Reading roundup (including Cold Days)
Catching up on the last of 2012 and starting off 2013:
45. Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts -- The beginning of an epic fantasy trilogy set in Central Asia (in 12th-13th century, apparently; at any rate, there are trade routes and (once) gunpowder). The worldbuilding is really neat, and I think I would've seen the care in it even if I didn't follow matociquala's LJ and had thus seen her trying to figure out the right etymology for things given the history of her universe. The worldbuilding is not just thorough and neat, it permeates aspects of culture that I don't think I've seen in other second-world fantasy -- like bows. Temur keeps noticing all these differences between the bows he's used to on the steppes and the bows of every other culture he encounters, and it takes additional effort for him to use the bows that are not like the ones he's used to, or in some cases he can only recycle arrowheads and so on. Personally, I don't much care about bows/archery, but that sort of detail made the world and Temur's worldview feel real. I liked other aspects of worldbuilding, too, the ghostly magical book made out of glass, the random megafauna, the talus and talus-herders, the science that the wizards learn alongside the magic, the sacrifice magic requires, the way religion is not only something that varies from culture to culture but even within a single culture is not monolithic. One of the central concepts, the sky being different over different nations, and the legends of the Carrion King worked for me less well, but I always tend to be less interested in macro worldbuilding than in micro detail, so that's not a surprise. So, anyway, the worldbuilding was great. Bear's characters never really do much for me, I must admit. Temur was fine (although his introduction and meeting with Bansh reminded me rather a lot of Muire and her steed in All the Windwracked Stars). Samarkar was fine. Edene was fine. I liked Payma, Samarkar's young sister in law. I liked Bansh, the magical horse, who had as much personality as the human characters, despite not talking (except when Temur was delirius). My favorites were probably Hrahima, a tiger-lady who determinedly refuses to believe in destiny despite Destiny's efforts to the contrary, and (surprise, surprise!) the Big Bad, Al-Sepehr, 'cos that's how I roll.
46. Pekhov et al, Кровные братья (Киндрэт 1)
47. Pekhov et al, Колдун из клана смерти (Киндрэт 2)
52. Pekhov et al, Основатель (Киндрэт 3)
53. Pekhov et al, Новые боги (Киндрэт 4) -- Recommended (and furnished) by ikel89, these have the distinction of being the other full series I started and read in 2012 (Hunger Games being the first one). I've read very little Russian fantasy, and these were an interesting cultural exercise. Well, I don't know if it's cultural or quirks of these particular authors, but I definitely felt that the books flowed very differently than I expected them to. Spoilers from here, although only vague ones, I think. The first one ends on a massive cliffhanger, but that happens, and there's world-changing stuff in pretty much every book, which was fairly neat, but I mean more things like pacing and introduction of characters and resolution of arcs -- all that was very odd, in a way that felt sloppy to me but may well be simply a convention I'm not used to.
The world-building was interesting enough, but centered around things I don't care about (like, for starters, vampires). I liked having multiple clans with very different aspects, but only one of the clans, Cadavercian, was interesting to me in its own right, with their green eyes and anise-smelling magic and touching care for each other. Feriartos digressions and Dahanavar "for the greater good" scheming were boring to me beginning to end, even though fairies in urban fantasy and a clan of, ostensibly, Tyrells could be expected to appeal to me otherwise. The missing Leardjini actually ended up being pretty neat in retrospect, and I got to like Ligamentia a bit more when it turned out Solomea was a figmen of Inokaanoan's imagination. Greygunn's are really perfectly summarized by K's "Slavic utopia" description, and didn't do much for me either. Like, at all. Lugat have neat powers, but I felt like their arc kind of went nowhere, though I liked Ramon and even Dina personally. Asiman barely advanced beyond evil for the hell of it, though Yakob's POV did help in that respect). Nachtserret ended up being my second-favorite clan, probably, which, considering that they are the evil thugs, is a bit telling.
I did like some of the individual characters, though, a few of them quite a lot :) I liked Darel in the first book, mostly for the oblivious but obvious besottedness with Lorian (still kind of LOLing that the Western adaptation by one of the authors turned Lorian into a female love interest without apparently having to change very much XP). But as soon as Kristof appeared, he pretty much became the focus of my attention, because he pushed lots and lots of my character buttons. It took me a little longer to come to the conclusion that Miklos, the fearsome head of of the evilest vampire clan of evil (and the main antagonist in the first books) was HILARIOUS with his "young intellectual" looks and germophobia and perfect pitch and vendetta against cell phones and deeply hidden sappiness towards his traitorous sister. Mikos-in-exile and Miklos having to get around Cadavercian-creature-infested Moscow were also pretty adorable. And I'm not sure if it would have happened if not for K, but as it is, I do find it kind of impossible NOT to ship Kristof and Miklos, who both combine being consummate badasses with being old biddies attached to their antique furniture, annoyed with modern technology, and possessed of a tendency to nag their subordinates about tracking dirt on their carpets or touching their stuff. And that was before Mikos participated and in a daring and, according to his own self, "romantic" rescue of Kristof. So, yeah. XP Even though Kristof canonically has a weakness for redheads and Miklos only likes blondes, it kind of has to be. The other character I ended up really loving was Bosxet the betalajs (spirit animating a dead body), who was hilarious and reminded me a bit of Loiosh, which crystallized when he called Kristof "Boss". Also, it did not escape my notice that it was his decision to rescue Miklos when Kristof had merely told him to watch. Bosxet the yenta -- I could live with that ;) I also liked Yakob the Asiman, even though his story kind of went nowhere. Oh, and I liked Vlad the pragmatic human at the end.
Stories going nowhere is probably my biggest complaint about the series, because so many things are introduced and consequently don't feel sufficiently resolved or developed. It's not like ASOIAF, where most POV characters get an ongoing thread (until they die horribly in some embarrassing fashion, but I digress), but rather POVs crop up and go away and don't feel finished. The arc of Korvinus, the old Revenant's son, felt the most random to me in this way -- he does get a kind of conclusion, but it doesn't really feel like it resolves anything. Actually, I'm not sure like I feel that anyone except Vivian and Darel and Lorian and Miklos, and maybe Felicia, whom I don't care about, get a resolution of any sort, with a pretty large cast. Ah well. While I'm complaining about the mechanics, one of the things that jumped out at me, especially in the third book, was the constant and somewhat distracting use of epithets ("Hranya's brother" "Lucius's student" "the Spaniard") -- I do think it's something I remembe being more common in Russian? But I'm just not used to it anymore. And just laughable is the terrible English etymology behind some of the clan names (the non-English etymology is not any better, I expect, I just can't judge). I can live with the triviality of "fairy + art" = Feriartos, or the not-quite-right-ness "grey + hunter" = Greygunn (though why would the Slavic utopia clan get an English-derived name?), but the crowning achievement is Тхорнисх, drived from the words "thorn" + "ichor", which contain neither a "tkh" sound nor a "skh" sound, or any "x" sound at all. XD I don't know if this is done on purpose, for the lulz, or what, but I'm still kind of O.o about it....
It's a bit odd talking about these books because I had a lot of real-time back-and-forth with K while I was reading them (at least the first 2.5). I definitely enjoyed them, both as a reading experience (I was happy to be reading in Russian again) and as fantasy, but I have a strong suspicion I would've enjoyed them more if they were just 4 volumes of Kristof mentoring his students, rescuing everybody, bantering with spirits, and helping random mortals, and Mikos complaining about annoying smells, telephone calls, substandart instruments, flying deathtraps, and everything else under the sun, because LOL.
48, 49. The Promise, parts 2 and 3 (the AtLA comic) -- The second one was cute -- Toph and Sokka are in my top three favorites, so a book where they were hanging out and being funny together was sure to appeal, but it mostly felt like a filler episode. Part 3 was a lot more thinky. Spoilers I liked the conflicts and shades of grey: Earth King Kuei and Zuko both trying to prove themselves as worthy leaders, Zuko worried that even though he's defending Yu Dao for a different reasopn from the outside it looks just like what his father would do (and being so surprised when his decision turns out to have been right), Aang being offended by the Avatar fan club appropriating Air Nomad tattoos but also coming to accept them if they were willing to "convert" (which I guess answers the question of where all the Air Nomads in LoK came from), Avatar Roku advising Aang to fulfill his promise and kill Zuko and being wrong, despite being a mentor figure, Zuko and Aang's conversation about Zuko trying to use Aang as his safety net/escape hatch, and about how choosing the right thing once doesn't mean the struggle is over. And it was great to see more of Toph, and Iroh (inventing eyeballs pearl milk tea -- so fitting!).
50. Leonid Renen's translation of Monday Begins on Saturday (original by Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky) -- admittedly, I skimmed one entire chapter (the time travel one) and some other passages, but in the end I read enough of it that I think it qualifies. And I had things to say about it, so. This is the old translation from 1977, and I don't know if it's the age of it partially, or if the translator was aiming for Britishisms, or (as seems the consensus) it's just a crappy translation, but so much of the English is just weird to me. He tried to keep the Russian syntax in places where it just doesn't work in English -- it's intelligible, but so, so weird-sounding. He used words that I've never heard used in English before -- "ventilator" meaning the little window ("fortochka" in Russian), where I would've just used window, "brummagem" (which apparently is a word for a cheap, showy imitation of something, but is a word I have never seen used -- apparently it's now regional/archaic?). And there's also the tendency to translate things in ways that are literally correct but feel really disruptive to the story, because the words are common in Russian but are not in English. Like, an example where this works well is translating "kerenki" as "Kerensky rubles", but it was the only one, pretty much. Then there's "fufajki" and "valenki" scrupulously described as "quilted vests" and "felted boots", where I think simply "coat" and "boots" would've led to much better flow. And the most egregious example, which I already complained about: "noven'kij Zaporozhets" translated as "brand new car manufactured in the Ukraine" which is factually true, but so, so awkward XD And there are some other examples of just plain badly/wrongly translated bits in this article.
I do think he did a pretty good job of translating the magic/science-babble, for the most part, and the legalese and the buzzwords, and a respectable go at the doggerel. But the dialogue is mostly really weird, because he picked different casual/slang terms that I would've gone for -- matching literal meaning more than connotation, I think, like translating "rebyata" as "chums" (I'd've gone with "guys", which seems to me a lot more generic). Another casualty were the idiosyncratic ways of speaking that Vybegallo and Modest Matveevich have (well, Vybegallo's French is preserved, and his tendency towards buzzwords, but not the other mannerisms), and so you especially can't tell when one of the other characters is immitating them.
Also, I got some unintended amusement out of Renen's Privalov talking about Sanya Drozd's "cute shirt" and "foxy Eddie" (I would have definitely gone with "clever", LOL XD). Oh, and I think he describes the guys who work in Fyodor Simeonovich's department as "handsome", too (it was "simpatichnye" in the original). Yeaaah, unintentionally gay Privalov FTW XP
Renen mostly left the names alone, except for anglicizing Vasilij the cat to Basil, the patronymic "Psoevich" to "Curovich" (which I had to stare at for a long time, feeling something was subtly off, but is actually pretty clever), and Vybegallo (which he writes Vibegallo) gets a footnote to explain the connotations of "running out ahead"), but he did translate, and not too badly, the names of the two journalists, as Perspicaciov (I'd've left it as Perscipacious, which sounds like it could be a last name) and Pupilov (Pronitsatel'nyj and Pitomnik in the original). The really weird moment for me was the translation of Savoaf Baalovich's last name (Odin). I've always read it as 'Odin, like the Norse god, through, of course, there's at least a visual pun on o-DIN, "one, solitary". Renen chose to go with the latter and called him Uni, which was so weird. He mostly drops diminutives or replaces them with modifications, but not always, but I suppose that's inevitable. The thing I really miss is Junta addressing Feodor Simeonovich as "Teodor" (while keeping Kivrin addressing him as Cristo, oddly enough) -- I guess maybe he figured that Feodor/Teodor would be too confusing?
50.5. Bromfield's translation -- which I'm about in the middle of, but have run out of steam on. I'll do a full write-up when I'm done, but might as well get this out now. I have a lot less to say about this one because I like it a lot more. I think the big difference is that Bromfield went for normal-sounding dialogue (in British English, since that's where he lives) over exact translation, and it worked really well. And with the dialogue sounding normal, the rest of the text didn't feel as weird, either, even when he had the same amount of weird-in-not-Russian detail on felted boots and quilted vests and so on. The only bit that threw me off was translating Lukomorye as "Curving Seashore Street", which is a correct translation but, I think, an unnecessary one. I do like NITWITT (National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy) as the very clever translation for NIICHAVO.
51. Lois McMaster Bujold, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance -- here.
Starting 2013:
1. Jim Butcher, Cold Days -- well! So, the first 80% of this book were pretty lackluster for me. I usually have trouble putting down a Dresden Files book once I get into it, but I was 2/3 through when I went on vacation with the book on my Kindle, and didn't even open it once. But once I got to the last fifth, that's when it really took off, and I do think the final 50 pages make up for the earlier sections, and the book is very much a WHAM episode overall. Spoilers from here!
So, the last 50 pages. [Spoiler tag because whoa, I wouldn't want someone to glance at this by accident] Xanatos Pileup with Mab and Maeve and Harry and friends in the middle of it, the revelation of Sarissa's true identity, Lily's death, Harry figuring out what it is Mab knows that Maeve doesn't and being too late to stop the mantle from passing to Molly, Harry's confrontation with Mab (especially the "That's not what I was doing" part when Mab congratulates him on trying Molly to himself as Justin had done with him), explanation of why Lea had been spending all that time with Molly (not out of the goodness of her heart, obviously), and even the detail about Mab having to speak through an intermediary books and books ago, just all of it was pretty damn awesome. And raises lots of interesting questions for the future, especially around Molly. So, yeah, WHAM.
Previous to that, the only thing I liked very much was Harry and Thomas's reunion. In fact, there was enough Harry and Thomas brotherly bonding in this one that I even sort of forgive "Ghost Story" for not having almost any Thomas in it and no interaction betweent hem at all. I actually really liked Thomas telling Harry exactly what he thinks of his suicide-by-proxy decision, even highlighting to Harry that chosing death over the possibility of becoming a "monster" by putting it into perspective for him -- because I do think that Harry has a tendency to be an absolutist when it comes to Good vs Evil abstractions (remember the hissyfit he threw when he found out about McCoy being the Blackstaff?) while being more tolerant/understanding of actual less-than-perfect people like Thomas, Lara, or even Marcone. Speaking of Thomas, I also enjoyed the little bits that appealed to my Thomas/Molly shipping, like Molly staring at pretty Thomas or Thomas saying he wouldn't mind having Michael Carpenter for a father himself (there's an option there, Thomas! ;).
The other stuff in the first 4/5 of the book... I understood why it was there, and there was some interesting worldbuilding (the Winter Court battling the Outsiders, the role of the Gatekeeper, the stuff with Mother Summer and Mother Winter, the revelation of what's in the Well, whatever Mac is, Faerie shapeshifters, Sharkface being a Walker and the callback to the chronologically-first short story with young Harry encountering He Who Walks Behind), and some fun character stuff (I'm looking forward to the inevitable wooing attempts between Toot-Toot and Lacuna, the the Za Lord's Guard in their winter-branded uniforms of toothpaste tubes and coke cans were adorable in general), oh, and I liked Cat Sith, before he was turned, but, *sigh* The violence being ratcheted up as it was made total sense, but I just don't enjoy reading endless drawn-out descriptions of physical fighting. And Harry's thought straying towards having his way with every woman he encountered (except, from what I recall, Murphy, with whom he just got jealous of Kincaid) made a lot of sense, too, and are a good way of showing the effect of the Winter Knight's mantle and Harry the unreliable narrator and all that stuff, but just because I think it's well done and necessary does not mean I can enjoy it. And I think maybe it was being laid on a little too thick, because the most effective, chilling quote along those lines for me was "I growled. I'd forgotten how to do whatever that other thing was." which has very little overt violence. And Harry getting off on the chase by the Wild Hunt without realizing it was a neat touch, too.
But it was good that Harry was not completely subsumed by the Winter Knight, and we still got the smartass narration with geeky asides (Princess Bride "only mostly dead" quote FTW, and Tao of Pratchett, of course), although I never figured him for someone who would read much Robert Frost (even if "Fire and Ice" is one of my favorite poems and I appreciated the quote).
Here are the two things I did not like at all: Nemesis and Murphy, albeit for different reasons. Nemesis, I think, is just kind of a copout. By tying absolutely everything to it, back to Harry's very first cases, it doesn't make the world feel vaster and more complex, it makes it feel smaller and flatter. Not a fan. And Nemesis allowing the Fae to lie, meh, that feels like a cop-out to break the rules of one's own worldbuilding, too. This one revelation makes me less interested in the outcome of the series as a whole, because it's no longer really people doing things for consistent if sometimes evil or alien reasons, it's "Nemesis made them do it". Meh.
Murphy is a different matter, and I don't feel like we've seen enough for me to decide whether it's a feature or a bug, just that I don't care for it much. Murphy was already acting king of weird in Ghost Story, especially in relation to her attitude towards Molly, but Harry was dead, it was a very stressful time, so, OK. But Murphy just didn't feel much like herself in this one (and it's going to take a while for me to get used to Harry referring to her as "Karrin" all the time; subtle, there). I could see her turning back from the Harry-assigned task of stopping the ritual to save Harry from the Wild Hunt surprised me a bit but made sense. But her "I'll be going to Hell right along" speech really wasn't something I was expecting from her. Over the years, she's loved and helped Harry, but I always felt like the good of the many was more important to her if there was a conflict. And I understand that people can change -- in fact, the fact that they've been doing so has surpassed my expectations in this series -- but Murphy the avenging angel (as per Harry's Soulgaze) has always been such a fundamental part of her, and I have a hard time understanding how that would suddenly not be the case just because she lost her job as a cop and Harry died. So, I don't know. I hope there's more to it than that, or it's leading up to something, and I'm reserving judgement/willing to be convinced, but so far I'm not.
Oh, and I still can't stand Molly's crush on Harry. It just find it not very believable (although Mab's version of events was a decent attempt at explaining it), and it makes Molly look kind of like an idiot to keep at it, and really it serves no constructive purpose anymore. In fact, the only purpose that I think it does serve is to a) keep bringing up the fact that a foxy younger woman thinks Harry is all that, and b) have the opportunity for Harry to nobly turn her down each time because he is just that great a guy. Blech.
Speaking of stuff like that, totally side-eyeing Butters and Andi. And I *like* action girl / non-action guy couples, but, please. First of all, female werewoves are apparently still not allowed to do anything more useful than be victims (lampshading it with "danger-prone Daphne" does not actually make it better, no). And second, I just don't see any chemistry between the two, or any reason for them to have gotten together (well, yes, Harry brought Butters to game night with the Alphas and they are both geeks, but it still feels rather random) and so it really feels like geeky fan-favorite Butters is having a hot redhead bestowed on him by authorial fiat as fanservice. Meh.
But, OK, I don't read Dresden Files for the relationships, it's been established.
Random things: I totally expected the disabled-but-not-sunk barge to be pushed to shore, but not all three barges being essentially decoys -- that was pretty cool. I also knew "Kringle" and the Erl King basically let Harry win the Wild Hunt, and was thinking that "Kringle" reminded me a lot of Odin, so, that was neat. As for unanswered questions: Harry's brain parasite -- is Lash involved in some way (in keeping it at bay, e.g.?).
Currently reading: A Clockwork Angel (New Year present from aome), which I'm about halfway through.
45. Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts -- The beginning of an epic fantasy trilogy set in Central Asia (in 12th-13th century, apparently; at any rate, there are trade routes and (once) gunpowder). The worldbuilding is really neat, and I think I would've seen the care in it even if I didn't follow matociquala's LJ and had thus seen her trying to figure out the right etymology for things given the history of her universe. The worldbuilding is not just thorough and neat, it permeates aspects of culture that I don't think I've seen in other second-world fantasy -- like bows. Temur keeps noticing all these differences between the bows he's used to on the steppes and the bows of every other culture he encounters, and it takes additional effort for him to use the bows that are not like the ones he's used to, or in some cases he can only recycle arrowheads and so on. Personally, I don't much care about bows/archery, but that sort of detail made the world and Temur's worldview feel real. I liked other aspects of worldbuilding, too, the ghostly magical book made out of glass, the random megafauna, the talus and talus-herders, the science that the wizards learn alongside the magic, the sacrifice magic requires, the way religion is not only something that varies from culture to culture but even within a single culture is not monolithic. One of the central concepts, the sky being different over different nations, and the legends of the Carrion King worked for me less well, but I always tend to be less interested in macro worldbuilding than in micro detail, so that's not a surprise. So, anyway, the worldbuilding was great. Bear's characters never really do much for me, I must admit. Temur was fine (although his introduction and meeting with Bansh reminded me rather a lot of Muire and her steed in All the Windwracked Stars). Samarkar was fine. Edene was fine. I liked Payma, Samarkar's young sister in law. I liked Bansh, the magical horse, who had as much personality as the human characters, despite not talking (except when Temur was delirius). My favorites were probably Hrahima, a tiger-lady who determinedly refuses to believe in destiny despite Destiny's efforts to the contrary, and (surprise, surprise!) the Big Bad, Al-Sepehr, 'cos that's how I roll.
46. Pekhov et al, Кровные братья (Киндрэт 1)
47. Pekhov et al, Колдун из клана смерти (Киндрэт 2)
52. Pekhov et al, Основатель (Киндрэт 3)
53. Pekhov et al, Новые боги (Киндрэт 4) -- Recommended (and furnished) by ikel89, these have the distinction of being the other full series I started and read in 2012 (Hunger Games being the first one). I've read very little Russian fantasy, and these were an interesting cultural exercise. Well, I don't know if it's cultural or quirks of these particular authors, but I definitely felt that the books flowed very differently than I expected them to. Spoilers from here, although only vague ones, I think. The first one ends on a massive cliffhanger, but that happens, and there's world-changing stuff in pretty much every book, which was fairly neat, but I mean more things like pacing and introduction of characters and resolution of arcs -- all that was very odd, in a way that felt sloppy to me but may well be simply a convention I'm not used to.
The world-building was interesting enough, but centered around things I don't care about (like, for starters, vampires). I liked having multiple clans with very different aspects, but only one of the clans, Cadavercian, was interesting to me in its own right, with their green eyes and anise-smelling magic and touching care for each other. Feriartos digressions and Dahanavar "for the greater good" scheming were boring to me beginning to end, even though fairies in urban fantasy and a clan of, ostensibly, Tyrells could be expected to appeal to me otherwise. The missing Leardjini actually ended up being pretty neat in retrospect, and I got to like Ligamentia a bit more when it turned out Solomea was a figmen of Inokaanoan's imagination. Greygunn's are really perfectly summarized by K's "Slavic utopia" description, and didn't do much for me either. Like, at all. Lugat have neat powers, but I felt like their arc kind of went nowhere, though I liked Ramon and even Dina personally. Asiman barely advanced beyond evil for the hell of it, though Yakob's POV did help in that respect). Nachtserret ended up being my second-favorite clan, probably, which, considering that they are the evil thugs, is a bit telling.
I did like some of the individual characters, though, a few of them quite a lot :) I liked Darel in the first book, mostly for the oblivious but obvious besottedness with Lorian (still kind of LOLing that the Western adaptation by one of the authors turned Lorian into a female love interest without apparently having to change very much XP). But as soon as Kristof appeared, he pretty much became the focus of my attention, because he pushed lots and lots of my character buttons. It took me a little longer to come to the conclusion that Miklos, the fearsome head of of the evilest vampire clan of evil (and the main antagonist in the first books) was HILARIOUS with his "young intellectual" looks and germophobia and perfect pitch and vendetta against cell phones and deeply hidden sappiness towards his traitorous sister. Mikos-in-exile and Miklos having to get around Cadavercian-creature-infested Moscow were also pretty adorable. And I'm not sure if it would have happened if not for K, but as it is, I do find it kind of impossible NOT to ship Kristof and Miklos, who both combine being consummate badasses with being old biddies attached to their antique furniture, annoyed with modern technology, and possessed of a tendency to nag their subordinates about tracking dirt on their carpets or touching their stuff. And that was before Mikos participated and in a daring and, according to his own self, "romantic" rescue of Kristof. So, yeah. XP Even though Kristof canonically has a weakness for redheads and Miklos only likes blondes, it kind of has to be. The other character I ended up really loving was Bosxet the betalajs (spirit animating a dead body), who was hilarious and reminded me a bit of Loiosh, which crystallized when he called Kristof "Boss". Also, it did not escape my notice that it was his decision to rescue Miklos when Kristof had merely told him to watch. Bosxet the yenta -- I could live with that ;) I also liked Yakob the Asiman, even though his story kind of went nowhere. Oh, and I liked Vlad the pragmatic human at the end.
Stories going nowhere is probably my biggest complaint about the series, because so many things are introduced and consequently don't feel sufficiently resolved or developed. It's not like ASOIAF, where most POV characters get an ongoing thread (until they die horribly in some embarrassing fashion, but I digress), but rather POVs crop up and go away and don't feel finished. The arc of Korvinus, the old Revenant's son, felt the most random to me in this way -- he does get a kind of conclusion, but it doesn't really feel like it resolves anything. Actually, I'm not sure like I feel that anyone except Vivian and Darel and Lorian and Miklos, and maybe Felicia, whom I don't care about, get a resolution of any sort, with a pretty large cast. Ah well. While I'm complaining about the mechanics, one of the things that jumped out at me, especially in the third book, was the constant and somewhat distracting use of epithets ("Hranya's brother" "Lucius's student" "the Spaniard") -- I do think it's something I remembe being more common in Russian? But I'm just not used to it anymore. And just laughable is the terrible English etymology behind some of the clan names (the non-English etymology is not any better, I expect, I just can't judge). I can live with the triviality of "fairy + art" = Feriartos, or the not-quite-right-ness "grey + hunter" = Greygunn (though why would the Slavic utopia clan get an English-derived name?), but the crowning achievement is Тхорнисх, drived from the words "thorn" + "ichor", which contain neither a "tkh" sound nor a "skh" sound, or any "x" sound at all. XD I don't know if this is done on purpose, for the lulz, or what, but I'm still kind of O.o about it....
It's a bit odd talking about these books because I had a lot of real-time back-and-forth with K while I was reading them (at least the first 2.5). I definitely enjoyed them, both as a reading experience (I was happy to be reading in Russian again) and as fantasy, but I have a strong suspicion I would've enjoyed them more if they were just 4 volumes of Kristof mentoring his students, rescuing everybody, bantering with spirits, and helping random mortals, and Mikos complaining about annoying smells, telephone calls, substandart instruments, flying deathtraps, and everything else under the sun, because LOL.
48, 49. The Promise, parts 2 and 3 (the AtLA comic) -- The second one was cute -- Toph and Sokka are in my top three favorites, so a book where they were hanging out and being funny together was sure to appeal, but it mostly felt like a filler episode. Part 3 was a lot more thinky. Spoilers I liked the conflicts and shades of grey: Earth King Kuei and Zuko both trying to prove themselves as worthy leaders, Zuko worried that even though he's defending Yu Dao for a different reasopn from the outside it looks just like what his father would do (and being so surprised when his decision turns out to have been right), Aang being offended by the Avatar fan club appropriating Air Nomad tattoos but also coming to accept them if they were willing to "convert" (which I guess answers the question of where all the Air Nomads in LoK came from), Avatar Roku advising Aang to fulfill his promise and kill Zuko and being wrong, despite being a mentor figure, Zuko and Aang's conversation about Zuko trying to use Aang as his safety net/escape hatch, and about how choosing the right thing once doesn't mean the struggle is over. And it was great to see more of Toph, and Iroh (inventing eyeballs pearl milk tea -- so fitting!).
50. Leonid Renen's translation of Monday Begins on Saturday (original by Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky) -- admittedly, I skimmed one entire chapter (the time travel one) and some other passages, but in the end I read enough of it that I think it qualifies. And I had things to say about it, so. This is the old translation from 1977, and I don't know if it's the age of it partially, or if the translator was aiming for Britishisms, or (as seems the consensus) it's just a crappy translation, but so much of the English is just weird to me. He tried to keep the Russian syntax in places where it just doesn't work in English -- it's intelligible, but so, so weird-sounding. He used words that I've never heard used in English before -- "ventilator" meaning the little window ("fortochka" in Russian), where I would've just used window, "brummagem" (which apparently is a word for a cheap, showy imitation of something, but is a word I have never seen used -- apparently it's now regional/archaic?). And there's also the tendency to translate things in ways that are literally correct but feel really disruptive to the story, because the words are common in Russian but are not in English. Like, an example where this works well is translating "kerenki" as "Kerensky rubles", but it was the only one, pretty much. Then there's "fufajki" and "valenki" scrupulously described as "quilted vests" and "felted boots", where I think simply "coat" and "boots" would've led to much better flow. And the most egregious example, which I already complained about: "noven'kij Zaporozhets" translated as "brand new car manufactured in the Ukraine" which is factually true, but so, so awkward XD And there are some other examples of just plain badly/wrongly translated bits in this article.
I do think he did a pretty good job of translating the magic/science-babble, for the most part, and the legalese and the buzzwords, and a respectable go at the doggerel. But the dialogue is mostly really weird, because he picked different casual/slang terms that I would've gone for -- matching literal meaning more than connotation, I think, like translating "rebyata" as "chums" (I'd've gone with "guys", which seems to me a lot more generic). Another casualty were the idiosyncratic ways of speaking that Vybegallo and Modest Matveevich have (well, Vybegallo's French is preserved, and his tendency towards buzzwords, but not the other mannerisms), and so you especially can't tell when one of the other characters is immitating them.
Also, I got some unintended amusement out of Renen's Privalov talking about Sanya Drozd's "cute shirt" and "foxy Eddie" (I would have definitely gone with "clever", LOL XD). Oh, and I think he describes the guys who work in Fyodor Simeonovich's department as "handsome", too (it was "simpatichnye" in the original). Yeaaah, unintentionally gay Privalov FTW XP
Renen mostly left the names alone, except for anglicizing Vasilij the cat to Basil, the patronymic "Psoevich" to "Curovich" (which I had to stare at for a long time, feeling something was subtly off, but is actually pretty clever), and Vybegallo (which he writes Vibegallo) gets a footnote to explain the connotations of "running out ahead"), but he did translate, and not too badly, the names of the two journalists, as Perspicaciov (I'd've left it as Perscipacious, which sounds like it could be a last name) and Pupilov (Pronitsatel'nyj and Pitomnik in the original). The really weird moment for me was the translation of Savoaf Baalovich's last name (Odin). I've always read it as 'Odin, like the Norse god, through, of course, there's at least a visual pun on o-DIN, "one, solitary". Renen chose to go with the latter and called him Uni, which was so weird. He mostly drops diminutives or replaces them with modifications, but not always, but I suppose that's inevitable. The thing I really miss is Junta addressing Feodor Simeonovich as "Teodor" (while keeping Kivrin addressing him as Cristo, oddly enough) -- I guess maybe he figured that Feodor/Teodor would be too confusing?
50.5. Bromfield's translation -- which I'm about in the middle of, but have run out of steam on. I'll do a full write-up when I'm done, but might as well get this out now. I have a lot less to say about this one because I like it a lot more. I think the big difference is that Bromfield went for normal-sounding dialogue (in British English, since that's where he lives) over exact translation, and it worked really well. And with the dialogue sounding normal, the rest of the text didn't feel as weird, either, even when he had the same amount of weird-in-not-Russian detail on felted boots and quilted vests and so on. The only bit that threw me off was translating Lukomorye as "Curving Seashore Street", which is a correct translation but, I think, an unnecessary one. I do like NITWITT (National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy) as the very clever translation for NIICHAVO.
51. Lois McMaster Bujold, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance -- here.
Starting 2013:
1. Jim Butcher, Cold Days -- well! So, the first 80% of this book were pretty lackluster for me. I usually have trouble putting down a Dresden Files book once I get into it, but I was 2/3 through when I went on vacation with the book on my Kindle, and didn't even open it once. But once I got to the last fifth, that's when it really took off, and I do think the final 50 pages make up for the earlier sections, and the book is very much a WHAM episode overall. Spoilers from here!
So, the last 50 pages. [Spoiler tag because whoa, I wouldn't want someone to glance at this by accident] Xanatos Pileup with Mab and Maeve and Harry and friends in the middle of it, the revelation of Sarissa's true identity, Lily's death, Harry figuring out what it is Mab knows that Maeve doesn't and being too late to stop the mantle from passing to Molly, Harry's confrontation with Mab (especially the "That's not what I was doing" part when Mab congratulates him on trying Molly to himself as Justin had done with him), explanation of why Lea had been spending all that time with Molly (not out of the goodness of her heart, obviously), and even the detail about Mab having to speak through an intermediary books and books ago, just all of it was pretty damn awesome. And raises lots of interesting questions for the future, especially around Molly. So, yeah, WHAM.
Previous to that, the only thing I liked very much was Harry and Thomas's reunion. In fact, there was enough Harry and Thomas brotherly bonding in this one that I even sort of forgive "Ghost Story" for not having almost any Thomas in it and no interaction betweent hem at all. I actually really liked Thomas telling Harry exactly what he thinks of his suicide-by-proxy decision, even highlighting to Harry that chosing death over the possibility of becoming a "monster" by putting it into perspective for him -- because I do think that Harry has a tendency to be an absolutist when it comes to Good vs Evil abstractions (remember the hissyfit he threw when he found out about McCoy being the Blackstaff?) while being more tolerant/understanding of actual less-than-perfect people like Thomas, Lara, or even Marcone. Speaking of Thomas, I also enjoyed the little bits that appealed to my Thomas/Molly shipping, like Molly staring at pretty Thomas or Thomas saying he wouldn't mind having Michael Carpenter for a father himself (there's an option there, Thomas! ;).
The other stuff in the first 4/5 of the book... I understood why it was there, and there was some interesting worldbuilding (the Winter Court battling the Outsiders, the role of the Gatekeeper, the stuff with Mother Summer and Mother Winter, the revelation of what's in the Well, whatever Mac is, Faerie shapeshifters, Sharkface being a Walker and the callback to the chronologically-first short story with young Harry encountering He Who Walks Behind), and some fun character stuff (I'm looking forward to the inevitable wooing attempts between Toot-Toot and Lacuna, the the Za Lord's Guard in their winter-branded uniforms of toothpaste tubes and coke cans were adorable in general), oh, and I liked Cat Sith, before he was turned, but, *sigh* The violence being ratcheted up as it was made total sense, but I just don't enjoy reading endless drawn-out descriptions of physical fighting. And Harry's thought straying towards having his way with every woman he encountered (except, from what I recall, Murphy, with whom he just got jealous of Kincaid) made a lot of sense, too, and are a good way of showing the effect of the Winter Knight's mantle and Harry the unreliable narrator and all that stuff, but just because I think it's well done and necessary does not mean I can enjoy it. And I think maybe it was being laid on a little too thick, because the most effective, chilling quote along those lines for me was "I growled. I'd forgotten how to do whatever that other thing was." which has very little overt violence. And Harry getting off on the chase by the Wild Hunt without realizing it was a neat touch, too.
But it was good that Harry was not completely subsumed by the Winter Knight, and we still got the smartass narration with geeky asides (Princess Bride "only mostly dead" quote FTW, and Tao of Pratchett, of course), although I never figured him for someone who would read much Robert Frost (even if "Fire and Ice" is one of my favorite poems and I appreciated the quote).
Here are the two things I did not like at all: Nemesis and Murphy, albeit for different reasons. Nemesis, I think, is just kind of a copout. By tying absolutely everything to it, back to Harry's very first cases, it doesn't make the world feel vaster and more complex, it makes it feel smaller and flatter. Not a fan. And Nemesis allowing the Fae to lie, meh, that feels like a cop-out to break the rules of one's own worldbuilding, too. This one revelation makes me less interested in the outcome of the series as a whole, because it's no longer really people doing things for consistent if sometimes evil or alien reasons, it's "Nemesis made them do it". Meh.
Murphy is a different matter, and I don't feel like we've seen enough for me to decide whether it's a feature or a bug, just that I don't care for it much. Murphy was already acting king of weird in Ghost Story, especially in relation to her attitude towards Molly, but Harry was dead, it was a very stressful time, so, OK. But Murphy just didn't feel much like herself in this one (and it's going to take a while for me to get used to Harry referring to her as "Karrin" all the time; subtle, there). I could see her turning back from the Harry-assigned task of stopping the ritual to save Harry from the Wild Hunt surprised me a bit but made sense. But her "I'll be going to Hell right along" speech really wasn't something I was expecting from her. Over the years, she's loved and helped Harry, but I always felt like the good of the many was more important to her if there was a conflict. And I understand that people can change -- in fact, the fact that they've been doing so has surpassed my expectations in this series -- but Murphy the avenging angel (as per Harry's Soulgaze) has always been such a fundamental part of her, and I have a hard time understanding how that would suddenly not be the case just because she lost her job as a cop and Harry died. So, I don't know. I hope there's more to it than that, or it's leading up to something, and I'm reserving judgement/willing to be convinced, but so far I'm not.
Oh, and I still can't stand Molly's crush on Harry. It just find it not very believable (although Mab's version of events was a decent attempt at explaining it), and it makes Molly look kind of like an idiot to keep at it, and really it serves no constructive purpose anymore. In fact, the only purpose that I think it does serve is to a) keep bringing up the fact that a foxy younger woman thinks Harry is all that, and b) have the opportunity for Harry to nobly turn her down each time because he is just that great a guy. Blech.
Speaking of stuff like that, totally side-eyeing Butters and Andi. And I *like* action girl / non-action guy couples, but, please. First of all, female werewoves are apparently still not allowed to do anything more useful than be victims (lampshading it with "danger-prone Daphne" does not actually make it better, no). And second, I just don't see any chemistry between the two, or any reason for them to have gotten together (well, yes, Harry brought Butters to game night with the Alphas and they are both geeks, but it still feels rather random) and so it really feels like geeky fan-favorite Butters is having a hot redhead bestowed on him by authorial fiat as fanservice. Meh.
But, OK, I don't read Dresden Files for the relationships, it's been established.
Random things: I totally expected the disabled-but-not-sunk barge to be pushed to shore, but not all three barges being essentially decoys -- that was pretty cool. I also knew "Kringle" and the Erl King basically let Harry win the Wild Hunt, and was thinking that "Kringle" reminded me a lot of Odin, so, that was neat. As for unanswered questions: Harry's brain parasite -- is Lash involved in some way (in keeping it at bay, e.g.?).
Currently reading: A Clockwork Angel (New Year present from aome), which I'm about halfway through.