Reading roundup (more Smek, more Locke) and watching roundup (B5, Angel)
9. Adam Rex, Smek for President (Smekday #2) -- I was so excited when I learned that a sequel to The True Meaning of Smekday was coming out! I preordered this in hardcover, which hasn't happened since... Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, I think (well, I would've done it for Hawk if I didn't think the ebook option would be faster, and I would've done it for Foxglove Summer if not for the UK/US date shenanigans, but anyway). anonymous_sibyl, who'd read it in ARC, warned me it wasn't as good as the first one, and the rodents read it before I did and concurred, so my expectations were suitably adjusted. It's still a fun book, but I didn't love it nearly as much as the original. Spoilers from here!
Part of it is the story: Smekday is actually playing one of my favorite sci-fi plots as kidlit -- Enemy Mine, and it's also a first contact story, which I tend to like a lot, too. A lot of the novelty and weirdness of the Boov isn't really there anymore in the second book -- they're still weird and all, but Tip (and we) are already kind of used to them. Part of it is the setting: it's lampshaded in the book itself that that Tip's inability to tell the Boov apart is ~racist, and also a bit of a plot point, when she thinks the masked Boov assassin is Funsize (when it's actually time-traveling J.Lo) (and Boov can't tell humans apart, either, as she keeps being mistaken for a "humansboy" and also for Dan Landry at one point), but I actually found them not terribly distinguishable as characters, either, and therefore not very interesting. The first book, through Tip's travels, had her meeting all sorts of people. Here I didn't get the same rich feel for the characters (my favorite was probably the Chief in Tip's imagination, which is kinda sad. He's a great character and all, but he's not a new character, and also not even real...) Also, I loved Tip in the first book, which doesn't happen to me often with protagonists. In the second book... well, she's just too much of a teenage girl, with her constant "whatevers" and chip on her shoulder (because she doesn't want to be known for saving the world but also wants to be treated like she had). And it makes sense to have her grow up a bit -- in book 1 she was fairly on the cust of becoming a teenager, so nothing else would've been realistic, I guess, but as I told L, I've got a precocious, fun kid turned into a fairly annoying teenager at home already, I don't terribly want to be reading about one, too. And as such, I found Tip's conversation with her mother at the end really depressing. Oh, and while I loved the way Tip's snarky-kid POV flavored everything she was experiencing in the first book, I felt like there was a lot less of that here -- many of the scenes felt like they were written for a movie adaptation -- lots of descriptive action, not much introspection. I did laugh a couple of times, and found some lines about Tip's relationship with her mother and with the Chief moving, but it's definitely not the same "must rec this to everyone I know" book as the original. Alas, earwax. Still, I'm glad there was more Tip for us to read about.
Quotes:
"Ask a person to draw 'space' and they're gonna draw a planet with rings around it. Going to space for the first time and getting to see Saturn is like visiting America and watching a bald eagle plant a flag on top of the Statue of Liberty."
re: the Chief: "When he was alive, I was always worried he'd die soon. I wasted a lot of time, worrying."
"I was rubbing my throat -- becase my dog collar was tight, but also in sympathy for J.Lo's vocal cords, which I didn't realize were in his armpit. I ws foggy on Boovish anatomy at the time; their insides are like balloon animals and crazy straws."
Boovish form of polite address: "Ladies and gentlemen and ladygentlemen and gentleladies and gentlementlemen and mentlegentladies and gentlemenmenmenmen."
"His gun was all black, too, unlike any Boov gun I'd ever seen, with a scribble of tubes and triggers and a wide horn on the business end. If Batman had decided to avenge his dead parents mostly through trombone lessons, he might have owned an instrument like this."
bingo: second book in a series, book with a female protagonist, book with a protagonist of color; it narrowly misses being a book narrated by a child because Tip is 13. I guess it's also a story where the main male and female characters don't fall in love, except Boovish gender is non-binary, so I don't think that counts.
Also, there's a movie adaptation of Smekday: Home, to be released on March 27. Apparently they've renamed J.Lo "Oh", but Jennifer Lopez is playing Tip's mother (and Tip is being voiced by Rihanna). I'm kind of curious to see this, even though I'm also pretty skeptical they'll do it any sort of justice.
10. Scott Lynch, Republic of Thieves (Locke Lamora #3) -- So, this is really interesting. I found book 2 kind of a slog and ultimately fairly pointelss (while still being an enjoyable read, sort of counterintuitively), but I didn't feel like complaining about it much. With this one -- which I read much more quickly, and almost missed my bus stop several times because I was engrossed, and kept reading through my entire Oregon commute even though I was very, very tired by the end -- as with the first one, I find I want to gripe a lot. I was trying to frame this in terms of my bran/cranberry muffin analogy, but it didn't feel like a muffin, so here's what I ended up with:
The first Scott Lynch book was a raspberry tart. The filling was really good, the presentation really pretty and flashy. It was a pretty good tart, but maybe it listed a bit to one side, or the crust was underdone here and there. As long as you concentrated on the filling, it was a GREAT tart, and the whole thing was not *as* good, but definitely worth eating and gushing over and feeding spoonfulls of filling to your friends. Book 3: raspberry tart, filling is still awesome, but the chef has entered some kind of weird gourmet baking stage and decided to incorporate onion into the tart. Maybe there's some kind of brilliant vision behind it, and maybe in the hands of a genius or if the onions are caramelized just right or with the proper addition of counterintuitive spices the raspberry/onion combo would work and actually enhance the raspberry tart. But we are definitely not there right now, and the onion bits are just sitting there being oniony, and while I may respect chefs for trying new things, I really wish he'd just stick a making raspberry tarts! (Book 2, in this analogy, was outmeal with a few raspberries sprinkled in, as far as I'm concerned -- nothing to rave about, nothing to complain about, just... oatmeal. But who wants to be eating oatmeal when you were expecting a raspberry tart?)
Less metaphorically: MAJOR SPOILERS from here!
I had much more fun with it than with the second book. I loved seeing Father Chains (though too briefly!) and the Sanzas again in the flashback interludes, and Jean and Locke in the present were heartbreaking and fun, by turns and occasionally simultaneously. They were *themselves* a lot more here than in RSURS, and that made a large difference to me, because Jean and Locke are the pocket Clair universe that I really read these for. I also liked Patience, and the way she was in control and not above screwing with Locke and Jean just for the hell of it. And, really? Did we really have to kill her? Can we maybe stop with the business of creating cool female characters just to kill them off? Because that's gotten rather old.
I might be wrong, but I felt like a lot of the Bondsmage stuff we got in this book was trying to address the various reasons the Bondsmage-as-villain storyline in the first book really taxed my disbelief. I dunno, maybe it was all planned from the start, and just not foreshadowed sufficiently, either by design or because it was Lynch's first novel and he was still learning how to do this stuff, but it felt less like a pre-scripted twist to me and more like a retcon/trying to fill in things around the already existing canon to make it make more sense. I liked a lot of it! The bizarre but attractive idea that, because nobody mortal has the moral authority to make the kind of decisions that the Bondsmages' power allows them to make, so therefore morality should just be completely taken out of the equation and the Bondsmages be treated purely as instruments of the will of those who bring the contracts to them. The idea that Bondsmages are motivated by fear of whatever wiped out or scared off the Eldren. The Falconer being (a) an asshole even by Bondsmage standards, (b) set up to fail in Camorr by his own people, (c) catatonic not because Locke et al did such a good job on him but because he fried his own mind (with help, apparently), and (d) not properly revenged by the Bondsmagi not because Locke brilliantly hit on a way to circumvent Bondmsagi rules by not killing the Falconer all the way, but because of (b). I still don't think the Bondsmagi make a lot of sense or are that interesting, but they annoy me less now than they did in book 1, so that's progress. And I do like that they're now passing beyond the rim going into self-imposed seclusion, because fewer Bondsmages = good, and also I'm curious to see what will happen in Karthain with the Presence removed.
Not progress: the way it seems the Falconer is being set up as the major antagonist again. I enjoyed the respite from him in the last two books. And his silver fingers and creepy silver-membrane voice are a neat touch, but, ugh, this is what I mean about onions -- I want to read fun heist books with bantering gentleman thieves, which Lynch is good at writing. I do not want to read yet another fantasy book with creepy wizard bad guys. And I still did not care about the Bondsmage internecine plotting in the "Intersect" chapters (it's a neat twist with Coldmarrow, but also I found the tag-less conversation so hard to follow, even with the bold font to show changed speakers, that, given my overall lack of interest in the Bondsmages, I could not be arsed to try to figure out who corresponded to which font where and just skimmed. I also don't care about Locke's mysterious past (never did, frankly), and the business of him maybe being Lamor Acanthus is SO irrelevant to me (more onions!). At least it's left open-ended, and I hope that Jean is right and this was just Patience trolling and she got what he thinks of as his true name from questioning Jean (and I love that Jean is the only one he told his true name).
And another bit of worldbuilding: "In Camorr, men were coy about laying with other men" (which I think is another bit of retconning for not including gay characters in the first book).
The other thing where I felt like Lynch was trying to course-correct around the already established book 1 canon was Sabetha, and that worked for me considerably less well than the Bondsmages maybe-retcon. I found all the Sabetha hagiography and Locke's obsession with her wearisome and annoying in book 1, but: it was boring and cliche but I did not actively want to vent about it. Book 3, oy. First, Sabetha being around makes Locke PATHETIC, whether he's six years old or in the present time. I didn't care about Locke very much after the first book (though I loved most of the secondary characters), but he actually grew on me in book 2, it would appear, and so seeing him reduced to this trembling, jealous, ridiculous husk when Sabetha is around is really unpleasant. This gets a little bit better when they get together as teenagers and when they reach an agreement in the present thread, but not a whole lot. And I'm just not interested in the two of them together -- a relationship that requires so much pussyfooting with a constant threat of fights hanging over it just does not feel enjoyable to me to read about; "little shit" and "bitch" really don't work as terms of endearment for me in romantic partners; and I just don't feel much chemistry between them, frankly -- I don't know if it's that they're too alike, or I just don't like either of them enough. I pretty much just kept wanting to 'fast-forward' through the Sabetha scenes.
(And I do wonder whether there's a bit of a Teckla thing going on here, with Lynch's marriage falling apart between book 1 and book 3. I read this interview from just before the first book was released, and there's one paragraph where Lynch says, of himself and Locke, "We're alike in one terribly important respect, that we're pig-headed romantic morons..." -- and I think that paragraph is a pretty clear indication that Lynch was playing the Locke/Sabetha romance straight at the time, or at least Locke being in love with her -- it's either a happily-ever-after waiting to happen or a tragedy, but not this miserable, pathetic thing we end up seeing in book 3... But you know, Teckla and Phoenix are really painful, but they are books I respect, they show character growth, both for Vlad (however reluctant) and for Cawti (though I find her ideals/decisions very difficult to understand), and the neat thing is that you can read Jhereg and, because of Vlad's POV, it is totally believable that the break in Teckla is building and he is just oblivious to it. Not so much with these books, on either count...)
Actually, while I'm going down the path of comparing to other series, the one that jumped out at me when I was reading about Locke in love was the Vorkosigan Saga. I tend to think of Locke and Miles together, because they are both protagonists whom I adore reading about while finding them exasperating as characters/people and sympathizing with the various characters who have to put up with and look after them (like Jean and Ivan). And Miles has a tendency to do really ill-advised things when he throws himself head-first into crushes, whether it be his childhood crush on Elena or the endgame with Ekaterin. But that's the thing: while his flailing about with Elena and jealousy of Baz and the dinner party of doom in ACC maybe embarrassing and his actions may at times be pathetic, Miles is very true-to-character when he goes about humiliating himself in the name of love: it's Refuge in Audacity all the way. And I guess that's what I would've expected of Locke, too, and instead we get this... persistent but passive pining and tongue-tiedness and... he's just not himself around Sabetha, he's a less interesting and less pleasant character all at once, and why would I want to read about that? Maybe it's 'cos Sabetha is too closely matched to him in background and ambition, so his usual approach wouldn't work, but it still feels weird that he wouldn't go for it...)
And Sabetha herself ended up being a really joyless character for me. Which is so weird, because even Lynch's minor characters tend to be fun and vivid and memorable, and Sabetha is just NOT any of those things. Her distinguishing characteristics are basically "a better con-artist than Locke", red hair, and being pissy. This is... really not that interesting (to me, anyway. Other readers seem to love her, want to cosplay her and so one. And I totally do not get why...). And this could be intentional commentary on the fact that Locke is obsessed with an idea of her rather than the real person, but unless we get to see the actual real person? She is not going to be that interesting to me.
You know what, I'm not quite done comparing this to other series, because the other situation Locke and Sabetha made me think about were Kvothe and Denna. I think Rothfuss and Lynch may be going for similar things with their romances, actually (and Locke and Kvothe are also not that dissimilar as protagonists, thought hey are virtuosos of mostly different milieus). And you know what? Even Kvothe's total avoidance of a relationship with Denna makes more sense to me than Locke and Sabetha, and that is a pretty impressive accomplishment, because Kvothe and Denna's relationship is also one of my least favorite things about the Kingkiller books. But with Kvothe, we are getting true unreliable narrator POV, and there's Bast to give a dissenting opinion about Denna being special. Here with Locke, we see how Locke sees Sabetha, and that it's probably a distorted view, but I really didn't get the sense of her beyond that image, except that being seen in this way bothered her. I spent a large chunk of the book thinking that maybe I'd like it better if Sabetha got her own POV -- Jean gets a POV after all, why not her -- and then she did get her POV, for about two pages of pining after Locke and being equally pathetic, and, really? That just made it worse...
As it is, Locke freezes up or walks on eggshells whenever Sabetha is around (which is not her fault, of course, but it still puts a damper on my enjoyment of him), so in order for Locke to shine, she has to not be around. And so we don't see her interacting with the group as fully early on in the flashbacks, and the other Bastards already got at least one book of headstart on her, and so she never really gelled as part of the GBs for me. Which may very well be intentional, because Sabetha herself points out that it's different being the only girl in the group. But, you know, I read these books for Bastards shenanigans, so it doesn't really matter to me why she didn't feel a part of the group -- because she did, I'm automatically less invested in her. This did get a bit better in the flashback sections when the hide-the-body plot got underway and we got to see the Bastards actually working as a team, but that was really too little too late.
The other thing about Sabetha that bugs me is that I feel (very possibly unfairly!) that Lynch is beomg very pat-himself-on-the-back about her as a Female Character who Stands for Something. I am extrapolating wildly, but, like, the Halloween costumes post? Everybody gets affectionate jokes, jokes in terrible taste, fandom references, with Designated Badass for Zamira. Sabetha gets "Sexy Reversal of the Default Male Gaze that Leaves Many Readers Hesitant and Uncomfortable". Gee, that sounds like fun! And, I dunno, maybe that's the point. Maybe making Sabetha a not-fun character is some kind of commentary along the lines of her line about girls being expected "to crap sunshine on command". But the thing is, as a character in a book, she's here to entertain me. And so me being annoyed with her for being not-fun is not like accosting random women and telling them to smile for one's enjoyment, but rather like being annoyed that my waitress is serving me with a scowl fixed on her face and slamming plates down on the table.
And the thing is, Sabetha the Feminist Character doesn't come across as very reasonable, in either the context of the world or the context of the Bastards. Locke's world of the first two books doesn't feel sexist to me at all -- hell, that's one of the reasons I like it! (There are elements of the books, the writing, that I think could be argued to be problematic -- the deaths of Nazca and Ezri and Patience, and, though I haven't seen an exhaustive analysis, it feels right that, while there are lots of female and male characters, males have more speaking parts and so on (which is a criticism I've seen), and, of course, Jean and Locke both being male and being the only consistent protagonists makes the books feel more male-skewed -- but the worldbuilding is not one of those things. Lots of women in positions of power, from the Spider to Zamira to Patience, women as physickers, scientists, captains, fighters, politicians, business owners, and magi alongside the men and no-one surprised by or questioning that, either in Camorr or in any of the other places we've visited so far.)
And the specific instances where Sabetha goes after Locke don't really feel fair / reasonable to me a lot of the time. Locke yelling at Chantal because she had dared to call Sabetha "average" (looking) and Sabetha being pissed off that Locke is white-knighting for her made a lot of sense. Sabetha snapping at Locke when he says she's "in a mood" when she, well, is, I was less sympathetic to. And the thing where she tried to argue that the others defer to Locke and don't listen to her when they give the same suggestion was just ridiculous: Maybe that's actually true at some point? but in the actual scene she said "I don't think that's wise" and Locke yammered at the Sanzas for a full page, with actual reasons, and those two things are in no way equivalent. If this were a modern workplace, I would maybe say something about how there needs to be an environment conducive to different communication styles and getting everybody heard so we can leverage the full power of diversity, but we're talking a bunch of teenage thieves in ~Renaissance !Venice -- OF COURSE they're going to listen to whoever thumps them on the head hardest. And her deciding that Locke thinking of red hair as "the real her" (which, um, that is, apparently, her natural hair color) and having imprinted on it at six years old just means he wants to fuck a redhead like every other guy is just silly. (It appears that she may have a point and Locke's fixation on her hair is a weird sublimated Replacement Goldfish thing because of Lamor Acanthus's wife, but neither of them has any way of knowing it at the time, if it's even the case, so.)
So you know what? How about you stop killing the various interesting and vivid female characters in your books, and I can do without a strawman feminist lecture from Sabetha? I think that would be a better use of these impulses, frankly.
And a thing that bugs me especially, because I care about him way more than I care about either Locke or Sabetha, is that Jean is rooting for Locke/Sabetha in the present timeframe. Now, I can justify it to myself pretty easily -- Jean is generally very much for enabling Locke, and also Jean has just lost a woman he loved, so it makes sense that he'd be encouraging Locke to win back Sabetha in a sort of "don't end up alone like me" way, but it still bugged me, because I just can't see it as any kind of relationship to root for.
Sabetha did make me wonder if I object to the character herself or if it's generally hard for me to enjoy a female trickster-type character (a type I love with male characters). They are really not very common... The other one that occurs to me is Aly in the Tortall Trickster's Queen books, and I really disliked her for reasons of Mary-Sue-ness. The only other one I can think of that I've met is Lyra Belacqua in His Dark materials, but she's a kid, and that's not really the same thing.
But enough ranting about Sabetha. Let's rant about other things. (I swear, I really enjoyed this book! Just... in a ranty way, apparently... XP)
I found the rigging the election plot idea to be stupid (such an arbitrary and pointless form of entertainment for the Bondsmagi, and the limitations are arbitrary, too). I guess in-universe it's justified because the election is just meant to be a misdirection anyway. But as a plot in a book, that doesn't really help, and it still feels pointless and low-stakes... but I actually enjoyed how Locke and Jean went about it anyway, so the individual adventures were fun to read so long as I didn't think too much about why they were doing all this in the first place. (I think this is a problem of the way Lynch has set up his plots for the series: Locke is the kind of protagonist that requires a heist plot for maximum fun and utilization of his strengths, but at the same time Lynch wants there to be some scary person with power over Locke to serve as an antagonist, so we've been getting these increasingly convoluted setups for why Locke needs to exercise his heist skills while being answerable (and mouthing off to) to someone scary -- Stragos in book 2, now the Bondsmages. But it taxes my suspension of disbelief that these scary people would need his skills -- it's almost like the way everybody with anything worth knowing in Carey's Kushiel books was into BDSM and could be persuaded by Phedre sleeping with them...)
The other (fairly minor) thing that bugged me about the election plot, though, was just the way the Karthain political system seemed to be the US political system in miniature -- only two parties (and, old money vs up-and-comers), the election contest being not a global one but one that had to be won district by district. While obviously having only two parties makes it so Locke and Sabetha can go head to head, and multiple districts means more balls in the air, the setup felt so familiar that it kept throwing me out of the story. And the ending of the plot felt too abrupt... like we hadn't spent enough time playing the game. I did like that it ended in a sort of tie, though. Oh, and I couldn't believe Locke and Jean did not figure out how Nikoros had been compromised even after they already knew the mole was him -- I mean, leaning on people through their drug habit is so basic!
Plot-wise, I liked the flashback chapters better, but for the behind-the-scenes shenanigans -- springing Moncraine from the Tower, the stuff with Boulidazzi, both when he was alive and Locke and Sabetha had to con him and later, trying to conceal his death. But I thought the play itself was given too much space, with very little payoff for me personally. The play with multiple characters reading the same passages, with expression showed by italics did not really work for me. Also, the problem with having your book have snippets of great works of literature in it is that the snippets need to actually be believably great (unless you're making fun of them), and the bits of the play we got were fairly meh. It's probably a blessing Lynch didn't try for iambic pentameter (and there's no reason Therin plays should follow the conventions of Elizabethan ones, of course), but neither the rhythm nor the vocabulary struck me as consistently play-like -- there were a couple of good lines, but not that many. I think having some play text in a plot centered around a play was probably unavoidable, but I've seen it done much better. (I don't actually remember how much of the play we get in Privilege of the Sword, but I remember it working for me very well there. Of course, Kushner actually is a playwright as well, so maybe that's part of the difference.) Anyway, some things, like Calo and Galdo doing the prologue together and wrapping up the play, worked for me, but mostly it just felt self-indulgent.
I haven't talked about the flashback characters yet, and I should. I liked Moncraine (as a character, I mean) and was bummed that he ditched the others, although it worked out conveniently as far as having a ready culprit to take the blame. I liked Sylvanus the old sot, too, and Mistress Gloriano being all indignant that Locke thought it was her first time hiding a dead body. Her niece didn't grab me as much, but her Mrs Robinson thing with Jean was sweet. Oh, and I liked the fight between Bert and Jean, which they end by sharing a smoke; and especially liked the way Chantal (Bert's wife) and Locke are so very firmly paralleled in their supporting roles, Chantal handing Bert a cigar and Locke holding and then restoring to Jean his optics. Boys ♥ And young Jean was really lovely in general, and I wanted to give him a hug when he was kicked out of the play and had to become a "bookkeeping stevedore"
In the present, among the bit players, I kinda liked Cortessa, the thug and excellent boss ("Gods, I love Camorri. Constitutionally incapable of doing things the easy way."), Damned Superstition Dexa (just for the name, really!), Josten the innkeeper (Jean: "I'd do public murder for a cup of coffee." Josten: "You've come to the only house in Krathain with coffee worth murdering for."), and Jean's conversation with the little old lady spy. Oh, and I was amused by how Jean and Locke kept asking Patience to give them some time alone, so she soon learned the drill ("I think we need to--" "Yes, I'm sure you do. The cabin is yours.")
Quotes:
Chains: "Remember those customes papers I said I was forging up last night? They weren't customs papers, they were arithmetic problems." (Chains is the best criminal daddy!)
"Excellent," said one of the Sanzas. "Soon he'll [Locke] be fat, and we can buthcer him like all the others for a Penance Day roast."
"What my brother meant to say," said the other twin, "is that all the others died of purely natural causes, and you have nothing to fear from us. Now have some more bread."
Chains to Locke: "And remember, I want one emerald necklace. I don't need two, or the deed to the townhouse, or the bloody crown jewels of Camorr. Tonight's definitely a night for you to underachieve."
Chains to Locke: "You knwo, believe it or not, 'the gods will provide' is not a fucking plan, lad."
Locke and Sabetha:
"Damn it, when will you learn that refusing to admit you've lost is not the same as winning?"
"Sort of depends on how long one keeps refusing, doesn't it?"
Locke and Nikoros:
"Nikoros, your job this afternoon is to say yes to anything that comes out of my mouth. The more you rehearse this, the sooner it'll become a smooth mechanical process allowing no time for painful reflrection. Can you practice for me?"
"Yes"
"You're a natural."
Sabetha and Locke:
"Fancy oysters or snails? What a damned awkward thing to be unsure of, for someone in your position. [...] I happen to like snails very well, thank you."
"Ahhh," he said, feeling the earth grow solid beneath his feet again. "I've never... never been so pleased at such a comparison before."
"That's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard." -- Locke, on the Sanzas coming up with the "Thorn of Camorr" sobriquet.
"Gods, as far as Locke was concerned, watching Sabetha handle people was as good as watching any other girl in the world take off her clothes."
Boulidazi: "All my family money is sitting safe in vaults, gathering dust and shitting interest."
"not the boisterous drinking of celebration but the quiet ritual of people relieved to still have throats to pour their ale down."
So, anyway. Long and mostly ranty write-up, but I really had a lot of fun reading this book and am eagerly looking forward to the sequel. It's just that kind of book, apparently.
bingo: book given to me as a gift. I can't think of any other square it checks off...
Randomly, I've been browsing Scott Lynch's Tumblr and Twitter, and his handle is "scottlynch78", which is driving home that this guy is the same age I am, which feels really weird for some reason...
Reading Bingo update: [under the spoiler cut]
Serious: 6/25
Books with a protagonist of color: Smek for President
Free Space: Point of Knives
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book given to you as a gift: Wool (birthday present from my friend R)
Book with red cover: Benedict Jacka, Hidden
Author I've never read before: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
Random: 6/25 (1 of 7 challenges)
Book by an author who shares the first letter of your last name (challenge mode: author who shares your initials): Smek for President, by Adam Rex
Free Space: Red Seas Under Red Skies
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Book by queer author: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
Book with queer protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
Mix'n'Match: 8/25
Book with an author or protagonist of color: Smek for President
Book given to you as a gift: Republic of Thieves
Free Space: Hidden (Alex Verus #5)
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book with queer author or protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
Book by an author I've never read before: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
And as a quick reminder, for people who are playing along with the Reading Bingo or would like to:
Cards and recs
Sharing and bragging post
tag: http://hamsterwoman.livejournal.com/tag/csrb
*
Also, a bit more B5 and Angel:
Babylon5: Epiphanies (4x07) spoilers -- OK, honestly, I was kind of bored with this episode, which hasn't happened since "Exogenesis", probably. OK, I liked the scene between G'Kar and Garibaldi, ribcage-crushing hugs and Garibaldi's awkwardness and G'Kar's zen, and the tiny scene between Londo and G'Kar that underscores they're not friends now, not even bickering rivals of season 1, and I liked Bester's quip about "my usual quarters in the brig", but other than that, meh, The Garibaldi storyline from here is one I really am not fond of, and as much as I love Bester, he wasn't quite doing it for me this ep. And I don't like either Zach or Lyta much, so having them occupy some of this ep was meh for me. Although the funny scene with Zach at customs, with Londo, Bester, and the Elvises, was pretty cute (apparently the Elvises were also meant as a visual pun, because "three Kings" XP)
Angel -- spoilers through 1x06
I Fall to Pieces (1x04) -- OK, ew. The horror-type episodes mostly don't work for me in Buffy, and the body-jumping demon was gross but not very interesting in the earlier ep, but the guy with the detachable body parts was both creepy and fairly interesting, especially the scene with the hands roaming under the covers just after the guy raised the stumps to show the police officer. I'm getting a biiiit tired of Angel rescuing assorted blondes, but there were a few funny moments courtesy of Cordelia, at least (also, I like Cordy's purple top in this), and, like I said, the creepy was well done. (Randomly, I feel like Angel being able to get around during the day is not explained terribly well. I suppose he drives a car with blackout shades? And parks in underground garages exclusively? Or is he barging in on the doctor for consultations after dark? And, in a different brand of "LOL nineties" than Buffy had with the hilariously outdated technology, here we have a lot of OJ Simpsons references.)
Rm w/ a vu (1x05) -- really stupid title, but maybe my favorite episode to date, because it's got a lot of Cordelia and because Cordy gets her groove back in it. Cordelia crashing at Angel's was pretty funny (and, while I generally don't find Angel that good-looking, shirtless!Angel is not an unwelcome sight), and her living with Phantom Dennis at the end was rather sweet (though I could've done with less cringing and sobbing in-between). And I liked the twists, from a random heart attack death to a vengeful murdered ghost to the truth, with the son's body being discovered (and the way that had been set up with Cordelia wanting to take out the wall from the very start). Doyle's tragic life story is not very interesting to me -- I definitely prefer him in the comic relief role. Oh, also, Angel's tiny housewarming cactus was a cute gesture.
Sense and Sensitivity (1x06) -- rather one-note, but a pretty funny episode with all the psychological mumbo-jumbo, kind of like "Band Candy". Best part, though, was Angel as a clueless tourist wearing a Hawaiian shirt (does he keep one in the car just in case? or where did it come from?). Also, LOL 90s: "Jar Jar getting his own talk show" on Cordelia's list of terrible things.
Part of it is the story: Smekday is actually playing one of my favorite sci-fi plots as kidlit -- Enemy Mine, and it's also a first contact story, which I tend to like a lot, too. A lot of the novelty and weirdness of the Boov isn't really there anymore in the second book -- they're still weird and all, but Tip (and we) are already kind of used to them. Part of it is the setting: it's lampshaded in the book itself that that Tip's inability to tell the Boov apart is ~racist, and also a bit of a plot point, when she thinks the masked Boov assassin is Funsize (when it's actually time-traveling J.Lo) (and Boov can't tell humans apart, either, as she keeps being mistaken for a "humansboy" and also for Dan Landry at one point), but I actually found them not terribly distinguishable as characters, either, and therefore not very interesting. The first book, through Tip's travels, had her meeting all sorts of people. Here I didn't get the same rich feel for the characters (my favorite was probably the Chief in Tip's imagination, which is kinda sad. He's a great character and all, but he's not a new character, and also not even real...) Also, I loved Tip in the first book, which doesn't happen to me often with protagonists. In the second book... well, she's just too much of a teenage girl, with her constant "whatevers" and chip on her shoulder (because she doesn't want to be known for saving the world but also wants to be treated like she had). And it makes sense to have her grow up a bit -- in book 1 she was fairly on the cust of becoming a teenager, so nothing else would've been realistic, I guess, but as I told L, I've got a precocious, fun kid turned into a fairly annoying teenager at home already, I don't terribly want to be reading about one, too. And as such, I found Tip's conversation with her mother at the end really depressing. Oh, and while I loved the way Tip's snarky-kid POV flavored everything she was experiencing in the first book, I felt like there was a lot less of that here -- many of the scenes felt like they were written for a movie adaptation -- lots of descriptive action, not much introspection. I did laugh a couple of times, and found some lines about Tip's relationship with her mother and with the Chief moving, but it's definitely not the same "must rec this to everyone I know" book as the original. Alas, earwax. Still, I'm glad there was more Tip for us to read about.
Quotes:
"Ask a person to draw 'space' and they're gonna draw a planet with rings around it. Going to space for the first time and getting to see Saturn is like visiting America and watching a bald eagle plant a flag on top of the Statue of Liberty."
re: the Chief: "When he was alive, I was always worried he'd die soon. I wasted a lot of time, worrying."
"I was rubbing my throat -- becase my dog collar was tight, but also in sympathy for J.Lo's vocal cords, which I didn't realize were in his armpit. I ws foggy on Boovish anatomy at the time; their insides are like balloon animals and crazy straws."
Boovish form of polite address: "Ladies and gentlemen and ladygentlemen and gentleladies and gentlementlemen and mentlegentladies and gentlemenmenmenmen."
"His gun was all black, too, unlike any Boov gun I'd ever seen, with a scribble of tubes and triggers and a wide horn on the business end. If Batman had decided to avenge his dead parents mostly through trombone lessons, he might have owned an instrument like this."
bingo: second book in a series, book with a female protagonist, book with a protagonist of color; it narrowly misses being a book narrated by a child because Tip is 13. I guess it's also a story where the main male and female characters don't fall in love, except Boovish gender is non-binary, so I don't think that counts.
Also, there's a movie adaptation of Smekday: Home, to be released on March 27. Apparently they've renamed J.Lo "Oh", but Jennifer Lopez is playing Tip's mother (and Tip is being voiced by Rihanna). I'm kind of curious to see this, even though I'm also pretty skeptical they'll do it any sort of justice.
10. Scott Lynch, Republic of Thieves (Locke Lamora #3) -- So, this is really interesting. I found book 2 kind of a slog and ultimately fairly pointelss (while still being an enjoyable read, sort of counterintuitively), but I didn't feel like complaining about it much. With this one -- which I read much more quickly, and almost missed my bus stop several times because I was engrossed, and kept reading through my entire Oregon commute even though I was very, very tired by the end -- as with the first one, I find I want to gripe a lot. I was trying to frame this in terms of my bran/cranberry muffin analogy, but it didn't feel like a muffin, so here's what I ended up with:
The first Scott Lynch book was a raspberry tart. The filling was really good, the presentation really pretty and flashy. It was a pretty good tart, but maybe it listed a bit to one side, or the crust was underdone here and there. As long as you concentrated on the filling, it was a GREAT tart, and the whole thing was not *as* good, but definitely worth eating and gushing over and feeding spoonfulls of filling to your friends. Book 3: raspberry tart, filling is still awesome, but the chef has entered some kind of weird gourmet baking stage and decided to incorporate onion into the tart. Maybe there's some kind of brilliant vision behind it, and maybe in the hands of a genius or if the onions are caramelized just right or with the proper addition of counterintuitive spices the raspberry/onion combo would work and actually enhance the raspberry tart. But we are definitely not there right now, and the onion bits are just sitting there being oniony, and while I may respect chefs for trying new things, I really wish he'd just stick a making raspberry tarts! (Book 2, in this analogy, was outmeal with a few raspberries sprinkled in, as far as I'm concerned -- nothing to rave about, nothing to complain about, just... oatmeal. But who wants to be eating oatmeal when you were expecting a raspberry tart?)
Less metaphorically: MAJOR SPOILERS from here!
I had much more fun with it than with the second book. I loved seeing Father Chains (though too briefly!) and the Sanzas again in the flashback interludes, and Jean and Locke in the present were heartbreaking and fun, by turns and occasionally simultaneously. They were *themselves* a lot more here than in RSURS, and that made a large difference to me, because Jean and Locke are the pocket Clair universe that I really read these for. I also liked Patience, and the way she was in control and not above screwing with Locke and Jean just for the hell of it. And, really? Did we really have to kill her? Can we maybe stop with the business of creating cool female characters just to kill them off? Because that's gotten rather old.
I might be wrong, but I felt like a lot of the Bondsmage stuff we got in this book was trying to address the various reasons the Bondsmage-as-villain storyline in the first book really taxed my disbelief. I dunno, maybe it was all planned from the start, and just not foreshadowed sufficiently, either by design or because it was Lynch's first novel and he was still learning how to do this stuff, but it felt less like a pre-scripted twist to me and more like a retcon/trying to fill in things around the already existing canon to make it make more sense. I liked a lot of it! The bizarre but attractive idea that, because nobody mortal has the moral authority to make the kind of decisions that the Bondsmages' power allows them to make, so therefore morality should just be completely taken out of the equation and the Bondsmages be treated purely as instruments of the will of those who bring the contracts to them. The idea that Bondsmages are motivated by fear of whatever wiped out or scared off the Eldren. The Falconer being (a) an asshole even by Bondsmage standards, (b) set up to fail in Camorr by his own people, (c) catatonic not because Locke et al did such a good job on him but because he fried his own mind (with help, apparently), and (d) not properly revenged by the Bondsmagi not because Locke brilliantly hit on a way to circumvent Bondmsagi rules by not killing the Falconer all the way, but because of (b). I still don't think the Bondsmagi make a lot of sense or are that interesting, but they annoy me less now than they did in book 1, so that's progress. And I do like that they're now passing beyond the rim going into self-imposed seclusion, because fewer Bondsmages = good, and also I'm curious to see what will happen in Karthain with the Presence removed.
Not progress: the way it seems the Falconer is being set up as the major antagonist again. I enjoyed the respite from him in the last two books. And his silver fingers and creepy silver-membrane voice are a neat touch, but, ugh, this is what I mean about onions -- I want to read fun heist books with bantering gentleman thieves, which Lynch is good at writing. I do not want to read yet another fantasy book with creepy wizard bad guys. And I still did not care about the Bondsmage internecine plotting in the "Intersect" chapters (it's a neat twist with Coldmarrow, but also I found the tag-less conversation so hard to follow, even with the bold font to show changed speakers, that, given my overall lack of interest in the Bondsmages, I could not be arsed to try to figure out who corresponded to which font where and just skimmed. I also don't care about Locke's mysterious past (never did, frankly), and the business of him maybe being Lamor Acanthus is SO irrelevant to me (more onions!). At least it's left open-ended, and I hope that Jean is right and this was just Patience trolling and she got what he thinks of as his true name from questioning Jean (and I love that Jean is the only one he told his true name).
And another bit of worldbuilding: "In Camorr, men were coy about laying with other men" (which I think is another bit of retconning for not including gay characters in the first book).
The other thing where I felt like Lynch was trying to course-correct around the already established book 1 canon was Sabetha, and that worked for me considerably less well than the Bondsmages maybe-retcon. I found all the Sabetha hagiography and Locke's obsession with her wearisome and annoying in book 1, but: it was boring and cliche but I did not actively want to vent about it. Book 3, oy. First, Sabetha being around makes Locke PATHETIC, whether he's six years old or in the present time. I didn't care about Locke very much after the first book (though I loved most of the secondary characters), but he actually grew on me in book 2, it would appear, and so seeing him reduced to this trembling, jealous, ridiculous husk when Sabetha is around is really unpleasant. This gets a little bit better when they get together as teenagers and when they reach an agreement in the present thread, but not a whole lot. And I'm just not interested in the two of them together -- a relationship that requires so much pussyfooting with a constant threat of fights hanging over it just does not feel enjoyable to me to read about; "little shit" and "bitch" really don't work as terms of endearment for me in romantic partners; and I just don't feel much chemistry between them, frankly -- I don't know if it's that they're too alike, or I just don't like either of them enough. I pretty much just kept wanting to 'fast-forward' through the Sabetha scenes.
(And I do wonder whether there's a bit of a Teckla thing going on here, with Lynch's marriage falling apart between book 1 and book 3. I read this interview from just before the first book was released, and there's one paragraph where Lynch says, of himself and Locke, "We're alike in one terribly important respect, that we're pig-headed romantic morons..." -- and I think that paragraph is a pretty clear indication that Lynch was playing the Locke/Sabetha romance straight at the time, or at least Locke being in love with her -- it's either a happily-ever-after waiting to happen or a tragedy, but not this miserable, pathetic thing we end up seeing in book 3... But you know, Teckla and Phoenix are really painful, but they are books I respect, they show character growth, both for Vlad (however reluctant) and for Cawti (though I find her ideals/decisions very difficult to understand), and the neat thing is that you can read Jhereg and, because of Vlad's POV, it is totally believable that the break in Teckla is building and he is just oblivious to it. Not so much with these books, on either count...)
Actually, while I'm going down the path of comparing to other series, the one that jumped out at me when I was reading about Locke in love was the Vorkosigan Saga. I tend to think of Locke and Miles together, because they are both protagonists whom I adore reading about while finding them exasperating as characters/people and sympathizing with the various characters who have to put up with and look after them (like Jean and Ivan). And Miles has a tendency to do really ill-advised things when he throws himself head-first into crushes, whether it be his childhood crush on Elena or the endgame with Ekaterin. But that's the thing: while his flailing about with Elena and jealousy of Baz and the dinner party of doom in ACC maybe embarrassing and his actions may at times be pathetic, Miles is very true-to-character when he goes about humiliating himself in the name of love: it's Refuge in Audacity all the way. And I guess that's what I would've expected of Locke, too, and instead we get this... persistent but passive pining and tongue-tiedness and... he's just not himself around Sabetha, he's a less interesting and less pleasant character all at once, and why would I want to read about that? Maybe it's 'cos Sabetha is too closely matched to him in background and ambition, so his usual approach wouldn't work, but it still feels weird that he wouldn't go for it...)
And Sabetha herself ended up being a really joyless character for me. Which is so weird, because even Lynch's minor characters tend to be fun and vivid and memorable, and Sabetha is just NOT any of those things. Her distinguishing characteristics are basically "a better con-artist than Locke", red hair, and being pissy. This is... really not that interesting (to me, anyway. Other readers seem to love her, want to cosplay her and so one. And I totally do not get why...). And this could be intentional commentary on the fact that Locke is obsessed with an idea of her rather than the real person, but unless we get to see the actual real person? She is not going to be that interesting to me.
You know what, I'm not quite done comparing this to other series, because the other situation Locke and Sabetha made me think about were Kvothe and Denna. I think Rothfuss and Lynch may be going for similar things with their romances, actually (and Locke and Kvothe are also not that dissimilar as protagonists, thought hey are virtuosos of mostly different milieus). And you know what? Even Kvothe's total avoidance of a relationship with Denna makes more sense to me than Locke and Sabetha, and that is a pretty impressive accomplishment, because Kvothe and Denna's relationship is also one of my least favorite things about the Kingkiller books. But with Kvothe, we are getting true unreliable narrator POV, and there's Bast to give a dissenting opinion about Denna being special. Here with Locke, we see how Locke sees Sabetha, and that it's probably a distorted view, but I really didn't get the sense of her beyond that image, except that being seen in this way bothered her. I spent a large chunk of the book thinking that maybe I'd like it better if Sabetha got her own POV -- Jean gets a POV after all, why not her -- and then she did get her POV, for about two pages of pining after Locke and being equally pathetic, and, really? That just made it worse...
As it is, Locke freezes up or walks on eggshells whenever Sabetha is around (which is not her fault, of course, but it still puts a damper on my enjoyment of him), so in order for Locke to shine, she has to not be around. And so we don't see her interacting with the group as fully early on in the flashbacks, and the other Bastards already got at least one book of headstart on her, and so she never really gelled as part of the GBs for me. Which may very well be intentional, because Sabetha herself points out that it's different being the only girl in the group. But, you know, I read these books for Bastards shenanigans, so it doesn't really matter to me why she didn't feel a part of the group -- because she did, I'm automatically less invested in her. This did get a bit better in the flashback sections when the hide-the-body plot got underway and we got to see the Bastards actually working as a team, but that was really too little too late.
The other thing about Sabetha that bugs me is that I feel (very possibly unfairly!) that Lynch is beomg very pat-himself-on-the-back about her as a Female Character who Stands for Something. I am extrapolating wildly, but, like, the Halloween costumes post? Everybody gets affectionate jokes, jokes in terrible taste, fandom references, with Designated Badass for Zamira. Sabetha gets "Sexy Reversal of the Default Male Gaze that Leaves Many Readers Hesitant and Uncomfortable". Gee, that sounds like fun! And, I dunno, maybe that's the point. Maybe making Sabetha a not-fun character is some kind of commentary along the lines of her line about girls being expected "to crap sunshine on command". But the thing is, as a character in a book, she's here to entertain me. And so me being annoyed with her for being not-fun is not like accosting random women and telling them to smile for one's enjoyment, but rather like being annoyed that my waitress is serving me with a scowl fixed on her face and slamming plates down on the table.
And the thing is, Sabetha the Feminist Character doesn't come across as very reasonable, in either the context of the world or the context of the Bastards. Locke's world of the first two books doesn't feel sexist to me at all -- hell, that's one of the reasons I like it! (There are elements of the books, the writing, that I think could be argued to be problematic -- the deaths of Nazca and Ezri and Patience, and, though I haven't seen an exhaustive analysis, it feels right that, while there are lots of female and male characters, males have more speaking parts and so on (which is a criticism I've seen), and, of course, Jean and Locke both being male and being the only consistent protagonists makes the books feel more male-skewed -- but the worldbuilding is not one of those things. Lots of women in positions of power, from the Spider to Zamira to Patience, women as physickers, scientists, captains, fighters, politicians, business owners, and magi alongside the men and no-one surprised by or questioning that, either in Camorr or in any of the other places we've visited so far.)
And the specific instances where Sabetha goes after Locke don't really feel fair / reasonable to me a lot of the time. Locke yelling at Chantal because she had dared to call Sabetha "average" (looking) and Sabetha being pissed off that Locke is white-knighting for her made a lot of sense. Sabetha snapping at Locke when he says she's "in a mood" when she, well, is, I was less sympathetic to. And the thing where she tried to argue that the others defer to Locke and don't listen to her when they give the same suggestion was just ridiculous: Maybe that's actually true at some point? but in the actual scene she said "I don't think that's wise" and Locke yammered at the Sanzas for a full page, with actual reasons, and those two things are in no way equivalent. If this were a modern workplace, I would maybe say something about how there needs to be an environment conducive to different communication styles and getting everybody heard so we can leverage the full power of diversity, but we're talking a bunch of teenage thieves in ~Renaissance !Venice -- OF COURSE they're going to listen to whoever thumps them on the head hardest. And her deciding that Locke thinking of red hair as "the real her" (which, um, that is, apparently, her natural hair color) and having imprinted on it at six years old just means he wants to fuck a redhead like every other guy is just silly. (It appears that she may have a point and Locke's fixation on her hair is a weird sublimated Replacement Goldfish thing because of Lamor Acanthus's wife, but neither of them has any way of knowing it at the time, if it's even the case, so.)
So you know what? How about you stop killing the various interesting and vivid female characters in your books, and I can do without a strawman feminist lecture from Sabetha? I think that would be a better use of these impulses, frankly.
And a thing that bugs me especially, because I care about him way more than I care about either Locke or Sabetha, is that Jean is rooting for Locke/Sabetha in the present timeframe. Now, I can justify it to myself pretty easily -- Jean is generally very much for enabling Locke, and also Jean has just lost a woman he loved, so it makes sense that he'd be encouraging Locke to win back Sabetha in a sort of "don't end up alone like me" way, but it still bugged me, because I just can't see it as any kind of relationship to root for.
Sabetha did make me wonder if I object to the character herself or if it's generally hard for me to enjoy a female trickster-type character (a type I love with male characters). They are really not very common... The other one that occurs to me is Aly in the Tortall Trickster's Queen books, and I really disliked her for reasons of Mary-Sue-ness. The only other one I can think of that I've met is Lyra Belacqua in His Dark materials, but she's a kid, and that's not really the same thing.
But enough ranting about Sabetha. Let's rant about other things. (I swear, I really enjoyed this book! Just... in a ranty way, apparently... XP)
I found the rigging the election plot idea to be stupid (such an arbitrary and pointless form of entertainment for the Bondsmagi, and the limitations are arbitrary, too). I guess in-universe it's justified because the election is just meant to be a misdirection anyway. But as a plot in a book, that doesn't really help, and it still feels pointless and low-stakes... but I actually enjoyed how Locke and Jean went about it anyway, so the individual adventures were fun to read so long as I didn't think too much about why they were doing all this in the first place. (I think this is a problem of the way Lynch has set up his plots for the series: Locke is the kind of protagonist that requires a heist plot for maximum fun and utilization of his strengths, but at the same time Lynch wants there to be some scary person with power over Locke to serve as an antagonist, so we've been getting these increasingly convoluted setups for why Locke needs to exercise his heist skills while being answerable (and mouthing off to) to someone scary -- Stragos in book 2, now the Bondsmages. But it taxes my suspension of disbelief that these scary people would need his skills -- it's almost like the way everybody with anything worth knowing in Carey's Kushiel books was into BDSM and could be persuaded by Phedre sleeping with them...)
The other (fairly minor) thing that bugged me about the election plot, though, was just the way the Karthain political system seemed to be the US political system in miniature -- only two parties (and, old money vs up-and-comers), the election contest being not a global one but one that had to be won district by district. While obviously having only two parties makes it so Locke and Sabetha can go head to head, and multiple districts means more balls in the air, the setup felt so familiar that it kept throwing me out of the story. And the ending of the plot felt too abrupt... like we hadn't spent enough time playing the game. I did like that it ended in a sort of tie, though. Oh, and I couldn't believe Locke and Jean did not figure out how Nikoros had been compromised even after they already knew the mole was him -- I mean, leaning on people through their drug habit is so basic!
Plot-wise, I liked the flashback chapters better, but for the behind-the-scenes shenanigans -- springing Moncraine from the Tower, the stuff with Boulidazzi, both when he was alive and Locke and Sabetha had to con him and later, trying to conceal his death. But I thought the play itself was given too much space, with very little payoff for me personally. The play with multiple characters reading the same passages, with expression showed by italics did not really work for me. Also, the problem with having your book have snippets of great works of literature in it is that the snippets need to actually be believably great (unless you're making fun of them), and the bits of the play we got were fairly meh. It's probably a blessing Lynch didn't try for iambic pentameter (and there's no reason Therin plays should follow the conventions of Elizabethan ones, of course), but neither the rhythm nor the vocabulary struck me as consistently play-like -- there were a couple of good lines, but not that many. I think having some play text in a plot centered around a play was probably unavoidable, but I've seen it done much better. (I don't actually remember how much of the play we get in Privilege of the Sword, but I remember it working for me very well there. Of course, Kushner actually is a playwright as well, so maybe that's part of the difference.) Anyway, some things, like Calo and Galdo doing the prologue together and wrapping up the play, worked for me, but mostly it just felt self-indulgent.
I haven't talked about the flashback characters yet, and I should. I liked Moncraine (as a character, I mean) and was bummed that he ditched the others, although it worked out conveniently as far as having a ready culprit to take the blame. I liked Sylvanus the old sot, too, and Mistress Gloriano being all indignant that Locke thought it was her first time hiding a dead body. Her niece didn't grab me as much, but her Mrs Robinson thing with Jean was sweet. Oh, and I liked the fight between Bert and Jean, which they end by sharing a smoke; and especially liked the way Chantal (Bert's wife) and Locke are so very firmly paralleled in their supporting roles, Chantal handing Bert a cigar and Locke holding and then restoring to Jean his optics. Boys ♥ And young Jean was really lovely in general, and I wanted to give him a hug when he was kicked out of the play and had to become a "bookkeeping stevedore"
In the present, among the bit players, I kinda liked Cortessa, the thug and excellent boss ("Gods, I love Camorri. Constitutionally incapable of doing things the easy way."), Damned Superstition Dexa (just for the name, really!), Josten the innkeeper (Jean: "I'd do public murder for a cup of coffee." Josten: "You've come to the only house in Krathain with coffee worth murdering for."), and Jean's conversation with the little old lady spy. Oh, and I was amused by how Jean and Locke kept asking Patience to give them some time alone, so she soon learned the drill ("I think we need to--" "Yes, I'm sure you do. The cabin is yours.")
Quotes:
Chains: "Remember those customes papers I said I was forging up last night? They weren't customs papers, they were arithmetic problems." (Chains is the best criminal daddy!)
"Excellent," said one of the Sanzas. "Soon he'll [Locke] be fat, and we can buthcer him like all the others for a Penance Day roast."
"What my brother meant to say," said the other twin, "is that all the others died of purely natural causes, and you have nothing to fear from us. Now have some more bread."
Chains to Locke: "And remember, I want one emerald necklace. I don't need two, or the deed to the townhouse, or the bloody crown jewels of Camorr. Tonight's definitely a night for you to underachieve."
Chains to Locke: "You knwo, believe it or not, 'the gods will provide' is not a fucking plan, lad."
Locke and Sabetha:
"Damn it, when will you learn that refusing to admit you've lost is not the same as winning?"
"Sort of depends on how long one keeps refusing, doesn't it?"
Locke and Nikoros:
"Nikoros, your job this afternoon is to say yes to anything that comes out of my mouth. The more you rehearse this, the sooner it'll become a smooth mechanical process allowing no time for painful reflrection. Can you practice for me?"
"Yes"
"You're a natural."
Sabetha and Locke:
"Fancy oysters or snails? What a damned awkward thing to be unsure of, for someone in your position. [...] I happen to like snails very well, thank you."
"Ahhh," he said, feeling the earth grow solid beneath his feet again. "I've never... never been so pleased at such a comparison before."
"That's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard." -- Locke, on the Sanzas coming up with the "Thorn of Camorr" sobriquet.
"Gods, as far as Locke was concerned, watching Sabetha handle people was as good as watching any other girl in the world take off her clothes."
Boulidazi: "All my family money is sitting safe in vaults, gathering dust and shitting interest."
"not the boisterous drinking of celebration but the quiet ritual of people relieved to still have throats to pour their ale down."
So, anyway. Long and mostly ranty write-up, but I really had a lot of fun reading this book and am eagerly looking forward to the sequel. It's just that kind of book, apparently.
bingo: book given to me as a gift. I can't think of any other square it checks off...
Randomly, I've been browsing Scott Lynch's Tumblr and Twitter, and his handle is "scottlynch78", which is driving home that this guy is the same age I am, which feels really weird for some reason...
Reading Bingo update: [under the spoiler cut]
Serious: 6/25
Books with a protagonist of color: Smek for President
Free Space: Point of Knives
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book given to you as a gift: Wool (birthday present from my friend R)
Book with red cover: Benedict Jacka, Hidden
Author I've never read before: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
Random: 6/25 (1 of 7 challenges)
Book by an author who shares the first letter of your last name (challenge mode: author who shares your initials): Smek for President, by Adam Rex
Free Space: Red Seas Under Red Skies
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Book by queer author: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
Book with queer protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
Mix'n'Match: 8/25
Book with an author or protagonist of color: Smek for President
Book given to you as a gift: Republic of Thieves
Free Space: Hidden (Alex Verus #5)
Book where male and female protagonists don't fall in love: Three Parts Dead (counting Tara and Abelard as the mains)
Independently published book: Wool
Second book in a series: Red Seas Under Red Skies (Locke Lamora #2)
Book with queer author or protagonist: Melissa Scott, Point of Knives
Book by an author I've never read before: Melissa Scott, The Kindly Ones
And as a quick reminder, for people who are playing along with the Reading Bingo or would like to:
Cards and recs
Sharing and bragging post
tag: http://hamsterwoman.livejournal.com/tag/csrb
*
Also, a bit more B5 and Angel:
Babylon5: Epiphanies (4x07) spoilers -- OK, honestly, I was kind of bored with this episode, which hasn't happened since "Exogenesis", probably. OK, I liked the scene between G'Kar and Garibaldi, ribcage-crushing hugs and Garibaldi's awkwardness and G'Kar's zen, and the tiny scene between Londo and G'Kar that underscores they're not friends now, not even bickering rivals of season 1, and I liked Bester's quip about "my usual quarters in the brig", but other than that, meh, The Garibaldi storyline from here is one I really am not fond of, and as much as I love Bester, he wasn't quite doing it for me this ep. And I don't like either Zach or Lyta much, so having them occupy some of this ep was meh for me. Although the funny scene with Zach at customs, with Londo, Bester, and the Elvises, was pretty cute (apparently the Elvises were also meant as a visual pun, because "three Kings" XP)
Angel -- spoilers through 1x06
I Fall to Pieces (1x04) -- OK, ew. The horror-type episodes mostly don't work for me in Buffy, and the body-jumping demon was gross but not very interesting in the earlier ep, but the guy with the detachable body parts was both creepy and fairly interesting, especially the scene with the hands roaming under the covers just after the guy raised the stumps to show the police officer. I'm getting a biiiit tired of Angel rescuing assorted blondes, but there were a few funny moments courtesy of Cordelia, at least (also, I like Cordy's purple top in this), and, like I said, the creepy was well done. (Randomly, I feel like Angel being able to get around during the day is not explained terribly well. I suppose he drives a car with blackout shades? And parks in underground garages exclusively? Or is he barging in on the doctor for consultations after dark? And, in a different brand of "LOL nineties" than Buffy had with the hilariously outdated technology, here we have a lot of OJ Simpsons references.)
Rm w/ a vu (1x05) -- really stupid title, but maybe my favorite episode to date, because it's got a lot of Cordelia and because Cordy gets her groove back in it. Cordelia crashing at Angel's was pretty funny (and, while I generally don't find Angel that good-looking, shirtless!Angel is not an unwelcome sight), and her living with Phantom Dennis at the end was rather sweet (though I could've done with less cringing and sobbing in-between). And I liked the twists, from a random heart attack death to a vengeful murdered ghost to the truth, with the son's body being discovered (and the way that had been set up with Cordelia wanting to take out the wall from the very start). Doyle's tragic life story is not very interesting to me -- I definitely prefer him in the comic relief role. Oh, also, Angel's tiny housewarming cactus was a cute gesture.
Sense and Sensitivity (1x06) -- rather one-note, but a pretty funny episode with all the psychological mumbo-jumbo, kind of like "Band Candy". Best part, though, was Angel as a clueless tourist wearing a Hawaiian shirt (does he keep one in the car just in case? or where did it come from?). Also, LOL 90s: "Jar Jar getting his own talk show" on Cordelia's list of terrible things.