Majestrum, Red Seas Under Red Skies, etc
Trivia note: two of the three books I took on my trip involved archons. (The third was the first Dresden files book, which I think I am going to wait to review until I've read a few more.)
Majestrum (Matthew Hughes): This is the novel-length Dying Earth-esque book I alluded to earlier. Dying Earth is fundamentally a short story setting -- the protagonist goes in, sees the weird culture or scam or whatnot and then escapes as it collapses around their ears a short time later. This book starts off with a little of that kind of thing (the protagonist is a detective in a far-future setting with lots of appropriately decadent cultures and crusty AIs) but quickly gets into an extended discussion of the world's metaphysics/save the world dealie.
The upshot here is once I stopped thinking of it as a Dying Earth pastiche and started thinking of it as a regular novel with some Dying Earth mannerisms*, I liked it pretty well. I have a minor gripe that the resolution seems not quite explained well enough and fails to follow totally logically, but it is the nature of the book that this actually makes perfect sense. So yeah.
*Like, the character dialogue is a pretty good imitation, even if the subjects under discussion are different. Ditto the haggling.
Red Seas Under Red Skies (Scott Lynch): Scott Lynch has enough awesome setting elements on hand to be able to totally throw away half of the ones he used in The Lies of Locke Lamora. I admire that in an author.
And I don't mean he has half as much cool stuff in this book -- the space freed up by discarding things from last time is filled in with stuff like the world's most impregnable safe, elaborate games of chance, stylish pirates, mysterious underwater creatures, clockwork mechanisms of all descriptions, sailor superstitions, even more uses for Elderglass, and so on.
The flipside of all this cool stuff is, well, the book feels designed around putting as much cool stuff in as possible*, and sometimes that means that climactic moments don't get the space they deserve, or the actual explanation for a cool scene turns out to be a little lame, or the entire middle sequence of the book feels shoehorned in (but really, this is only a problem during the transitions into and out of that plotline). I see I griped about the plotting and pacing issues with the first book; my sense is that they've improved here but still bumpy.
*I should mention that I read the first book right around the start of the book club. In the time since I've read a fair amount of Big Fantasy Novels and they've given me a renewed appreciation for the first book; it's still got a massive plot irritation but it turns out that I would much rather have something which is awesome and poorly designed than something which is dull and carefully designed.
I'm a little curious where the series is going to go from here. There's the obvious issue that if you want someone to pull off million-dollar heists repeatedly, they either have to lose the money after each heist (which feels a little unsatisfying) or need multiple millions for something (which just puts off the problem). Or some non-financial motivation has to be involved; the author tries a couple in this book, some of which work and some of which feel a little strained. In particular, I'm concerned that both the first and second books have extended sequences where a powerful side character says to the protagonists "Ok, you have to do X for me, or else I'll kill you. And no, you can't do anything about it."
Anyway, this was overall good stuff, despite the bumps. Apparently the author has some novellas about side characters in progress as well as the third novel, and I am all for it.
P.S. Confidental to the author: Get a new author photo -- the current one makes you look like the sort of guy who tries to pick up 16-year-olds at Renaissance Faires.
How to be an Alien (George Mikes): Basically a collection of "white folks do things like this, whereas black folks do things like this" jokes, but about European countries and about 50 years out of date. There are definitely some amusing bits in here but it is more interesting as a cultural document for what stereotypes were popular in Europe in the 50s. The link, incidentally, isn't actually to the edition of the book I read, which has bits on France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, and Japan, as well as Britain. Same basic deal, though.
Murder in a Mummy Case (K.K. Beck): I am fond of mysteries, particularly ones set in the 20s (although this is California and flappers, not England and vicarages), but this just reminds me that mysteries are harder than they look to write. I think part of the deal is a lot of people write mysteries when they want to write romances, but don't want to use the plot that the people meet, have sex, then quarrel over some trivial reason and are estranged for half the book, and then a perilous situation brings them back together and they can go back to having sex again. Investigating a mystery gives the protagonists something to do instead of being estranged. Anyway, the reason why I pick on this particular book is that the mystery itself sucks. The author obviously knows that mysteries are supposed to involve clues, but hasn't gotten the idea that the clues are in turn supposed to suggest the solution to the mystery, rather than just being random facts scattered around. Similarly, the author knows you are supposed to have an unusual murder method, but doesn't know that you aren't supposed to have one so bizarre it has to be deduced in its entirety in a single 'brilliant' insight by one of the characters, because there's no way to work out only part of it. Also, while I believe the author has done a lot of research about the clothing of the period, I don't think a similar amount of work went into developing the characters. All in all, not recommended.
Wycliffe and the House of Fear (W.J. Burke): This is the second Wycliffe book I've read. It's interesting that even though he's a police officer both these books have the premise that he's on vacation and stumbles across the crime. I guess because the series has 20-odd books in it, you need a little variety. Anyway, this is not really noteworthy in any way, and it's not the ideal kind of mystery*, but it's pleasant enough.
*Following on my gripes about the previous book -- in the ideal form of the mystery novel, as practiced by Christie or Sayers or Stout (most of the time), you get clues along the way which you can use to deduce the solution before the detective actually says it. I can't actually do this in practice, but I can generally work out a couple of the important bits, enough to feel pleased. Correct design also makes the story feel better on a re-read, when you know the solution and are watching it be executed, and can see the clues fit together. Finally, reader-solvable mysteries mean that the murderer has to be determinable from the clues given -- way too many mysteries get to the end with the murderer still possibly any number of people, and it's obvious the author just picks a guy and has him do something to get caught.
Next up: man, who knows.
Majestrum (Matthew Hughes): This is the novel-length Dying Earth-esque book I alluded to earlier. Dying Earth is fundamentally a short story setting -- the protagonist goes in, sees the weird culture or scam or whatnot and then escapes as it collapses around their ears a short time later. This book starts off with a little of that kind of thing (the protagonist is a detective in a far-future setting with lots of appropriately decadent cultures and crusty AIs) but quickly gets into an extended discussion of the world's metaphysics/save the world dealie.
The upshot here is once I stopped thinking of it as a Dying Earth pastiche and started thinking of it as a regular novel with some Dying Earth mannerisms*, I liked it pretty well. I have a minor gripe that the resolution seems not quite explained well enough and fails to follow totally logically, but it is the nature of the book that this actually makes perfect sense. So yeah.
*Like, the character dialogue is a pretty good imitation, even if the subjects under discussion are different. Ditto the haggling.
Red Seas Under Red Skies (Scott Lynch): Scott Lynch has enough awesome setting elements on hand to be able to totally throw away half of the ones he used in The Lies of Locke Lamora. I admire that in an author.
And I don't mean he has half as much cool stuff in this book -- the space freed up by discarding things from last time is filled in with stuff like the world's most impregnable safe, elaborate games of chance, stylish pirates, mysterious underwater creatures, clockwork mechanisms of all descriptions, sailor superstitions, even more uses for Elderglass, and so on.
The flipside of all this cool stuff is, well, the book feels designed around putting as much cool stuff in as possible*, and sometimes that means that climactic moments don't get the space they deserve, or the actual explanation for a cool scene turns out to be a little lame, or the entire middle sequence of the book feels shoehorned in (but really, this is only a problem during the transitions into and out of that plotline). I see I griped about the plotting and pacing issues with the first book; my sense is that they've improved here but still bumpy.
*I should mention that I read the first book right around the start of the book club. In the time since I've read a fair amount of Big Fantasy Novels and they've given me a renewed appreciation for the first book; it's still got a massive plot irritation but it turns out that I would much rather have something which is awesome and poorly designed than something which is dull and carefully designed.
I'm a little curious where the series is going to go from here. There's the obvious issue that if you want someone to pull off million-dollar heists repeatedly, they either have to lose the money after each heist (which feels a little unsatisfying) or need multiple millions for something (which just puts off the problem). Or some non-financial motivation has to be involved; the author tries a couple in this book, some of which work and some of which feel a little strained. In particular, I'm concerned that both the first and second books have extended sequences where a powerful side character says to the protagonists "Ok, you have to do X for me, or else I'll kill you. And no, you can't do anything about it."
Anyway, this was overall good stuff, despite the bumps. Apparently the author has some novellas about side characters in progress as well as the third novel, and I am all for it.
P.S. Confidental to the author: Get a new author photo -- the current one makes you look like the sort of guy who tries to pick up 16-year-olds at Renaissance Faires.
How to be an Alien (George Mikes): Basically a collection of "white folks do things like this, whereas black folks do things like this" jokes, but about European countries and about 50 years out of date. There are definitely some amusing bits in here but it is more interesting as a cultural document for what stereotypes were popular in Europe in the 50s. The link, incidentally, isn't actually to the edition of the book I read, which has bits on France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, and Japan, as well as Britain. Same basic deal, though.
Murder in a Mummy Case (K.K. Beck): I am fond of mysteries, particularly ones set in the 20s (although this is California and flappers, not England and vicarages), but this just reminds me that mysteries are harder than they look to write. I think part of the deal is a lot of people write mysteries when they want to write romances, but don't want to use the plot that the people meet, have sex, then quarrel over some trivial reason and are estranged for half the book, and then a perilous situation brings them back together and they can go back to having sex again. Investigating a mystery gives the protagonists something to do instead of being estranged. Anyway, the reason why I pick on this particular book is that the mystery itself sucks. The author obviously knows that mysteries are supposed to involve clues, but hasn't gotten the idea that the clues are in turn supposed to suggest the solution to the mystery, rather than just being random facts scattered around. Similarly, the author knows you are supposed to have an unusual murder method, but doesn't know that you aren't supposed to have one so bizarre it has to be deduced in its entirety in a single 'brilliant' insight by one of the characters, because there's no way to work out only part of it. Also, while I believe the author has done a lot of research about the clothing of the period, I don't think a similar amount of work went into developing the characters. All in all, not recommended.
Wycliffe and the House of Fear (W.J. Burke): This is the second Wycliffe book I've read. It's interesting that even though he's a police officer both these books have the premise that he's on vacation and stumbles across the crime. I guess because the series has 20-odd books in it, you need a little variety. Anyway, this is not really noteworthy in any way, and it's not the ideal kind of mystery*, but it's pleasant enough.
*Following on my gripes about the previous book -- in the ideal form of the mystery novel, as practiced by Christie or Sayers or Stout (most of the time), you get clues along the way which you can use to deduce the solution before the detective actually says it. I can't actually do this in practice, but I can generally work out a couple of the important bits, enough to feel pleased. Correct design also makes the story feel better on a re-read, when you know the solution and are watching it be executed, and can see the clues fit together. Finally, reader-solvable mysteries mean that the murderer has to be determinable from the clues given -- way too many mysteries get to the end with the murderer still possibly any number of people, and it's obvious the author just picks a guy and has him do something to get caught.
Next up: man, who knows.