2014 books, late April: Wells (3) and Lee and Miller
Mostly re-reads. After cheering about Kate Elliott's post on Martha Wells's The Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy (um, back in February), I finally decided to reread books 2 and 3, The Ships of Air and The Gate of Gods. Oh, I do love the Ile-Rien setting. If only the first book had sold better so we could have MORE!
Ile-Rien is set in a secondary world, where magic and Fae exist. The main capital is Vienne (like Paris or Vienna). In this trilogy, Ile-Rien's world has been under attack by the Gardier who have overrun a few neighboring countries and are now about to conquer Ile-Rien. Tremaine Valiarde, a young playwright and novelist, is caught up in an investigation and research started by her father and foster-uncle, Nicholas Valiarde and Arisilde Damal. Nicholas was a master criminal, and morphed into a government agent (sort of) as a young man. Arisilde Damal was an extremely talented sorcerer who had frittered a lot of it away as a drug user, but had recovered when Tremaine was young. They had been investing early incursions by the Gardier but had disappeared. Anyway, this is about trying to fight the Gardier and to discover what is driving them to war.
I think Wells is great at well-put together worlds--there's always a lot of scope for more stories--and great characters. I end up caring about the secondary and tertiary ones, not just the primary ones and can remember them easily. A commenter on the Elliott post called it competence porn, which I've seen before in relation to Wells's works. It is so nice to have characters who may make mistakes, but are rarely stupid, and really pull through (usually by their wits) when put to it. I would love to see Miles Vorkosigan and Nicholas Valiarde paired up, except Nicholas would probably murder Miles!
A new story, "Rites of Passage", was released a week or so ago. Wheeee!!!
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller also released a new short story on their Splintered Universe site, "Roving Gambler", about Pat Rin yos'Phelium's son, Quin.
Ile-Rien is set in a secondary world, where magic and Fae exist. The main capital is Vienne (like Paris or Vienna). In this trilogy, Ile-Rien's world has been under attack by the Gardier who have overrun a few neighboring countries and are now about to conquer Ile-Rien. Tremaine Valiarde, a young playwright and novelist, is caught up in an investigation and research started by her father and foster-uncle, Nicholas Valiarde and Arisilde Damal. Nicholas was a master criminal, and morphed into a government agent (sort of) as a young man. Arisilde Damal was an extremely talented sorcerer who had frittered a lot of it away as a drug user, but had recovered when Tremaine was young. They had been investing early incursions by the Gardier but had disappeared. Anyway, this is about trying to fight the Gardier and to discover what is driving them to war.
I think Wells is great at well-put together worlds--there's always a lot of scope for more stories--and great characters. I end up caring about the secondary and tertiary ones, not just the primary ones and can remember them easily. A commenter on the Elliott post called it competence porn, which I've seen before in relation to Wells's works. It is so nice to have characters who may make mistakes, but are rarely stupid, and really pull through (usually by their wits) when put to it. I would love to see Miles Vorkosigan and Nicholas Valiarde paired up, except Nicholas would probably murder Miles!
A new story, "Rites of Passage", was released a week or so ago. Wheeee!!!
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller also released a new short story on their Splintered Universe site, "Roving Gambler", about Pat Rin yos'Phelium's son, Quin.