Minor recs/reviews
I don't usually recommend fanfic, because I'm usually behind the curve -- if I've seen it and it's SV, anybody who might be interested has probably seen it as well. But Verism, if that's her name, doesn't seem to have an LJ -- correct me if I'm wrong, will you? And Luthor Detail and The 0100 were interesting short stories. The first is basically a sweet futurefic with a few very nice touches; the second is a crossover with "The 4400," though I don't think you need to know anything about the show for the story to work, and it starts off with the best observation about Clark's football playing I've seen and then goes someplace very different.
Oh, I am so far behind in my reviews. The stack on my desk is about three feet high. And the Deep Discount DVDs arrived today, tempting me away from writing ...
Sean Stewart, Mockingbird and Perfect Circle: Stewart is a delight, with writing both clean and evocative. Both books are about Texans with tight-knit, hard-fighting families and strange, unwanted powers - to talk/be possessed by spirits in the first book, to see ghosts in the second. Perfect Circle could be considered songfic, in a way, because there's a lot of talk in it about music, including the REM song that provides the title, but really it's about how hard it is to live fully. Along the way there are gems of description, like the moment Stewart casually explains why oil refineries look the way they do. Here's the first paragraph of Mockingbird; while the book isn't always this light in tone, it's still a good introduction to Stewart's style:
When you get down to the bottom of the bottle, as Momma used to say, this is the story of how I became a mother. I want that clear from the start. Now, it's true that mine was not a typical pregnancy. There was some magic mixed up in there, and a few million dollars in oil-field speculation, and some people who died, and some others who wouldn't stay quite dead. It would be lying to pretend there wasn't prophecy involved, and an exorcism, and a hurricane, and I scorn to lie. But if every story is a journey, then this is about the longest trip I ever took, from being a daughter to having one.
One of the nicest things about the books is that the voices of the two narrators are quite distinct, though they both have powers and screwed-up families. Mockingbird's narrator is female and living a substantially saner life than Perfect Circle's male narrator, who has a child he can see only every few weeks and is so broke they have to hang out in record stores as recreation. The former is prickly and still incredibly aware of the web of connections between her and the other people in her life; the latter is much more self-absorbed and has to learn to recognize his connections before he can accept them. I will definitely be reading more of Stewart's books.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Fantasy Life: After a family tragedy, Lyssa Buckingham brings her daughter home to Seavy County on the Oregon coastline, seeking help for young Emily’s newfound powers, and discovers that her family history is much more baroque than she imagined, and just as inescapable as she feared. The Buckinghams have always had eldritch powers, and have been responsible for protecting the County as a refuge for fantasylife, mermaids and other creatures gone from the rest of the world. But an oil spill in the past - and the present - threatens that sanctuary. And some members of the fantasylife aren’t content with refuge; they want revenge for the loss of their world. Obviously, an interesting premise, but I found the novel less successful than some of Rusch’s other work. The fantasylife remained mysterious, which made sense, but without rhyme or reason to the Buckinghams’ powers I felt the story just rolled along until it ended rather than following a strong narrative arc. (I also don’t understand why the title is two words and the term in the text is one word, but that’s minor.)
F. Paul Wilson, Hosts: A Repairman Jack Novel: To the governments of the world, Repairman Jack doesn’t exist; he’s dropped out. But to the forces of Good and Evil that struggle covertly for dominion over the world, he’s a key player. When a strange coincidence brings his sister to him, asking for help for her (female) lover who’s undergone a serious personality change after being injected with a genetically engineered virus as a treatment for a tumor, Jack gets further involved in the great struggle. The villain of the piece - the virus - is plenty Grand Guignol, and the visions of the future if Jack fails to suppress it were reasonably creepy. Wilson is of the tell-don’t-show school of characterization, and you have to sit through some anti-gun-control lectures, but the sleazy reporter trying to exploit Jack’s “masked man” heroics to get himself famous was almost not cardboard.
Guy Gavriel Kay, The Summer Tree: The Fionavar Tapestry: Book One: So, epic fantasy = not for Rivka. I kinda burned out on David Eddings, and so Kay didn’t do much for me. (I was hoping for a blowjob in a throne room, as suggested by juliefortune, but that’s not in this book. There is some soft-core sex, but Kay cuts away from the most troubling encounter, which seems to have been the Fionavar version of date rape.) Anyway, five people from our world are taken to Fionavar because they’re important somehow to the survival of that world, where magic works and kings treat with sorcerors who are lifebonded to their assistants, and off in the distant mountains a great evil is rising. There’s lots of foreshadowing, and many, many made-up names - here’s one paragraph’s worth: Eilatehn, Rakoth, Conary, Colan the Beloved, “Ra-Termaine, greatest of the Lords of the lios alfar,” “svart alfar,” Maugrim (good guy or bad? Take a guess!), Sennett, Dalrei, Daniloth, Revor, Ysanne (okay, that’s fine), “the warriors of Brennin and Cathal,” Andarien, Starkadh, and “the Lion of Eridu.” The pomposity got to me - I’m just not the right audience for this sort of thing.
Oh, I am so far behind in my reviews. The stack on my desk is about three feet high. And the Deep Discount DVDs arrived today, tempting me away from writing ...
Sean Stewart, Mockingbird and Perfect Circle: Stewart is a delight, with writing both clean and evocative. Both books are about Texans with tight-knit, hard-fighting families and strange, unwanted powers - to talk/be possessed by spirits in the first book, to see ghosts in the second. Perfect Circle could be considered songfic, in a way, because there's a lot of talk in it about music, including the REM song that provides the title, but really it's about how hard it is to live fully. Along the way there are gems of description, like the moment Stewart casually explains why oil refineries look the way they do. Here's the first paragraph of Mockingbird; while the book isn't always this light in tone, it's still a good introduction to Stewart's style:
When you get down to the bottom of the bottle, as Momma used to say, this is the story of how I became a mother. I want that clear from the start. Now, it's true that mine was not a typical pregnancy. There was some magic mixed up in there, and a few million dollars in oil-field speculation, and some people who died, and some others who wouldn't stay quite dead. It would be lying to pretend there wasn't prophecy involved, and an exorcism, and a hurricane, and I scorn to lie. But if every story is a journey, then this is about the longest trip I ever took, from being a daughter to having one.
One of the nicest things about the books is that the voices of the two narrators are quite distinct, though they both have powers and screwed-up families. Mockingbird's narrator is female and living a substantially saner life than Perfect Circle's male narrator, who has a child he can see only every few weeks and is so broke they have to hang out in record stores as recreation. The former is prickly and still incredibly aware of the web of connections between her and the other people in her life; the latter is much more self-absorbed and has to learn to recognize his connections before he can accept them. I will definitely be reading more of Stewart's books.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Fantasy Life: After a family tragedy, Lyssa Buckingham brings her daughter home to Seavy County on the Oregon coastline, seeking help for young Emily’s newfound powers, and discovers that her family history is much more baroque than she imagined, and just as inescapable as she feared. The Buckinghams have always had eldritch powers, and have been responsible for protecting the County as a refuge for fantasylife, mermaids and other creatures gone from the rest of the world. But an oil spill in the past - and the present - threatens that sanctuary. And some members of the fantasylife aren’t content with refuge; they want revenge for the loss of their world. Obviously, an interesting premise, but I found the novel less successful than some of Rusch’s other work. The fantasylife remained mysterious, which made sense, but without rhyme or reason to the Buckinghams’ powers I felt the story just rolled along until it ended rather than following a strong narrative arc. (I also don’t understand why the title is two words and the term in the text is one word, but that’s minor.)
F. Paul Wilson, Hosts: A Repairman Jack Novel: To the governments of the world, Repairman Jack doesn’t exist; he’s dropped out. But to the forces of Good and Evil that struggle covertly for dominion over the world, he’s a key player. When a strange coincidence brings his sister to him, asking for help for her (female) lover who’s undergone a serious personality change after being injected with a genetically engineered virus as a treatment for a tumor, Jack gets further involved in the great struggle. The villain of the piece - the virus - is plenty Grand Guignol, and the visions of the future if Jack fails to suppress it were reasonably creepy. Wilson is of the tell-don’t-show school of characterization, and you have to sit through some anti-gun-control lectures, but the sleazy reporter trying to exploit Jack’s “masked man” heroics to get himself famous was almost not cardboard.
Guy Gavriel Kay, The Summer Tree: The Fionavar Tapestry: Book One: So, epic fantasy = not for Rivka. I kinda burned out on David Eddings, and so Kay didn’t do much for me. (I was hoping for a blowjob in a throne room, as suggested by juliefortune, but that’s not in this book. There is some soft-core sex, but Kay cuts away from the most troubling encounter, which seems to have been the Fionavar version of date rape.) Anyway, five people from our world are taken to Fionavar because they’re important somehow to the survival of that world, where magic works and kings treat with sorcerors who are lifebonded to their assistants, and off in the distant mountains a great evil is rising. There’s lots of foreshadowing, and many, many made-up names - here’s one paragraph’s worth: Eilatehn, Rakoth, Conary, Colan the Beloved, “Ra-Termaine, greatest of the Lords of the lios alfar,” “svart alfar,” Maugrim (good guy or bad? Take a guess!), Sennett, Dalrei, Daniloth, Revor, Ysanne (okay, that’s fine), “the warriors of Brennin and Cathal,” Andarien, Starkadh, and “the Lion of Eridu.” The pomposity got to me - I’m just not the right audience for this sort of thing.