Reading roundup
It's been a while since I've done a reading roundup, so here's the last three books of 2014, and the first two of 2015. But before we get to that, please VOTE if you're thinking of doing the Reading Bingo, and also help us brainstorm recs if you're so inclined even if you aren't planning to play along.
61. Michelle Sagara, Cast in Peril (Elantra # 8) -- you know, I have remarkably little to say about this one. Even the writing didn't annoy me as much as in the past, so I don't have a rant in me, and there wasn't much here that I was excited about. Spoilers!I do like Mr Small and Squawky, Kaylin's new little dragon friend. The Barrani are their psycho!elf selves, but I found them to be mostly all the same, so at this point -- unlike in Courtlight, which I think of as the Barrani book, where these characteristics are established -- I didn't feel like I got much new out of the interaction with them. I don't care about the Consort; I do like Nightshade's interactions with Kaylin, but there was less of that than I had expected. The sleepover with Teela, complete with hot-tubbing and pillow fight, was nice, though, and getting some Teela backstory was interesting. All the rest of it, the Ferals-who-aren't-Ferals, everything in the Outlands, Kaylin's angst about Severn working as a Wolf again -- meh. I think this is probably the Elantra book that I've liked least, not because there's anything particularly wrong with it, but because there was just not enough to hold my interest. And I'm afraid the next one won't either, so I'm looking forward to Kaylin coming back to Elantra.
62. Lisa Sweetingham, Chemical Cowboys: The DEA's Secret Mission to Hunt Down a Notorious Ecstasy Kingpin -- funny story about this book. On the first big rainy day of the season I repacked my backpack for work so I would have room for an umbrella and my boots (because I was going in rain boots), and to make room for all that I took out my hard copy book (the Tom Holt one from sephystabbity), figuring I'd be OK with just my Kindle. Except my Kindle was still in the light backpack I'd taken to meet with lodessa, and not in my work backpack at all. I discovered this on the morning commute, but M was there to keep me company on MUNI, and on Caltrain I could do stuff on my laptop to keep myself entertained. I had no idea what I would do on the return commute -- laptop really doesn't work on MUNI, the Caltrain shuttle, or while waiting for the train. And then, as I was getting ready to head home and packing up my stuff, I noticed the book that had been lying on my desk for the last couple of years: We had a murder-mystery-lunch winter social a couple of seasons ago, and our table -- by which I mean "me"-- was the one to solve the mystery, so we got the prize: a pile of mystery-themed paperbacks to pick from. I ended up with one called Chemical Cowboys, which I had thought was a thriller of some sort. Upon a closer look, it turned out to be a non-fiction account of the first cases prosecuting Ecstasy distribution in the US. Which didn't sound that exciting, so I never bothered to try to read it, just kept it on the desk as a memento of the work event, which had been fun. But desparate times call for desparate measures, so, since it was the only book I had on me, I started reading it.
And found myself pretty hooked, and enjoyed the experience. The book covers the period from the time Ecstasy was first noticed by the DEA to the take-down of Oded Tuito (first Ecstasy distributor to get the "kingpin" designation) and Ze'ev Rosenstein (Israeli mafia bigshot arrested on Ecstasy distribution charges because he was too good at evading everything else), and weaves in stories from the personal lives of cops and drug-dealers. So, even though this was non-fiction, there was a definite plot, and the people really did feel like characters, even if things did not develop or resolve as cleanly as one would expect them to in fiction. Spoilers from here!
The thing I liked best were the various anecdotes from field work, interaction between cops and criminals. Bob Gagne, the closest to what this book has to a protagonist, was apparently really great at building trust as an undercover agents, because there are a couple of wonderful episodes: When they are ready to arrest a guy, he tells him he's a DEA agent, and the guy says, "No, Jimmy, it's okay. It's okay, you're not", because he's convinced Gagne is really what he'd been pretending to be, but has been pressured to cooperate with the DEA and is lying to him *now*. My favorite is probably the time when Gagne and his partner need to pump two small-time dealers for all the information they can, *after* they've arrested the guys but while the dealers still think they'll get out of jail by cooperating, and they have a single night in which to do this, so Gagne suggests a sleepoever at the dealers' apartment, and off they go. In the morning a third agent comes in and discovers the cops sleeping and one of the dealers gone -- he'd said he'd go out to get coffee, and the mostly-asleep agent let him go. The non-asleep agent starts to panic that the guy has disappeared forever, when the dealer walkes in... with bagels. But there are also some great anecdotes from when the "bad guys" win, like when Oded Tuito, who had been arrested in France and whom France had agreed to extradict to the US for prosecution, managed to push through his naturalization case (his parents were born in Algeria) and got himself declared a French citizen, revealing this to the French judge just as he was about to give the extradition order -- and had to be released, because France does not extradict its citizens. Or the comedy of errors involved when the same dealer, sick of being stuck in France, visited his partner in Spain and had his family come over from the US for a Passover seder, and US, Spanish, and Israeli police knew about it and were standing by... except the Israeli translators *also* went home for Passover, so there was nobody left who understood the Hebrew conversations on the phones they were tapping, and the Spanish police mostly wanted to get on with their Easter holiday, too, so the take-down fell through. I could read stuff like this all day long!
The personal details of the agents' lives -- Gagne's marriage, his sister's struggle with drugs and his brother being on trial for murder of his dealer (he was innocent, and acquitted), etc. -- were less interesting to me, but the "bad guys" were more intriguing. Not because they were bad guys -- there is really no romance in these characters -- but because almost all of them were Israeli. I had no idea Ecstasy pushing in the US had started with Israelis, first freelancing crooks with connections in Holland, but eventually the Israeli mafia got involved. That was fascinating reading, because the names were very familiar and not at all what I was expecting in a book about drug dealers, and the places where they grew up and lived were all familiar, too. And the details were occasionally quite bizarre -- the diabetic rabbi's son who was Tuito's right-hand man in NYC (and went straight, and stayed clean after his arrest, and started cooking shabbat dinners for people), the yeshiva boys smuggling Ecstasy pills, having been told they were smuggling diamonds for the good of Israel, one of the dealers claiming he had become a rabbi while in jail. The Israeli police get in on the action, too, and that was entertaining also. I could quite readily hear their conversations with the perps and with each other in my head, especially the scene where Eshed and Noyman had arrested Ze'ev Rosenstein and broke open the champagne they'd been keeping for the occasion, and were taken a picture of celebrating and criticized in the press for partying prematurely, and the head of INP, when asked to comment on this scandalous occurrence, concurred that it was scandalous because a) he had not been invited to the party, and b) they were toasting the arrest with cheap champagne -- so he made them hold another celebration, with him invited, and furnished the good brandy. I also really enjoyed Eshed's view of Oded Tuito -- one can tell he admired the trick with the French citizenship, as well as his thoughts on the final "trick" where Tuito died of a heart attack in jail while waiting for trial, and so was never convicted.
It does seem like the book was decently researched, and the author made an effort to interview people on the other side of the law as well, such as would talk to her, and their defense attorneys, but it's really told like the story of the DEA agents, and doesn't try particularly hard to be impartial. The dealers are presented, not sympathetically, but you can see them as people. The DEA agents are all squeaky clean and heroic, but, fine, I suppose she wants these people to keep talking to her. There is also a tinge of "America, fuck yeah" to the proceedings, such as when talking about the difference in how US and Dutch police operate (this amused B, when I recounted it to him, and he proceeded to impersonate Dutch police and decline to look at the truck of drugs in this very heavy Dutch accent he can hilariously adopt), or the exchange when Rosenstein (the untouchable mafia don with seven lives) is arrested in Israel and, having been all bravado before, he goes all pale when the Israeli investigator tells him the Americans are now involved and want him to be extradited.
Anyway, this ended up being an enjoyable read, and also covered a square in Reading Bingo
that I had the most trouble with, pretty much by accident, so, hey! Thanks, Murder Mystery theater people from three years ago!
63. Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy -- this was my "forgotten classic" for the 2014 Reading Bingo, taken from my flist's recs, and it was a very good choice! Definitely a forgotten classic, since I had never seen it come up in school canon but it seems well known by conoisseurs and apparently was popular back in the day. And I was looking for something non-depressing, and this definitely fits the bill. I did find myself wishing, a lot, that I were reading this with a class, for the extra context that one gets in that sort of setting. I picked up on some things, but I definitely had the feeling that I was missing out on a lot more, and, like, it would've been good to know whether there was something subtle going on with some of those passages that I wasn't registering, or if they really were just extended dick jokes...
I'm not entirely sure how to write about this book, since it's a very odd one. There are characters, wandering among the digressions, and I enjoyed them. Uncle Toby is a sweetheart, with his fortifications obsession, and his dynamic with Trim was great, and Tristram's father and mother make for a great comic couple. Yorick was also an interesting character, and I wish there had been more of him, actually. Tristram himself I mostly found tedious, but in occasionally entertaining ways, since he spent a lot of the time talking about his misadventures, and his fondness for his Uncle Toby was fairly endearing. But I don't have much more to say about characters than that, and as for plot, well, ahaha, what plot.
1. Martha Wells, Cloud Roads (Books of the Raksura #1) -- I finally read some Martha Wells! It only took me like ten years. Picked this up based on egelantier's Reading Wednesday reread, as the dragon-people and found family aspects sounded highly relevant to my interests. And they were! But even that did not prepare me for how weirdly ADORABLE this book is. Spoilers!
Moon apparently belongs to a class of protagonists that work for me, a fish-out-of-water who is trying his earnest best to do the right thing despite lacking a lot of the relevant background that would help determine what the right thing is (see also: Laurence, Maya). And while he mopes and sulks some, the other characters treat it with just the right level of fond exasperation that makes this not be a problem for me. (Something that surprised me about Moon's POV was the way it kept reminding me of Miles Vorkosigan. Not in any objective way -- Moon and Miles are very different characters, with different roles in their narratives and so on -- but in the way the POV relates to them. Like, their self-awareness of their limitations, and of the way people around them are aware of them, and the author's attitude towards the same limitations, aware but tempered with gentleness and humour. I don't know if this makes any sense, but I kept catching myself thinking that the narration had a Vorkosiverse-y feel (which is obviously a very good thing).
I like the other characters too. Sharp-tongue Selis was actually the first one i really liked, and was sorry when the narrative left her behind, then happy when she reappeared briefly, then sorry again. Does Moon meet up with her again in later books? I want to hear what she's been up to, and be reassured she's found something satisfying and fulfilling to do. I loved Stone pretty much from his first appearance snarking at Moon, and him wrangling the fledgelings at the end only made me like him more. Speaking of fledgelings, Frost, the baby queen, is a hoot, and I hope to see more of her. I'm very intrigued by Chime, both for the disarming earnestness with Moon and for the very interesting backstory where he changes from flightless Arbora to winged Aeriat (I've seen there's a short story about that, and I want to go read it). Also, definitely getting Chime/Moon vibes; there seems to be some disagreement as to whether this turns canonical in later books? I don't have as strong a fix on Jade, but she's clearly inherited Stone's penchant for sarcasm, and I already like her for that. I also liked Delin, the groundling explorer-historian dedushka.
And I was very glad to see that the old queen, Pearl, who is petty and does highly ill-advised things and is really not a nice person at all, did not turn out to be evil, somebody who had to be taken down. Actually, I really like the fact that not only did she and Jade have to team up to win over the Fell in the climactic fight, but Pearl actually survives it -- it's a much less cop-out-y resolution, and I appreciate that. The worldbuilding is quite neat, and rather unlike any other fantasy I've read. The Three Worlds -- ground, sea, sky -- are teeming with life, beasties and sapient races. And we're not talking regular humans with slightly pointy ears, but a variety of appearances that makes me think of alien races much more than standard fantasy ones -- fur and scales and skin in weird colors and tails even among the groundlings, and of course the sea-dwellers and the beetle-lizardly Dhruv, and shifters like the Raksura and Fell.
Raksura society and biology are interesting and believably intertwined, the way being born in clutches and raised together means they sleep in social cuddly piles, the separation of labor between Arbora (teachers and artisans) and Aerieat (warriors) and the different metabolisms and habits (like the fact that the Aeriat need an afternoon nap), things like the warrior "duds" in royal clutches and the effect that has on their psyches, the queen's ability to keep the others from shifting and etiquette around shifting in the absence of that, and so on. One thing I really liked throughout was how the Raksura alien biology is present in little ways throughout the narration -- it's been a while since I've seen it done that thoroughly and transparently. Like, instead of choosing just one key alien feature and periodically fixating on that, it's actually pervasive: Moon likes lying on surfaces too hot for a groundling to stand (which he can doo easily even in his groundling form); Raksura hang upsidedown by their prehensile tails; spine positions, hisses, and growls are part of the standard gestures in communication; the vulnerabilities and advantages of a winged and clawed form are very clear in both the aerial and ground fights. It's just really well done.
And here's a minor thing I noticed (or think I noticed -- I would probably need to reread the book to be sure, because I didn't start tracking/highlighting this until later on) -- fantasy tends to teem with made up words for critters and plants, but this was done very sparingly here. In fact, I think made-up words only appear as loan words, essentially -- the Dwei refer to "dorgali and matra" that they farm, but when Moon is thinking about stapes of the people he's lived/is living among, it's stuff like "vine melon", and the animals are simply "herdbeasts" and "grasseaters". The names for the Fell types are among the very few made up words, which contributes to their alienness. And probably they mean something to the Fell themselves, it's just that Moon doesn't speak their language. ("Arbora" and "Aeriat" are an interesting case, since they are not English, but also not just made up, since the Latin roots are really clear. I suppose that's probably meant to evoke origin in some kind of antique Raksuran? or a dead scholarly language?) Same with people's names: Raksuran names are simple nouns, and I get the sense that Fell names are something similar, though in their own language, of course -- there's a commonality to them which makes me feel like they're probably all one form of speech.
Speaking of the Fell, I was a bit iffy on the way they are basically a Chaotic Evil nation, torture, mindless destruction, cannibalism, all that good stuff -- which is something I'm really not a fan of. But a) we get them from the Raksuran POV (eternal enemies sort of thing) and Moon's POV specifically (after the traumatic experiences at Saraseil), and b) by the end, Moon starts thinking that maybe the Fell rulers, at least, do care about something besides their own hide. I hope this is developed a bit further, as right now that's my major worldbuilding quibble.
The other thing about worldbuilding, though, is that the social aspects of the different races we see feel so solid that it's making me ask questions about the world that normally wouldn't bother me at all, because, *shurg* magic *shrug* fantasy world. But I keep wondering how this profusion of sapient life would've come about, and in such variety -- it seems improbably that a single planet (or whatever this is) would naturally involve THAT many different species of rational beings. How does the Arbora/Aeriat blending work, given that they were distinct races once, and how does it allow for something like Chime's case? How does *shifting* work? That's a perennial question, with where does the extra mass come from/go, and also how they can shift with clothes. Normally I just shrug it off, but with so much of the worldbuilding feeling so solid and novel, it's harder to overlook the bits that aren't.
Quotes:
"Moon set his jaw. It's not enough that he's going to eat you; he's got to insult your dead mother."
"I'm not sleeping with you." If this was going to be a problem, he wanted to find out now. [...]
Stone lifted a brow, deeply amused. "I have great-grandchildren older than you." He pointed to a white seam on his elbow. "You see this scar? That's older than you."
Stone: "I'm bringing my great-great-granddaugher a present."
"The damn Fell aren't any good to eat." Stone lifted a brow. Moon added belatedly, "Not that I ever tried."
[and quite a while later]
"People like him. It was wonderful and terrifying. || And seeing it let him articulate the thought that had been plaguing him since Stone had asked him to come to a shifter settlement: If you can't fit in here, it's not them; it's you."
Moon, on learning of Chime's transformation: "He hadn't known that could happen. He wished he didn't know it now."
'"So we are born like groundlings. Not in eggs." Moon had been wondering.'
"So if we're born in fives, there was at least one more of their clutch that she left behind to die so she could bring me."
"I was actually trying to be comforting," Flower sighed.
"Delin claimed that he was well able to continue as long as they wanted, then fell asleep in his chair."
Jade: "Stone said I should just take you [as consort], fight it out, and get it over with."
That was typical. "He gives me lousy advice, too."
Chime whispered harshly, "I don't want a stuck-up consort from Star Aster acting as if he's condescending to do us a huge favor. I want you."
Moon rolled over and sat up. He leaned over Chime and hissed, "You're not going to get me."
[...]
Chime, completely undeterred by their argument, was a warm presence against his back.
Jade: "I've known Stone all my life. I'm not surprised at anything he shows up with."
"Moon." Jade growled, and shook him a little. "For once in your life, listen to someone."
"Ow. No."
"Moon." She gritted her teeth, then hissed in frustration, settling down and curling around him. "Just.. go to sleep."
Selis: "You're in love with that woman."
"No." At her skeptical expression, he gave in and added, "Maybe."
"You're stupid about women." After a moment of thought, she added. "You're stupid about men, too."
Moon couldn't argue with that.
"He reminded himself he hadn't done anything wrong, he hadn't betrayed anyone, except himself, turns ago in Saraseil."
Stone: "If he's a Fell ally, he's doing a bad job of it. He keeps killing them. He killed a bunch of dakti at Sky Copper. [...] Said we should eat them."
"I did not, you sick bastard," Moon snapped.
"Of course they wanted us to follow them, and they're hoping we'll attack like crazy idiots, he thought sourly. [...] The only thing they could do was attack like sane idiots, and hope that worked."
"Find a weapon and kill the progenitor. Or make the progenitor kill you. He had to admit the second option was more likely."
"Good, Moon thought. Stone was practical. I can talk him into killing me."
"Frost glared at Moon. 'You need a queen. Otherwise you'll just cause trouble."
Moon to Jade: "I'm not going to ask if you won. Apparently it's none of my business."
"You can tell he's feeling better because he's getting all mouthy again," Stone told Jade.
After his last mistake, Moon wanted to be very specific about this. "As your consort?"
Jade sighed. "No, Moon, I thought we'd just be friends. After all, I just offered to rip Pearl's head off over you."
As you can tell from the length of this review, though, I really liked the book and am looking forward to continuing with the series. Also, note to self: links to short stories and fanart on the author's site.
2. Benedict Jacka, Chosen (Alex Verus #4) -- I have to admit, this series has been growing on me. The first book mostly irked me with how derivative it was, and with Alex being patronizing towards Luna. I liked book 2 much better, and book 3 was decent, too. After reading this one, I am sort of grudgingly impressed with MAJOR SPOILERS! Jacka making his protagonist this much of a not-so-great person. I mean, that's always been around -- he set off a bomb a guy was wiring in book 2, killed a bunch of people to protect Anne in book 3 -- but this tendency of his is much more front-and-center in this one. Not just because we get flashbacks of his time as a Dark apprentice -- there actually wasn't anything particularly interesting there for me, but the way he quite coldly sets up the Nightstalkers to be mopped up by Deleo and Cinder. After trying to come to a peaceful solution and warning them repeatedly, yes, but when it comes right down to it, he doesn't seem to regret their deaths so much as just to be angry at Will that Will has forced him into this situation. I can't really fault him for what he did, because it really appears he had no better choice, but his reactions are not those of a good person. Which is pretty impressive! (In fact, I would've like the book better without Arachne's pep talk at the end about how Alex is nothing like his Dark master because he is worried that he is.) I also liked that his history caused some estrangement from Sonder and his actions a genuinely nasty fight with Anne; I hope this stuff isn't just erased in the next book.
The revelations about Rachel/Deleo and Shirreen were fairly interesting, the flashback to Richard was not groundbreaking or anything, but he does seem like he should be a neat antagonist (but I like the way Jacka writes his powerful villains in general). And I'm always happy to see Cinder, so was glad for his brief cameo as well. I liked Caldera the keeper, I continue warming up to Vari (and there seemes to be a bickery UST being set up between him and Luna, along with Sonder's obvious crush on her that she seems pretty oblivious to). I'd thought Alex/Anne was being set up as well, but am actually glad that this is at least on pause while they're on the outs. And I'm curious to see if we'll be seeing more of Lee, the lone remaining Nightstalker, with whom Alex sort of identifies.
Currently reading: The Kindly Ones by Melissa Scott, after looking at a couple of different fantasies that I had on my Kindle, because apparently I felt like sci-fi all of a sudden.
61. Michelle Sagara, Cast in Peril (Elantra # 8) -- you know, I have remarkably little to say about this one. Even the writing didn't annoy me as much as in the past, so I don't have a rant in me, and there wasn't much here that I was excited about. Spoilers!I do like Mr Small and Squawky, Kaylin's new little dragon friend. The Barrani are their psycho!elf selves, but I found them to be mostly all the same, so at this point -- unlike in Courtlight, which I think of as the Barrani book, where these characteristics are established -- I didn't feel like I got much new out of the interaction with them. I don't care about the Consort; I do like Nightshade's interactions with Kaylin, but there was less of that than I had expected. The sleepover with Teela, complete with hot-tubbing and pillow fight, was nice, though, and getting some Teela backstory was interesting. All the rest of it, the Ferals-who-aren't-Ferals, everything in the Outlands, Kaylin's angst about Severn working as a Wolf again -- meh. I think this is probably the Elantra book that I've liked least, not because there's anything particularly wrong with it, but because there was just not enough to hold my interest. And I'm afraid the next one won't either, so I'm looking forward to Kaylin coming back to Elantra.
62. Lisa Sweetingham, Chemical Cowboys: The DEA's Secret Mission to Hunt Down a Notorious Ecstasy Kingpin -- funny story about this book. On the first big rainy day of the season I repacked my backpack for work so I would have room for an umbrella and my boots (because I was going in rain boots), and to make room for all that I took out my hard copy book (the Tom Holt one from sephystabbity), figuring I'd be OK with just my Kindle. Except my Kindle was still in the light backpack I'd taken to meet with lodessa, and not in my work backpack at all. I discovered this on the morning commute, but M was there to keep me company on MUNI, and on Caltrain I could do stuff on my laptop to keep myself entertained. I had no idea what I would do on the return commute -- laptop really doesn't work on MUNI, the Caltrain shuttle, or while waiting for the train. And then, as I was getting ready to head home and packing up my stuff, I noticed the book that had been lying on my desk for the last couple of years: We had a murder-mystery-lunch winter social a couple of seasons ago, and our table -- by which I mean "me"-- was the one to solve the mystery, so we got the prize: a pile of mystery-themed paperbacks to pick from. I ended up with one called Chemical Cowboys, which I had thought was a thriller of some sort. Upon a closer look, it turned out to be a non-fiction account of the first cases prosecuting Ecstasy distribution in the US. Which didn't sound that exciting, so I never bothered to try to read it, just kept it on the desk as a memento of the work event, which had been fun. But desparate times call for desparate measures, so, since it was the only book I had on me, I started reading it.
And found myself pretty hooked, and enjoyed the experience. The book covers the period from the time Ecstasy was first noticed by the DEA to the take-down of Oded Tuito (first Ecstasy distributor to get the "kingpin" designation) and Ze'ev Rosenstein (Israeli mafia bigshot arrested on Ecstasy distribution charges because he was too good at evading everything else), and weaves in stories from the personal lives of cops and drug-dealers. So, even though this was non-fiction, there was a definite plot, and the people really did feel like characters, even if things did not develop or resolve as cleanly as one would expect them to in fiction. Spoilers from here!
The thing I liked best were the various anecdotes from field work, interaction between cops and criminals. Bob Gagne, the closest to what this book has to a protagonist, was apparently really great at building trust as an undercover agents, because there are a couple of wonderful episodes: When they are ready to arrest a guy, he tells him he's a DEA agent, and the guy says, "No, Jimmy, it's okay. It's okay, you're not", because he's convinced Gagne is really what he'd been pretending to be, but has been pressured to cooperate with the DEA and is lying to him *now*. My favorite is probably the time when Gagne and his partner need to pump two small-time dealers for all the information they can, *after* they've arrested the guys but while the dealers still think they'll get out of jail by cooperating, and they have a single night in which to do this, so Gagne suggests a sleepoever at the dealers' apartment, and off they go. In the morning a third agent comes in and discovers the cops sleeping and one of the dealers gone -- he'd said he'd go out to get coffee, and the mostly-asleep agent let him go. The non-asleep agent starts to panic that the guy has disappeared forever, when the dealer walkes in... with bagels. But there are also some great anecdotes from when the "bad guys" win, like when Oded Tuito, who had been arrested in France and whom France had agreed to extradict to the US for prosecution, managed to push through his naturalization case (his parents were born in Algeria) and got himself declared a French citizen, revealing this to the French judge just as he was about to give the extradition order -- and had to be released, because France does not extradict its citizens. Or the comedy of errors involved when the same dealer, sick of being stuck in France, visited his partner in Spain and had his family come over from the US for a Passover seder, and US, Spanish, and Israeli police knew about it and were standing by... except the Israeli translators *also* went home for Passover, so there was nobody left who understood the Hebrew conversations on the phones they were tapping, and the Spanish police mostly wanted to get on with their Easter holiday, too, so the take-down fell through. I could read stuff like this all day long!
The personal details of the agents' lives -- Gagne's marriage, his sister's struggle with drugs and his brother being on trial for murder of his dealer (he was innocent, and acquitted), etc. -- were less interesting to me, but the "bad guys" were more intriguing. Not because they were bad guys -- there is really no romance in these characters -- but because almost all of them were Israeli. I had no idea Ecstasy pushing in the US had started with Israelis, first freelancing crooks with connections in Holland, but eventually the Israeli mafia got involved. That was fascinating reading, because the names were very familiar and not at all what I was expecting in a book about drug dealers, and the places where they grew up and lived were all familiar, too. And the details were occasionally quite bizarre -- the diabetic rabbi's son who was Tuito's right-hand man in NYC (and went straight, and stayed clean after his arrest, and started cooking shabbat dinners for people), the yeshiva boys smuggling Ecstasy pills, having been told they were smuggling diamonds for the good of Israel, one of the dealers claiming he had become a rabbi while in jail. The Israeli police get in on the action, too, and that was entertaining also. I could quite readily hear their conversations with the perps and with each other in my head, especially the scene where Eshed and Noyman had arrested Ze'ev Rosenstein and broke open the champagne they'd been keeping for the occasion, and were taken a picture of celebrating and criticized in the press for partying prematurely, and the head of INP, when asked to comment on this scandalous occurrence, concurred that it was scandalous because a) he had not been invited to the party, and b) they were toasting the arrest with cheap champagne -- so he made them hold another celebration, with him invited, and furnished the good brandy. I also really enjoyed Eshed's view of Oded Tuito -- one can tell he admired the trick with the French citizenship, as well as his thoughts on the final "trick" where Tuito died of a heart attack in jail while waiting for trial, and so was never convicted.
It does seem like the book was decently researched, and the author made an effort to interview people on the other side of the law as well, such as would talk to her, and their defense attorneys, but it's really told like the story of the DEA agents, and doesn't try particularly hard to be impartial. The dealers are presented, not sympathetically, but you can see them as people. The DEA agents are all squeaky clean and heroic, but, fine, I suppose she wants these people to keep talking to her. There is also a tinge of "America, fuck yeah" to the proceedings, such as when talking about the difference in how US and Dutch police operate (this amused B, when I recounted it to him, and he proceeded to impersonate Dutch police and decline to look at the truck of drugs in this very heavy Dutch accent he can hilariously adopt), or the exchange when Rosenstein (the untouchable mafia don with seven lives) is arrested in Israel and, having been all bravado before, he goes all pale when the Israeli investigator tells him the Americans are now involved and want him to be extradited.
Anyway, this ended up being an enjoyable read, and also covered a square in Reading Bingo
that I had the most trouble with, pretty much by accident, so, hey! Thanks, Murder Mystery theater people from three years ago!
63. Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy -- this was my "forgotten classic" for the 2014 Reading Bingo, taken from my flist's recs, and it was a very good choice! Definitely a forgotten classic, since I had never seen it come up in school canon but it seems well known by conoisseurs and apparently was popular back in the day. And I was looking for something non-depressing, and this definitely fits the bill. I did find myself wishing, a lot, that I were reading this with a class, for the extra context that one gets in that sort of setting. I picked up on some things, but I definitely had the feeling that I was missing out on a lot more, and, like, it would've been good to know whether there was something subtle going on with some of those passages that I wasn't registering, or if they really were just extended dick jokes...
I'm not entirely sure how to write about this book, since it's a very odd one. There are characters, wandering among the digressions, and I enjoyed them. Uncle Toby is a sweetheart, with his fortifications obsession, and his dynamic with Trim was great, and Tristram's father and mother make for a great comic couple. Yorick was also an interesting character, and I wish there had been more of him, actually. Tristram himself I mostly found tedious, but in occasionally entertaining ways, since he spent a lot of the time talking about his misadventures, and his fondness for his Uncle Toby was fairly endearing. But I don't have much more to say about characters than that, and as for plot, well, ahaha, what plot.
1. Martha Wells, Cloud Roads (Books of the Raksura #1) -- I finally read some Martha Wells! It only took me like ten years. Picked this up based on egelantier's Reading Wednesday reread, as the dragon-people and found family aspects sounded highly relevant to my interests. And they were! But even that did not prepare me for how weirdly ADORABLE this book is. Spoilers!
Moon apparently belongs to a class of protagonists that work for me, a fish-out-of-water who is trying his earnest best to do the right thing despite lacking a lot of the relevant background that would help determine what the right thing is (see also: Laurence, Maya). And while he mopes and sulks some, the other characters treat it with just the right level of fond exasperation that makes this not be a problem for me. (Something that surprised me about Moon's POV was the way it kept reminding me of Miles Vorkosigan. Not in any objective way -- Moon and Miles are very different characters, with different roles in their narratives and so on -- but in the way the POV relates to them. Like, their self-awareness of their limitations, and of the way people around them are aware of them, and the author's attitude towards the same limitations, aware but tempered with gentleness and humour. I don't know if this makes any sense, but I kept catching myself thinking that the narration had a Vorkosiverse-y feel (which is obviously a very good thing).
I like the other characters too. Sharp-tongue Selis was actually the first one i really liked, and was sorry when the narrative left her behind, then happy when she reappeared briefly, then sorry again. Does Moon meet up with her again in later books? I want to hear what she's been up to, and be reassured she's found something satisfying and fulfilling to do. I loved Stone pretty much from his first appearance snarking at Moon, and him wrangling the fledgelings at the end only made me like him more. Speaking of fledgelings, Frost, the baby queen, is a hoot, and I hope to see more of her. I'm very intrigued by Chime, both for the disarming earnestness with Moon and for the very interesting backstory where he changes from flightless Arbora to winged Aeriat (I've seen there's a short story about that, and I want to go read it). Also, definitely getting Chime/Moon vibes; there seems to be some disagreement as to whether this turns canonical in later books? I don't have as strong a fix on Jade, but she's clearly inherited Stone's penchant for sarcasm, and I already like her for that. I also liked Delin, the groundling explorer-historian dedushka.
And I was very glad to see that the old queen, Pearl, who is petty and does highly ill-advised things and is really not a nice person at all, did not turn out to be evil, somebody who had to be taken down. Actually, I really like the fact that not only did she and Jade have to team up to win over the Fell in the climactic fight, but Pearl actually survives it -- it's a much less cop-out-y resolution, and I appreciate that. The worldbuilding is quite neat, and rather unlike any other fantasy I've read. The Three Worlds -- ground, sea, sky -- are teeming with life, beasties and sapient races. And we're not talking regular humans with slightly pointy ears, but a variety of appearances that makes me think of alien races much more than standard fantasy ones -- fur and scales and skin in weird colors and tails even among the groundlings, and of course the sea-dwellers and the beetle-lizardly Dhruv, and shifters like the Raksura and Fell.
Raksura society and biology are interesting and believably intertwined, the way being born in clutches and raised together means they sleep in social cuddly piles, the separation of labor between Arbora (teachers and artisans) and Aerieat (warriors) and the different metabolisms and habits (like the fact that the Aeriat need an afternoon nap), things like the warrior "duds" in royal clutches and the effect that has on their psyches, the queen's ability to keep the others from shifting and etiquette around shifting in the absence of that, and so on. One thing I really liked throughout was how the Raksura alien biology is present in little ways throughout the narration -- it's been a while since I've seen it done that thoroughly and transparently. Like, instead of choosing just one key alien feature and periodically fixating on that, it's actually pervasive: Moon likes lying on surfaces too hot for a groundling to stand (which he can doo easily even in his groundling form); Raksura hang upsidedown by their prehensile tails; spine positions, hisses, and growls are part of the standard gestures in communication; the vulnerabilities and advantages of a winged and clawed form are very clear in both the aerial and ground fights. It's just really well done.
And here's a minor thing I noticed (or think I noticed -- I would probably need to reread the book to be sure, because I didn't start tracking/highlighting this until later on) -- fantasy tends to teem with made up words for critters and plants, but this was done very sparingly here. In fact, I think made-up words only appear as loan words, essentially -- the Dwei refer to "dorgali and matra" that they farm, but when Moon is thinking about stapes of the people he's lived/is living among, it's stuff like "vine melon", and the animals are simply "herdbeasts" and "grasseaters". The names for the Fell types are among the very few made up words, which contributes to their alienness. And probably they mean something to the Fell themselves, it's just that Moon doesn't speak their language. ("Arbora" and "Aeriat" are an interesting case, since they are not English, but also not just made up, since the Latin roots are really clear. I suppose that's probably meant to evoke origin in some kind of antique Raksuran? or a dead scholarly language?) Same with people's names: Raksuran names are simple nouns, and I get the sense that Fell names are something similar, though in their own language, of course -- there's a commonality to them which makes me feel like they're probably all one form of speech.
Speaking of the Fell, I was a bit iffy on the way they are basically a Chaotic Evil nation, torture, mindless destruction, cannibalism, all that good stuff -- which is something I'm really not a fan of. But a) we get them from the Raksuran POV (eternal enemies sort of thing) and Moon's POV specifically (after the traumatic experiences at Saraseil), and b) by the end, Moon starts thinking that maybe the Fell rulers, at least, do care about something besides their own hide. I hope this is developed a bit further, as right now that's my major worldbuilding quibble.
The other thing about worldbuilding, though, is that the social aspects of the different races we see feel so solid that it's making me ask questions about the world that normally wouldn't bother me at all, because, *shurg* magic *shrug* fantasy world. But I keep wondering how this profusion of sapient life would've come about, and in such variety -- it seems improbably that a single planet (or whatever this is) would naturally involve THAT many different species of rational beings. How does the Arbora/Aeriat blending work, given that they were distinct races once, and how does it allow for something like Chime's case? How does *shifting* work? That's a perennial question, with where does the extra mass come from/go, and also how they can shift with clothes. Normally I just shrug it off, but with so much of the worldbuilding feeling so solid and novel, it's harder to overlook the bits that aren't.
Quotes:
"Moon set his jaw. It's not enough that he's going to eat you; he's got to insult your dead mother."
"I'm not sleeping with you." If this was going to be a problem, he wanted to find out now. [...]
Stone lifted a brow, deeply amused. "I have great-grandchildren older than you." He pointed to a white seam on his elbow. "You see this scar? That's older than you."
Stone: "I'm bringing my great-great-granddaugher a present."
"The damn Fell aren't any good to eat." Stone lifted a brow. Moon added belatedly, "Not that I ever tried."
[and quite a while later]
"People like him. It was wonderful and terrifying. || And seeing it let him articulate the thought that had been plaguing him since Stone had asked him to come to a shifter settlement: If you can't fit in here, it's not them; it's you."
Moon, on learning of Chime's transformation: "He hadn't known that could happen. He wished he didn't know it now."
'"So we are born like groundlings. Not in eggs." Moon had been wondering.'
"So if we're born in fives, there was at least one more of their clutch that she left behind to die so she could bring me."
"I was actually trying to be comforting," Flower sighed.
"Delin claimed that he was well able to continue as long as they wanted, then fell asleep in his chair."
Jade: "Stone said I should just take you [as consort], fight it out, and get it over with."
That was typical. "He gives me lousy advice, too."
Chime whispered harshly, "I don't want a stuck-up consort from Star Aster acting as if he's condescending to do us a huge favor. I want you."
Moon rolled over and sat up. He leaned over Chime and hissed, "You're not going to get me."
[...]
Chime, completely undeterred by their argument, was a warm presence against his back.
Jade: "I've known Stone all my life. I'm not surprised at anything he shows up with."
"Moon." Jade growled, and shook him a little. "For once in your life, listen to someone."
"Ow. No."
"Moon." She gritted her teeth, then hissed in frustration, settling down and curling around him. "Just.. go to sleep."
Selis: "You're in love with that woman."
"No." At her skeptical expression, he gave in and added, "Maybe."
"You're stupid about women." After a moment of thought, she added. "You're stupid about men, too."
Moon couldn't argue with that.
"He reminded himself he hadn't done anything wrong, he hadn't betrayed anyone, except himself, turns ago in Saraseil."
Stone: "If he's a Fell ally, he's doing a bad job of it. He keeps killing them. He killed a bunch of dakti at Sky Copper. [...] Said we should eat them."
"I did not, you sick bastard," Moon snapped.
"Of course they wanted us to follow them, and they're hoping we'll attack like crazy idiots, he thought sourly. [...] The only thing they could do was attack like sane idiots, and hope that worked."
"Find a weapon and kill the progenitor. Or make the progenitor kill you. He had to admit the second option was more likely."
"Good, Moon thought. Stone was practical. I can talk him into killing me."
"Frost glared at Moon. 'You need a queen. Otherwise you'll just cause trouble."
Moon to Jade: "I'm not going to ask if you won. Apparently it's none of my business."
"You can tell he's feeling better because he's getting all mouthy again," Stone told Jade.
After his last mistake, Moon wanted to be very specific about this. "As your consort?"
Jade sighed. "No, Moon, I thought we'd just be friends. After all, I just offered to rip Pearl's head off over you."
As you can tell from the length of this review, though, I really liked the book and am looking forward to continuing with the series. Also, note to self: links to short stories and fanart on the author's site.
2. Benedict Jacka, Chosen (Alex Verus #4) -- I have to admit, this series has been growing on me. The first book mostly irked me with how derivative it was, and with Alex being patronizing towards Luna. I liked book 2 much better, and book 3 was decent, too. After reading this one, I am sort of grudgingly impressed with MAJOR SPOILERS! Jacka making his protagonist this much of a not-so-great person. I mean, that's always been around -- he set off a bomb a guy was wiring in book 2, killed a bunch of people to protect Anne in book 3 -- but this tendency of his is much more front-and-center in this one. Not just because we get flashbacks of his time as a Dark apprentice -- there actually wasn't anything particularly interesting there for me, but the way he quite coldly sets up the Nightstalkers to be mopped up by Deleo and Cinder. After trying to come to a peaceful solution and warning them repeatedly, yes, but when it comes right down to it, he doesn't seem to regret their deaths so much as just to be angry at Will that Will has forced him into this situation. I can't really fault him for what he did, because it really appears he had no better choice, but his reactions are not those of a good person. Which is pretty impressive! (In fact, I would've like the book better without Arachne's pep talk at the end about how Alex is nothing like his Dark master because he is worried that he is.) I also liked that his history caused some estrangement from Sonder and his actions a genuinely nasty fight with Anne; I hope this stuff isn't just erased in the next book.
The revelations about Rachel/Deleo and Shirreen were fairly interesting, the flashback to Richard was not groundbreaking or anything, but he does seem like he should be a neat antagonist (but I like the way Jacka writes his powerful villains in general). And I'm always happy to see Cinder, so was glad for his brief cameo as well. I liked Caldera the keeper, I continue warming up to Vari (and there seemes to be a bickery UST being set up between him and Luna, along with Sonder's obvious crush on her that she seems pretty oblivious to). I'd thought Alex/Anne was being set up as well, but am actually glad that this is at least on pause while they're on the outs. And I'm curious to see if we'll be seeing more of Lee, the lone remaining Nightstalker, with whom Alex sort of identifies.
Currently reading: The Kindly Ones by Melissa Scott, after looking at a couple of different fantasies that I had on my Kindle, because apparently I felt like sci-fi all of a sudden.