Fiction
Frances Hardinge, The Lost Conspiracy: Hathin is a member of the Lace, a coastal tribe distrusted by most of the other islanders-many of whom are descended from the foreign conquerors who came hundreds of years ago to dedicate most of the islands to the use of their ancestors. Now, with most of the good farmland reserved for the dead, farms are sneaking up the foothills of the volcanoes, but as the Lace know, the volcanoes can easily be angered. Hathin’s more immediate problem, though, is that outsiders are coming to test her sister Arilou’s abilities as one of the Lost-people with the rare ability to send their senses out of their bodies and find out important information. The Lost are the backbone of communication on the island. What no one but Hathin’s village knows is that Arilou isn’t really a Lost at all but rather is unresponsive; Hathin, who communicates for her, has just been making up her answers. When Arilou’s test goes horribly wrong, Hathin is forced onto a quest for vengeance that might involve the death of all the Lace, or worse. I’m just scratching the surface of the plot, which was incredibly engaging. The villains’ motivations ranged from understandable to frightening; the heroes were always just scraping from one risky situation to the next. The book engages with issues of colonialism and forgiveness; the hardest part to believe is that a culture would deliberately give over more and more good farmland to the dead, but then again I’ve read Jared Diamond’s Collapse and real cultures have done more self-destructive things. Very enjoyable. I will be looking for more Hardinge.
Jacqueline Carey, Autumn Bones: Daisy, who’s part-demon, is Hel’s agent in her small Michigan town (and can I digress about how annoying it is that this is called “urban fantasy” because it’s got a heroine with powers in the modern world, even though a huge part of the plot here turns on the tourist townishness of the setting?). As she navigates the multiple cute boys in her life-one’s a werewolf who likes her but doesn’t want to mate outside his species, one’s a human with a few unfortunate secrets, and one’s a ghoul who subsists off of human emotions-she also deals with various challenges, from visiting hostiles to old high school wounds. It’s a lot of atmosphere and coziness and possible worldbuilding for later, despite the occasional life-threatening emergency. Carey is a very good writer who strikes me as having, like Patricia Briggs, made the decision to write urban fantasy for the sake of making more money; I don’t feel that her heart is in it quite as much as in her other works.
Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam: The railroad comes to Ankh-Morpork, and it’s all progress except for the anti-progress dwarf grags who make trouble, kill a few people, and are rather neatly routed with minimal bloodshed. Lots of people are hired to do new jobs, and none of them are underpaid or discriminated against (well, not by the majority of Ankh-Morporkians). The railroad brings fresh food to the city but the pollution is already there so that’s not a problem. Dwarfs make social progress (which here means “publicly acknowledging that some dwarfs are women”), which left me mildly disappointed that what looked like a gay romance was actually a heterosexual dwarf romance. Maybe it comes from my extradiegetic knowledge about Pratchett, but I felt like he was rushing to get Ankh-Morpork into the late nineteenth century, British-style, but without as much of the energy that makes Discworld so much fun.
Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear: As he recounts his life, Kvothe is still telling the story of being at the University, with a term off to have adventures. The adventures include him, as a teenaged virgin, having sex with a fairy woman who’s seduced innumerable men to their deaths-and he’s so good at it that she is impressed and teaches him more. This is the most eye-rolling part of the book, because the power fantasy aspects intersect with some really annoying tropes about women (she’s not the only one who can’t resist his charms). However, Rothfuss’s apparent awareness of the ridiculous nature of the power fantasy, and his twisting of fantasy standards so that many of Kvothe’s adventures are much less than they seem even as Kvothe remains over-the-top talented and suave, kept me interested enough that I am willing to tolerate this aspect. Much depends on whether Rothfuss will be able to stick the landing, and for that I guess I just have to wait and see.
Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes: Seven years ago someone plowed into a line of jobseekers outside a job fair, killing seven (including a baby) and maiming others. Now one of the detectives on the case has retired, and someone sends him a letter claiming to be the killer. It’s a good setup, without any supernatural elements, and King does his usual good job of ramping up the tension of whether the ex-cop will find the killer before he strikes again. It’s maybe a bit too self-aware-there’s a reference to watching It on TV, and the amazing woman with whom the ex-cop hooks up as part of the investigation lampshades about how she’s the sexy blonde-but in the end the appeal of a ragtag band of outsiders trying to stop a slaughter outweighs that.
Patricia Lockwood, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals: I knew of Lockwood’s incredible “Rape Joke,” but bought this book of poetry after Mallory Ortberg’s amazing takedown of the sexist New Yorker review of it. So I came in primed for sharp observations on sexual relations, and they are there, embedded in colorful and outright loopy metaphors that judder around like fireflies, flashing now and then. Given the poems’ repeated themes of sexual vulnerability and desire, often expressed by converting women or men into animals (rarely both at the same time), it’s hard not to think of Sylvia Plath, though with less depression and more mania. They’re hard-edged, artificially flavored, full of plays on words and breasts. A longer volume could’ve gotten overloaded, but this was just right. “What have we dumped in the ocean? All/the dolphins have begun growing breasts./Now dolphins are women when you want/women and fish when you want fish,/at last…./A triangle pokes above the water/and says better shapes below-circles are/the most sought-after shapes of course/but teardrops are also accepted.”
Magic City: Recent Spells, ed. Simon R. Green: Loosely themed collection on magic and the city, though some of them stretch for the city. Authors include: Elizabeth Bear (werewolf drag queen), Holly Black (fairies in a coffee shop), Patricia Briggs (werewolf, but not part of her main werewolf series; blind witch meets werewolf seeking to save his brother and literal sparks fly), Emma Bull (hit man going after magical immigrants, some sort of message about immigration), Jim Butcher (Harry Dresden investigates the White Sox curse), Nancy Kress (delinquent discovers his magic powers, saves day), Nnedi Okafor & Alan Dean Foster (stressed lawyer gets in the wrong Nigerian cab, or maybe the right one, and goes unexpected places), and Catherynne Valente (Bordertown). I was in it for the Briggs and Butcher, and the stories were good examples of their abilities, so fans shouldn’t hesitate.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Jacqueline Carey, Autumn Bones: Daisy, who’s part-demon, is Hel’s agent in her small Michigan town (and can I digress about how annoying it is that this is called “urban fantasy” because it’s got a heroine with powers in the modern world, even though a huge part of the plot here turns on the tourist townishness of the setting?). As she navigates the multiple cute boys in her life-one’s a werewolf who likes her but doesn’t want to mate outside his species, one’s a human with a few unfortunate secrets, and one’s a ghoul who subsists off of human emotions-she also deals with various challenges, from visiting hostiles to old high school wounds. It’s a lot of atmosphere and coziness and possible worldbuilding for later, despite the occasional life-threatening emergency. Carey is a very good writer who strikes me as having, like Patricia Briggs, made the decision to write urban fantasy for the sake of making more money; I don’t feel that her heart is in it quite as much as in her other works.
Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam: The railroad comes to Ankh-Morpork, and it’s all progress except for the anti-progress dwarf grags who make trouble, kill a few people, and are rather neatly routed with minimal bloodshed. Lots of people are hired to do new jobs, and none of them are underpaid or discriminated against (well, not by the majority of Ankh-Morporkians). The railroad brings fresh food to the city but the pollution is already there so that’s not a problem. Dwarfs make social progress (which here means “publicly acknowledging that some dwarfs are women”), which left me mildly disappointed that what looked like a gay romance was actually a heterosexual dwarf romance. Maybe it comes from my extradiegetic knowledge about Pratchett, but I felt like he was rushing to get Ankh-Morpork into the late nineteenth century, British-style, but without as much of the energy that makes Discworld so much fun.
Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear: As he recounts his life, Kvothe is still telling the story of being at the University, with a term off to have adventures. The adventures include him, as a teenaged virgin, having sex with a fairy woman who’s seduced innumerable men to their deaths-and he’s so good at it that she is impressed and teaches him more. This is the most eye-rolling part of the book, because the power fantasy aspects intersect with some really annoying tropes about women (she’s not the only one who can’t resist his charms). However, Rothfuss’s apparent awareness of the ridiculous nature of the power fantasy, and his twisting of fantasy standards so that many of Kvothe’s adventures are much less than they seem even as Kvothe remains over-the-top talented and suave, kept me interested enough that I am willing to tolerate this aspect. Much depends on whether Rothfuss will be able to stick the landing, and for that I guess I just have to wait and see.
Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes: Seven years ago someone plowed into a line of jobseekers outside a job fair, killing seven (including a baby) and maiming others. Now one of the detectives on the case has retired, and someone sends him a letter claiming to be the killer. It’s a good setup, without any supernatural elements, and King does his usual good job of ramping up the tension of whether the ex-cop will find the killer before he strikes again. It’s maybe a bit too self-aware-there’s a reference to watching It on TV, and the amazing woman with whom the ex-cop hooks up as part of the investigation lampshades about how she’s the sexy blonde-but in the end the appeal of a ragtag band of outsiders trying to stop a slaughter outweighs that.
Patricia Lockwood, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals: I knew of Lockwood’s incredible “Rape Joke,” but bought this book of poetry after Mallory Ortberg’s amazing takedown of the sexist New Yorker review of it. So I came in primed for sharp observations on sexual relations, and they are there, embedded in colorful and outright loopy metaphors that judder around like fireflies, flashing now and then. Given the poems’ repeated themes of sexual vulnerability and desire, often expressed by converting women or men into animals (rarely both at the same time), it’s hard not to think of Sylvia Plath, though with less depression and more mania. They’re hard-edged, artificially flavored, full of plays on words and breasts. A longer volume could’ve gotten overloaded, but this was just right. “What have we dumped in the ocean? All/the dolphins have begun growing breasts./Now dolphins are women when you want/women and fish when you want fish,/at last…./A triangle pokes above the water/and says better shapes below-circles are/the most sought-after shapes of course/but teardrops are also accepted.”
Magic City: Recent Spells, ed. Simon R. Green: Loosely themed collection on magic and the city, though some of them stretch for the city. Authors include: Elizabeth Bear (werewolf drag queen), Holly Black (fairies in a coffee shop), Patricia Briggs (werewolf, but not part of her main werewolf series; blind witch meets werewolf seeking to save his brother and literal sparks fly), Emma Bull (hit man going after magical immigrants, some sort of message about immigration), Jim Butcher (Harry Dresden investigates the White Sox curse), Nancy Kress (delinquent discovers his magic powers, saves day), Nnedi Okafor & Alan Dean Foster (stressed lawyer gets in the wrong Nigerian cab, or maybe the right one, and goes unexpected places), and Catherynne Valente (Bordertown). I was in it for the Briggs and Butcher, and the stories were good examples of their abilities, so fans shouldn’t hesitate.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.