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Thunder Oak: a Welkin Weasels adventure by Garry Kilworth
They say that one sign of insanity is to do the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome. I keep picking up "animal fantasies", hoping for another Watership Down, another Kine Saga, another Black Fox Running . . . and I keep getting Redwall clones. Am I crazy to hope?
Of course I am. The island of Welkin was abandoned by humans a long time ago; now their cast-off homes are inhabited by Stoats, who oppress the Weasels into being their servants. Evil Prince John Lackland Prince Poynt the Stoat sends the Sherriff of Nottingham Falshed the Sherriff to arrest Robin Hood Sylver the Weasel. Sylver believes that the sea walls protecting Welkin are crumbling and the humans must be found and brought back to fix them. So Sylver and his outlaw band are off on a quest, as they journey around generic fantasy land Welkin, collecting tokens of power to trade in for a human. And of course, it's part one of a trilogy.
Very disappointing, really. The animals are just people in animal suits, and there's nothing here you haven't seen before. Hell, it's aimed at kids, and there's nothing here that the kids haven't seen before, either. Avoid it like it was a rabid weasel.
Not recommended.
The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold
Pure, unalloyed pleasure. Bujold continues to explore the world of the Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, this time to the equivalent of Germany, rather than Chalion's Spain. Prince Boleso, the younger son of the Hallowed King, has been killed. Always a wild youth, he died attempting to rape a young woman . . . or was it something darker that he was trying to accomplish? Into this situation is sent Ingrey, a retainer to one of the greater nobles of the realm, and one of its more feared warriors. Ingrey takes Boleso's body back to the Capital for a state funeral, and takes along the young woman accused of the Prince's murder for trial. But he finds her very attractive, and begins to wonder what he can do to save her from a death sentence she does not really deserve. Then he discovers that he, himself, is one of the weapons sent against her . . . and when they resolve that situation they return to capital and things get really complicated . . . .
I'm not even going to try to do this plot justice. Like the previous two it's more complicated than any summary could make it sound. Weapons, magic, the gods, and history all intertwine. There are slight echoes of Bujold's earlier Vorkosigan series: the girl is a tall, intelligent and strong-willed red-head. Ingrey is the agent of the feared power behind the throne (Simon Illyan, if you will [not that Ingrey is Illyan; rather he works for his equivalent). There is even a powerful lord with physical deformities--but these are only rough equivalencies, not exact matches. Bujold writes as I wish I could; this is one of the best books I've read this year and one I will return to.
Highly recommended.
This is the end of August's books; which is good since I doubt it I'll get through September's in time to do October in the kind of depth I'd like. Anyway, that was a total of 13 books for the month, with 4 of them being nonfiction, for annual totals of 102 overall and 24 nonfiction.