Fiction
So, I haven't been trying to post every day for astolat's challenge, even though I would like to. I post almost every weekday at my pro blog, and it's the start of school, so I've felt a little overwhelmed. But it's a good idea. I'll see what I can do.
Ted Naifeh: Courtney Crumrin, Volume Four: Monstrous Holiday: I don’t know why my comic store can’t seem to get all of these in, but this volume has Courtney touring Europe with her uncle, trying to get away from the pain of home and only finding pain elsewhere. There’s a werewolf story and a vampire story, and if you think they end happily, then this is probably your first Courtney Crumrin. Enjoyable, if bitter enough that it needs leavening with some other story’s happy ending.
Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter, The Long War: Second in a series about what happens when humans discover how to “step,” or move between alternate versions of Earth, and encounter other evolutionary possibilities-from “trolls” to “elves” to, in this book, “beagles.” There’s a smarmy AI and various adventurers, along with largely futile attempts from “Datum Earth” to control the people who’ve stepped away. The basic theory seems to be that scarcity is what makes people awful (except when it comes to mistreating trolls, because many people don’t see them as worthy of moral respect-not that subgroups of humanity have ever seen other subgroups that way, of course!), so it’s largely a bloodless “war” even as different colonies declare independence and our heroes try to get everybody to treat the trolls with dignity. I dunno, the worldbuilding just seems shaky-barter/owing people favors is supposed to be the basic way trade is done, but the authors recognize that once you get a real division of labor, including specialties like surgeons, that doesn’t work very well, then they just sort of drop the issue.
Cherie Priest, Dreadnought: Steampunk Civil War with zombies, continuing the world of Boneshaker. Our protagonist this time is an apolitical Confederate nurse (but don’t worry; in this timeline, the technological capacities of the South have dragged the war out so long that most of the slaves have been freed! /sarcasm) who undertakes a journey to Seattle to see her father, on his deathbead. The journey occupies the entire book, so we get a tour of airships and cross-country trains, along with some looks at the complicated politics of a continent that includes, along with the North and the South, a Republic of Texas and a Mexican government that wants to know what happened to a large group of its soldiers who disappeared. Hint: it involves the drug that’s been turning soldiers into wrecks on the war front, and the zombies of Boneshaker, though Mercy doesn’t know anything about that last bit. I will read the third book because I got it for free, but I can’t say I’m in love with the world she’s built.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Ted Naifeh: Courtney Crumrin, Volume Four: Monstrous Holiday: I don’t know why my comic store can’t seem to get all of these in, but this volume has Courtney touring Europe with her uncle, trying to get away from the pain of home and only finding pain elsewhere. There’s a werewolf story and a vampire story, and if you think they end happily, then this is probably your first Courtney Crumrin. Enjoyable, if bitter enough that it needs leavening with some other story’s happy ending.
Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter, The Long War: Second in a series about what happens when humans discover how to “step,” or move between alternate versions of Earth, and encounter other evolutionary possibilities-from “trolls” to “elves” to, in this book, “beagles.” There’s a smarmy AI and various adventurers, along with largely futile attempts from “Datum Earth” to control the people who’ve stepped away. The basic theory seems to be that scarcity is what makes people awful (except when it comes to mistreating trolls, because many people don’t see them as worthy of moral respect-not that subgroups of humanity have ever seen other subgroups that way, of course!), so it’s largely a bloodless “war” even as different colonies declare independence and our heroes try to get everybody to treat the trolls with dignity. I dunno, the worldbuilding just seems shaky-barter/owing people favors is supposed to be the basic way trade is done, but the authors recognize that once you get a real division of labor, including specialties like surgeons, that doesn’t work very well, then they just sort of drop the issue.
Cherie Priest, Dreadnought: Steampunk Civil War with zombies, continuing the world of Boneshaker. Our protagonist this time is an apolitical Confederate nurse (but don’t worry; in this timeline, the technological capacities of the South have dragged the war out so long that most of the slaves have been freed! /sarcasm) who undertakes a journey to Seattle to see her father, on his deathbead. The journey occupies the entire book, so we get a tour of airships and cross-country trains, along with some looks at the complicated politics of a continent that includes, along with the North and the South, a Republic of Texas and a Mexican government that wants to know what happened to a large group of its soldiers who disappeared. Hint: it involves the drug that’s been turning soldiers into wrecks on the war front, and the zombies of Boneshaker, though Mercy doesn’t know anything about that last bit. I will read the third book because I got it for free, but I can’t say I’m in love with the world she’s built.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.