe the story.
As always, one of my favorite aspects of the series is references to Ponedelnik, like Anton envisioning an exhibit with "Pravyj glaznoj (rabochij) zub vampira". There are other references, too, to Others finding Saruman and Gandalf's duel in the LotR movie funny because they were using staffs, Svetlana explaining to Nadya that Anton fights evil people "like Harry Potter", references to Earthsea, even, and Pratchett. It was also kind of neat that the book made references to the Night Watch movie. I caught the one about Egor, dreaming that Anton is his father, but Wiki helped out with Semyon's dream about Zavulon standing in the way of his car.
5. Sarah Rees Brennan, Demon's Covenant
6. Sarah Rees Brennan, Demon's Surrender -- So I finally finished the series! And I keep waffling about whether to write about them together or separately and I don't know, but let's try it like this. Spoilers for both books! Major ones!
I liked Covenant a lot. It had a lot of Alan in it, who is my favorite character hands down (though I wouldn't have said "no" to more). It also had a lot of Jamie, which I also enjoyed, as he is one of my favorites, too. I wasn't expecting to like Mae's narration, because I didn't find her particularly interesting in the first book -- I didn't dislike her, but had no strong feelings about her either way -- but I actually liked her quite a lot as a narrator, though she won't be joining my favorite characters hall of fame. I really liked her relationship with Jamie. I also liked the way she gives Seb a chance without forgiving him for his bullying of Jamie and stands by her word despite complications with Nick and Alan. And even though I adore Alan, I like that my manipulating her and not trusting her Alan basically loses his chance. I guess what I mean overall is, I like that Mae is very clear and very unapologetic about who she is, she has a clear code for herself and abides by it, goes for what she wants and makes no excuses about it -- and all this while being tiny and pink-haired. I like the fact that Mae is uninterested in and helpless around babies and "It occurred to her that this might be why women went for men who were good with kids: It meant they wouldn't have to be." I like the way she likes food and doesn't care if she weighs a few extra pounds if it means she gets to enjoy it, and the way she is also hopeless about cooking. And, of course, how could I not like a character who has a T-shirt quoting Dorothy Parker's "Resume".
I really, really didn't think I could be won over to Nick/Mae, and I don't think I am exactly, but I do think the book handles it as well as it could be handled. Mae's attraction to Nick is understandable, and Nick's continued attempts to see her and Alan together make perfect sense, and I thought the revelation of Nick's habit of displacing feelings (which he doesn't think he's supposed to have) onto Alan was perfectly set up with the camping story and the "Alan doesn't like new people" bit, so that when Mae's understanding coalesced, it felt both perfect and suprising. I don't know, though, how I feel about it after Nick used his mark to force Mae to leave him. On the one hand, his actions are quite understandable, because he's lost pretty much his worle world. On the other hand, Mae said, "I won't forgive you for this", and, I don't know. The pearl removes Nick's ability to do it again, and I do think second chances can be acceptable
Speaking of Nick, I liked the way this book continued to develop him despite no longer being from his point of view. The father's diary helped, and the insertions didn't even seem particularly clunky. I especially liked the way Nick seems to have made peace with the revelation of his nature: "I'm not human. I never was, and I never will be. We don't work in the same way you do, we don't feel or think the same, and I don't want to. Why should I? What's so great about you people? You spend your whole lives in a stupid emotional mess, and then you die. You torture each other and you don't even mean to." The conflict between his nature and what he would sometimes (not often, as he himself says) would want to be, for Alan, and then for Mae, continues to be very interesting, and the other revelations about him, like:
"'I--' said Nick, his voice halting. 'I don't mind it as much when -- when people touch me. Some people."
[...]
'Because you trust them not to hurt you?' Mae asked tentatively.
'No,' Nick said, his voice harsh. 'Because I'd let them hurt me.'"
Nick's humanity or lack thereof continues to be nicely complex, with no easy answers.
I was looking forward to more Jamie, and we did get more Jamie, but I didn't notice too much about him, apparently, looking at where my bookmarks are. I did like his speech about coming out as a magician: "It's not the same! Being gay doesn't hurt anybody. This does!"
The stand-out character for me in this book, though, was Annabel, Mae and Jamie's mother. First, I kind of love that she showed up in the books at all. Mae and Jamie are all-but-abandoned by their parents in the first book, or at least that's how it comes across, and I was expecting more of the same and was glad that wasn't the case. Annabel is not very motherly, inept at a lot of things, uncomfortable with her children -- and yet badass, with her fencing and her heels and mastery of unfamiliar situations. I thought it was believable that she would run off after Jamie's demonstration -- because, uh, that was not the best way to spring that revelation on her, possibly -- and, of course, that she came back and defended her children, and went with them to fight at the end. I didn't expect her to die and was really sorry when she did -- but I do think it was an effective death, and did important things in setting up important character things for Mae (who ends up killing Celeste in reveng) and especially Jamie, who ends up accepting his mother's killer into his Circle in Surrender because the killing has to stop or it never will. When I read ambyr's Goodreads review, she mentioned something about Annabel that I felt as well -- that this was the way I was hoping the mother/child relationship in the Killer Unicorn books would play out, instead of Lilith just becoming a flat bad guy sort of person.
I didn't think the twist/surprise ending was nearly as effective or shocking (or logical) as the one in Lexicon. Which is OK, because you certainly can't do that every book, but it did make the climax feel like a bit of a letdown. I never believed Alan would bind Nick's powers fully, and wasn't sure why Mae would believe such a thing.
Quotes:
Mae: "Well, speaking as a feminist, I'm glad that women can lead -- uh, groups of unspeakable magical evil."
"Yes," Alan said gravely. "It'd be shocking if the evil magicians were sexist. For one thing, that would mean they were stupid, and having stupid enemies would be a terrible blow to my manly pride."
(And, in an echo of this quote, I also liked the bit where it turns out that Celeste's best fighter is a woman and Mae feels ashamed for having assumed it was a man.)
"Nicholas Ryves, ladies and gentlemen, Mae thought. The only person in the world who could make a matchmaking scheme sound like a death threat."
Moving on to Surrender.
My biggest problem with Surrender is that I saw the big reveal coming from the beginning and lots of things didn't make particular sense to me because of that. Like, I never for a moment believed that Jamie accepting Nick's mark meant that he could control Nick -- it was always my assumption that Nick was playing along, biding his time until the moment was right to strike at the heart of the Circle. But... why wait that long? There were a couple of moments where I thought they could have pulled off the same reveal and had at least as good a shot at victory as they did at the end before various horrible things happened. There probably are various valid reasons, but they were not apparent to me, and so I was mainly thinking, "What are you waiting for?" It just felt drawn out to reach the final reveal rather than organic.
Oddly enough, I was less dubious about Sin's narration of the third book than I was about Mae's before I started, and I liked her voice a lot. I thought she and her siblings were a neat addition to the various explorations of the sibling theme that these books present, with Nick and Alan and Mae and Jamie. I liked how confident she was about the things she did well while being aware of her limitations. I liked her relationship with Nick, even though it was founded on things that I don't understand/care about, like fighting and dancing -- maybe because it's nice to have someone who relates to Nick through things that he cares about, as opposed to things they want to make him care about.
I am really, really conflicted about her relationship with Alan. Not because I'm jealous (Alan is my favorite character and all, but in a non-fictional universe I would run far, far away, because that boy's got Issues), and not because I wanted Alan to end up with Mae (I did root for them in Covenant, but when it became clear how deeply his general Yendi-like nature bothered her in the context of a potential relationship, that was definitely a decision I could respect). There were things about Alan and Sin that were really great. One of my favorite scenes in the series as a whole is the one where, after their impromptu performance at the boat they have a... well, lies tennis match, basically, that goes like this:
"I was doing a chemistry experiement. I'm so sorry the noise disturbed you; I'm in some advanced classes, and sometimes when I'm studying I lose track of time."
Sin slipped her knife out of her pocket and showed it to him. "This? It's a prop. I do a dance with it." She paused significantly. "A belly dance."
"And that sound was a car backfiring. My brother's keen on cars, you see. Don't worry. I'll have a word with him."
"Of course I remember you from the last Market," Sin said, restroing her knife to her pocker. "Who could forget you?"
"Actually," Alan said, earnst and clear-eyed, "this is my first time playing poker."
I could very readily see them as very good friends after that point. I could even see how Sin's subconscious antagonism because of Alan's limp and her reliance on grace for safety in demon dancing would blossom into infatuation when she saw Alan taking care of her siblings, because Alan has been shown to be mad for babies and taking care of people from the very beginning. Alan interpreting her advances as attempted gratitude (because he has odd but believable self-confidence issues) and Sin being pissed off when he makes that clear were good. But I just don't see it as Sudden True Love, like the book seems to want it to be. Joking around pals, life of crime partners, OK. Cosmic connection or whatever -- not so much. And I felt like the book was pulling for the latter. Although, of course, it's told in Sin's POV, and maybe she was just blinded by love into thinking that -- I guess we don't know what she's like in relationships with people who are good to her, as Alan certainly is. Although I did find this scene quite poignant, regardless:
"Come here," she said. "Lie to me." [...]
"Cynthia," he murmured, fingers still brushing her cheek, making her shiver. "I'm not lying."
Sin closed her eyes and tucked her cheek into the curve of his neck and against his pillow.
"Yeah," she whispered. "Just like that."
I liked Sin and Mae's relationship, back from the second book and in this one as well. Actually, in Covenant, I thought Mae and Sin had way more chemistry than Mae with any of her male suitors. I'm generally not interested in femmeslash, but I sure hope it is a popular ship in this fandom. I like the way the various ways in which Mae has privilege that she may or may not be aware of enters into the relationship, too, but doesn't get in the way of it. The whole thing with the pearl and competition for leading the Goblin Market was... strange, though. I mean, Meris is basically crazy and demon-possessed when she suggests it, and it seems like the sort of thing a demon-possessed person would suggest, but the fact that Sin and Mae go along with it is a little weird. I like that it's acknowledged but doesn't actually get in the way of their friendship, and, to be honest, I don't get the appeal of the Goblin Market (it was my least favorite part in the first book and I didn't particularly care in these two either), so I also didn't care who won, but, eh. Mae being amazingly awesome at it all of a sudden was also a little too convenient. Maybe it would've been more believable if we'd seen it from her POV, with struggles and uncertainty and getting advice from people who have actually been around for a while, but from the outsdie view it just seemed odd.
Jamie and Seb seen through the eyes of Sin were not nearly as interesting, which was a pity, because I liked Jamie and Seb in Mae's POV, and Jamie even in Nick's. I liked Matthias the acerbic piper, although his parents being a lesbian couple at least one of whom is deaf or mute, and the late revelation that he himself is Asian did feel like it crossed over a bit into token minority representation -- all of those things are awesome; having all of them show up in half a page feels rather shoehorn-y, though.
Let me say a couple more words about Alan, whom I loved a whole lot starting with book 1 and more and more. I love that Alan is a pathological Chessmaster. That his thing about taking care of people is also pathological -- and that he realizes he's crazy. I also like that both of the girls he's interested in romantically, Mae and Sin, understand how crazy he is, and Sin even verbalizes it: "I think you're all right. [...] I mean, you know, irredeemably messed up, but in a charming way." I LOVE his relationship with Nick, of course, which is the linchpin of this series, the way he both takes care of Nick and protects him and knows he has to control him.
Some other general thoughts about the series: I liked that Alan didn't want his leg to be fixed by magic, and that when Nick insists on it as part of a bargain (which totally makes sense that he would), it's not a permanent "fix". On a similar note, that Jamie's hand doesn't magically grow back and he has to learn to deal with it (in a very Jamie-like fashion, of course)
Quotes:
"Love always costs more than you can afford to pay. And it's always worth the price." (This sounded almost Bujoldian to me, like something Cordelia would say.)
Sin: "I mean, we're friends too, aren't we?" She laughed a little.
Nick blinked. "No."
Sin stared at him. "What?"
"I've already got one," Nick told her.
"You've already got one--friend?" Sin asked slwoly.
Nick nodded. "He's a lot of trouble. I don't think I can deal with any more."
"Alan, bereft of any current opportunity to help someone, had already got out his keys."
"I don't have deal breakers," Alan said. "I look on tempests, and am never shaken."
"Shakespeare?"
His eyes brightened. "You know the poem?"
"No," said Sin. "I know your quoting voice."
"She had never thought of Matthias as having parents. She supposed it was logical, most people had them, but Matthias liked music so much more than people, she would hardly have been surprised to learn his father was a flute and his mother a music stand."
Randomly, I find it quite confusing that the people on the covers of book 2 and 3 are not the people narrating the books, and, in fact, that the person on the cover of book 2 (in my edition) is narrating book 3. Not that I have any objections to Alan on the cover of Surrender.
7. Terry Pratchett, Snuff -- the last couple of Discworld books I've been approaching apprehensively, and Snuff was no exception. But this was the first book since at least Thud! where I didn't finish reading it with some kind of bittersweet feeling about the shadow book that I could have seen Pterry writing at his prime. I just really enjoyed Snuff with no reservations, and I was really, really happy about that. Spoilers galore!
Vimes was in top form (and while his relationship with the Summoning Dark was quite different from what it was in Thud!, it made sense to me that he would have assimilated it to some degree, or come to this kind of symbiosis with whatever it is). Sybil was wonderful, not being fazed by Nobby's goblin girlfriend or the propsect of Young Sam eating snails because there's nothing poisonous in this country for a snail to eat (though it was quite shocking to hear her refer to Lady Rust as a bitch. Not to her face, of course -- "there's such a thing as manners"). Young Sam was both adorable and bright and very believably a little boy, being overwhelmed by toys in the Ramkin nursery, and obsessed with poo, and effortlessly charming the ladies. The extra focus on Willikins didn't do much for me, but there were some funny and neat moments there, especially in his interaction with Vimes, especially in talking about his father, and Willikins provoking Feeney by taking a shot at his mum from the crowd. Stratford was a decent Pterry villain, and I loved Vimes's trick with the sabotaged crossboew. The goblin stuff was handled with more deftness, I think, than in Unseen Academicals. I especially liked the Ankh-Moprpork goblins encountered by the Watch, Billy and his grandmother, but Tears of the Mushroom was also very neat, and I liked the addition of Miss Beedle the writer and her mother's story of being "rescued" from the goblins that raised her. (I also liked how her focus on bodily excretions in her writing is likely related to her exposure to gobins.) And I'm glad she wasn't trying to teach the goblins to be human, but I'm not sure what I think of her "teaching them how to be goblins, clever goblins". I don't think that's what she's actually doing -- she is helping teach goblins to come across in ways that other people can more readily accept -- but that's still a rather odd way to put it.
There were a couple of things that did strike me as odd or a little bit off. Vetinari has definitely been a bit different in the last couple of books, in a way that I have a hard time fitting in my mental construct of Vetinari. Getting upset (for him) about crosswords and apparently being moved to tears by music? Hmmm. I also enjoyed the Watch cameos less than I normally do, but as they played only a minor role, I was OK with that. And it was neat to find out that Cheery has a bit of a crush on Carrot, though she realizes he's spoken for. And I note Wee Mad Arthur is back from his sabbatical, all Feeglified but back with the Watch.
For how much the "Pride and Prejudice" reference featured in fan reactions, I was expecting it to be more prominent in the book, but it was pretty funny for a throwaway gag. I also quite enjoyed the running gag with Vimes butchering the Bhangbhangduc words when talking to Feeney, and the trout stream joke. I rather liked Colonel Charles Makepeace and his unrequited friendship for potted shrimp and other crustaceans, and Vimes's view on jodhpurs ("no man should meet a copper if he is wearing trousers that make his legs look as though he has just burgled a house full of silverware and shoved it hastily down his trousers", and "Most of the time I've got nothing against horses, and then I come down very firmly against horses, and then I'm shot up in the air again so that once more I have nothing against horses". And "Obliged to you, sire, and I surely hope you won't take it amiss if I say that we generally talk about port and starboard?" "Wouldn't know about that, Gastric, never drank starboard."
The fight on the Wonderful Fanny in the middle of a flood/tidal wave was quite impressive. I'm not sure what I think Stinky is, but I guess it doesn't really matter.
Quotes:
"You've killed people?"
Vimes: "I like to think I did my best not to, and on the whole I've been good at that."
Stoner: "I have no knowledge whatsoever of any goblins being dispossessed of their accommodations lately, as the chief constable appears to believe."
Vimes: "I congratulate you on your careful ignorance, Mr Stoner."
Vimes: "[A]nd so I'm going to give the orders and I want you to do exactly what I tell you, okay?"
Vimes: "Are you waiting for something, Feeney?"
Feeney: "I didn't wish to interrupt you, commander, and as you say, you are in charge, but I was waiting until you said something I wanted to hear."
V: "Oh yes? Such as?"
F: "Well, sire, to begin with I'd like to hear you say that it's time to mount up and get out of here really fast because the water is rising and soon the alligators will wake up."
"I'll take that order as a given, then, shall I?" shouted Feeney as he sped after Vimes.
Vimes: "All right, Chief Constable Upshot, I'm still in charge, but I agree to respect your local knowledge."
Wee Mad Arthur: "I hope I did what ye would have done, commander?"
Vimes: "No, constable, you did not do what I would have done, which is fortunate, because if you had, then you would be in front of me on a charge for using brutally excessive force in the execution of your duties."
8. Jonathan Kellerman, Mystery -- I never have a whole lot to say about the Kellerman books, except that I do continue enjoying them. This one had a lot of Alex and Robin being together in it, which I like, and even a tiny bit of Rick in the background, which, ditto. Major spoilers, including the whodunit! The character Alex meets over the course of his investigations are my favorite, usually. In this one, my very favorite character was actually Leona, so I was a bit sorry to see that she turned out to be the murderer (though that does not, actually, make her less awesome, and possibly more), but I also liked the clueless waiter, the businessladies behind SukRose.net, Lori and Divana and their weird relationship. Oh, and then there was the thread with Gretchen and Chad, which was unexpected, but I guess did fit in with the theme of mothers doing their best by their children, constructively despite deep personality flaws, like Gretchen, or murderously, like Leona. It's been a while since we've had a book with some kind of medical-type mystery, and the superfecundation thing, in the form of twins from different fathers, showed up here. Also, I was amused by the real crime techs grumbling about CSI-type shows, and everybody using Craigslist for everything.
9. Libba Bray, Beauty Queens -- I picked up the book primarily because it was by Libba Bray (whose modern-set stories I actually enjoy more than the Gemma Doyle trilogy, despite my love for Fee), and also because the premise mad it sound a lot like Lord of the Flies retold with girls. Which is not unintentional, of course -- LotF actually gets namechecked by the characters towards the end ("Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place wher eno one's watching them so they can be who they really are"). It was a much more "message" book than I had been expecting, but the message was handled with enough humour and nuance that I didn't mind, and I wouldn't have guessed that was possible. So, in all, I'm quite pleased with the book. Spoilers from here on. Major ones!
The premise is, well, LotF with beauty queens (they even have a conch stand-in in a baton), plus stuff. A plane with the 50 Miss Teen Dream USA contestants crashes on an island. Many of the girls die. The remaining ones have to fend for themselves. Instead of turning against each other and hunting pigs and/or their fellows, being away from society allows the girls to grow, realize their own and each other's strengths, understand better what they want rather than following the expectations of their parents, trainers, or society, and so on. There are also flamboyant reality TV pirates who end up shipwrecked on the island after the girls have basically settled it, and a secret base run by the Corporation (the same omnipresent sinister corporation that featured in Going Bovine, I guess?), and Ladybird Hope, past Miss Dream winner and pageant sponsor who is actually behind the plane crash and is also dealing arms to a third-world dictator and planning to assassinate him and run for president, and occasional commercial breaks. The Ladybird Hope and MoMo B. ChaCha storyline is broad parody and I thought it was the weakest (and fairly unnecessary) part of the book. The commercial breaks / messages from the Corporation are also pretty broad, but packed a lot more punch for me, and were just more fun ("Sweet Sixteen Gone Wrong (Wednesdays 10 p.m. EST): Will Special let her manicurist inject her with yak's urine? Heidi flips out when Heather schedules her dress-fitting party on the same day as Heidi's pre-party modeling lessons. Z'anay has a tanning mishap. Dazzle chooses a small dog to match her dress."). I'm not really sure what the purpose of the pirates was, except to show how the girls regressed in the presence of boys and to give Adina some difficult character growth moments, but I'm glad Petra found someone who appreciates her. Really, for me, the plot was just an excuse to get to know these girls and their relationships with each other... so, not dissimilar to the Gemma Doyle books, in that way.
All of the girls we get to know well were interesting and different and all of them had flaws and strengths. Adina Greenberg, Miss New Hampshire (who wanted Robert Frost for her state symbol), is the first one we meet, and so I started out thinking of her as the Ralph to Taylor's Jack, but it's fortunately not that simple. Adina is in the pageant in order to write an expose (she is a journalism student), and she's smart, and a feminist, but not a very good leader (at first) and not always a very good friend (Petra calls her out on this at one point: "Just because you're funny doesn't mean you get to be cruel"), though she does learn how to be better at both over the course of the book. And she has to come to terms with and respect the things she personally finds demeaning and abhorrent, like makeovers and purity rings, that are important to other girls and therefore valid personal choices. There's Shanti Singh, who is a valley girl who wants to be a DJ (and also the head of a Fortune 500 company) but who drives herself to perfection in "respectable" pursuits instead (because "winning was easy and addictive; the more she won, the more she felt she couldn't risk failure"), and whose schtick is her Indian background, because her Soviet handler tells her that "everbody loves a happy assimilation story". There's African-American Nicole Ade, who wanted to be a doctor, and whose Laker Girl mother pushes her into using beauty products like hair relaxer and skin-bleaching cream. There's Mary Lou Novak, a "wild girl" who wears a purity ring because she's afraid of her own sexuality and thinks others will be too. There's Jennifer Huberman, who got into the pageant through a program for at-risk youths, and is a lesbian and a comic book nerd and good with mechanical things. There's her crush, Sosie Simmons, who is hearing impaired and tired of being a happy "overcoming adversity" story and "sweet deaf girl mascot", and lives to dance. And there's Petra, who is transgender and used to be a boy band idol, and is in the pageant in order to earn enough money to transition. Laid out that way, it sounds like Minority Bingo (even relatively mainstream Adina is Jewish and, if I read that correctly, has a gay father), but it's actually not, at all, because all of the girls are well developed characters who have plenty of traits and histories beyond their minority status, and get their own POVs, and have relationships with each other. And I'm not the best judge of this, but I thought the book managed to say things about sexism and racism and homophobia and gender and disability in ways that were sufficiently subtle but also quite powerful.
It did bug me somewhat that there are girls on the island who don't get that treatment. We do get to see quite a lot of Tiara, who starts out looking just like a dumb blonde, but reveals a skill at interior decorating and, more importantly, being a good friend (I really liked her friendship with Petra) and a valuable ally -- she is used to being underestimated and dismissed but can be counted on when it counts. She does get a bit of a POV, but she doesn't get a dossier, like the other main characters, which I thought was sort of unfortunate -- it seems to send the message that she had nothing of value to say which in itself is dismissive. There's also stuff going on with Tiara that I wish had been explored more -- parents push her into the pageant thing since she's a baby, telling her that they're doing it for her, because she enjoys it, and some of her numbers as highly questionable, though performed with a Christian spin. This in itself is borderline child abuse, but I wonder if something overt was going on, too (her under-the-influence-of-berries story about the stuffed dinosaur ("One night, I found him under the covers, down, you know, there. [...] I think he did the nasty to me.") sounded sort of suspicious. Also, I was left wondering whether Tiara has a learning disability (which was, interestingly, the one minority status not overtly checked) or is left ignorant because nobody bothers to teach her (until Petra comes along) -- she's pretty, so who cares what she learns, she's set for life.
But, anyway, Tiara does get some development and POV, but Brittani, Miss Alabama, the other "dumb blonde" does not, and, in fact, even in the post-series write-up is a soap opera actress and accidentally married a European prince. Oh, wait, she has a third nipple, which is her one distinguishing characteristic beyond being a dumb blonde. And then there are Miss New Mexico, Miss Ohio, Miss Arkansas, and Miss Montana, who never get much differentiation, and seem to be mostly there to have more people in the cast and for the gag where they are all four named Caitlin Ashley. I realize the book already had a large cast, but I found it rather odd that a book which focused on girls discovering their strengths and exploring the various ways and trials of being female still had a cast of largely non-differentiated backup players.
I was really concerned that Taylor, Miss Texas and the voice of the "establishment" early on, was going to end up in the same boat, dismissed for not being "different" enough, but I was quite happy with the way Taylor was treated. She starts out as an alpha female and someone who idolizes Ladybird Hope and parrots all kinds of patriotic and Miss Dream mumbo-jumbo, but along with that, and her crazy dedication to the pageant, where she insists on the girls practicing their talent routines so they'd be ready to compete when they are rescued, Taylor is undeniably badass ("I am my own weapon, Miss New Hampshire"), a capable leader (Adina tries to channel her when she has to assume the responsibilities of leader), and has valuable experience. She also gets a dossier and her own backstory, both of which are both impressive and heartbreaking. And I was afraid that Taylor's general father would end up as part of the broad parody troupe, but he is actually treated quite respectfully, as a single father backed her interest in pageants, and his flashback exchange with Taylor was actually one of the most poignant moments in the book for me: "It isn't fair!" "No, it isn't, baby. Not by a mile. The world's only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay here, in your little cave, that's one less fighter on the side of fair." (I'm totally tearing up even just typing this up.) I wish Taylor hadn't gone crazy, but she continued to be a formidable force, treated with respect by the narrative even after she'd gone round the bend, and the last glimpse of her, sort of Eden-like (but better, with a snake draped around her shoulders), was hopeful, so I'm OK with that I guess. (In case you can't tell, Taylor was my favorite character in this, and I was bummed that she didn't clear the melee round to compete in chickfight, as I can't think of a better candidate, girls with actual magic nonwithstanding.)
Characters aside, there were a couple of plot things that I saw coming a million miles away, like Ladybirt Hope being the Boss, and also Petra being trans (but not with the first mention that could have tipped one off, the scene with little Petra playing with her mother's beauty products and asking "Will I be beautiful like you someday?"), but that was OK, because, as I said, plot is not really the point.
So, anyway, I really enjoyed this book, and it's one of those where I wish more people I knew had read it because I want to talk about it, or at least hear what other people have to say.
In progress: Name of the Wind (reached a part I'm enjoying less and got stuck), God's War (reached a part I'm enjoying less and got stuck, even though I'm more than halfway through). I also just finished Goliath and just started Crucible of Gold