At long last, books
Officially, I never stopped trying to write mini-reviews of the books I read. I'm not sure anyone except maybe 
ruthling is reading them, but it helps me keep track. I kind of took a break after I finished writing up 2013, though, and that break's been going on for... well, you know.
So, here's a stab at least. We'll see if I remember enough to make this pointful.
First up is An Officer's Duty by Jean Johnson, book two of Theirs Not to Reason Why. This is the story of super-precog Ia, a reasonable young woman from a colony world who's incredible foresight lets her see the onrushing doom of the entire galaxy. She dedicates her life to manipulating civilization toward one thread of future that leads to survival, including becoming a soldier. Ia's life is kind of weird in that she's already mapped out pretty much everything she'll do for the rest of her life. Not everything is certain - she can't control every variable - but she's already knowns every person and challenge she'll ever encounter. In this book, she spends a lot of time in an advanced training school where she gets more than a little stressed when she encounters a classmate she's never foreseen and can't predict.
It's a good concept, and it's an okay series. Ia's a little too perfect, though, which can get annoying. We do at least finally get let it on what the Terrible Onrushing Danger is, so that's something.
For a real change in tone, we turn to The Last Dark, final book in Stephen R. Donaldson's The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. This is very much a Thomas Covenant book from Donaldson's determination to expand his readers' vocabularies past the breaking point to all the Dread Things With Capital Letters. Mocking tone aside, it was as solid an end to the series as one could ask for. If you like the books, you'll probably like this. If you don't - as you no doubt knew by the end of The Illearth War - you'd be wise to skip.
And to continue the tonal whiplash, let's move on to Happy Hour in Hell by Tad Williams. This is the second book about Bobby Dollar, an angel assigned to inhabit a mortal body on Earth. Advocates like him are supposed to keep in touch with the human perspective so as to fulfill their vital (if low level) duty of explaining why each departed's soul should be admitted to Heaven (while a Hellish advocate makes the counterargument). Except we don't really see Bobby doing his job or even interacting much with the characters from the first book. He's still in love/lust/something with the mid-level demon he had a brief affair with before she got taken back to Hell. With the surprise assistance of his boss, he's able to sneak into Hell in a demon body to try and find her. His travels through the realm of the damned are somewhat interesting, but much of the first book's tone is missing. Also, since this is noir, you can pretty much bet things aren't likely to turn out hunky dory for all concerned. I realize this is just a middle book, but it still seemed unnecessarily long and rambly. I'll give the third one a try, but I hope it tightens up a bit.
I'll wrap up tonight with the six book graphic novel series Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (Welcome to Lovecraft, Head Games, Crown of Shadows, Keys to the Kingdom, Clockworks, and Alpha & Omega). This is the story of the Locke family, three kids ranging from late teens down to about eight plus their mother. Their father died (and the survivors were brutalized in various ways) in a seemingly senseless assault, and they moved away to Lovecraft, the town where the father grew up. They move into his childhood home "Keyhouse", a large near-mansion dating back to the Revolutionary War.
The kids rapidly begin to uncover mysterious keys. Each magically opens something... like the door where if you walk through it you fall down dead and your ghost can flit around at will until you choose to reenter your body. Or the ceiling where the user becomes a giant. Or the one that opens people's heads up allowing them to add and remove things from their own minds. New keys keep turning up, and at first it all seems like a game. But there's a dark power manipulating them, and everything is just the second act of the story that empowered and then consumed most of their father's high school set.
Against the fantastic backdrop there's also the struggle of the maimed family to figure out how to function and how severely they've been damaged. The initial attack changed them all variously into victims, killers, and guilt-ridden survivors. How they view themselves, and how they react to others viewing them also plays a big role.
This is a good story, and I recommend it. Two warnings, though. First, the middle phase goes on a little too long while it establishes some characters and then leaves those characters fallow long enough I was a little fuzzy on who was who when they all popped back up for the end. Second, this is a dark series... not everyone is going to come through it unscathed. 'nuff said.
This brings my 2014 total to nine. You can probably guess there are just a few more coming.
This entry was originally posted at http://squidminion.dreamwidth.org/379688.html.
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comments there. You could add one via OpenID.
Or you can comment here if you'd rather; it's okay.
ruthling is reading them, but it helps me keep track. I kind of took a break after I finished writing up 2013, though, and that break's been going on for... well, you know.
So, here's a stab at least. We'll see if I remember enough to make this pointful.
First up is An Officer's Duty by Jean Johnson, book two of Theirs Not to Reason Why. This is the story of super-precog Ia, a reasonable young woman from a colony world who's incredible foresight lets her see the onrushing doom of the entire galaxy. She dedicates her life to manipulating civilization toward one thread of future that leads to survival, including becoming a soldier. Ia's life is kind of weird in that she's already mapped out pretty much everything she'll do for the rest of her life. Not everything is certain - she can't control every variable - but she's already knowns every person and challenge she'll ever encounter. In this book, she spends a lot of time in an advanced training school where she gets more than a little stressed when she encounters a classmate she's never foreseen and can't predict.
It's a good concept, and it's an okay series. Ia's a little too perfect, though, which can get annoying. We do at least finally get let it on what the Terrible Onrushing Danger is, so that's something.
For a real change in tone, we turn to The Last Dark, final book in Stephen R. Donaldson's The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. This is very much a Thomas Covenant book from Donaldson's determination to expand his readers' vocabularies past the breaking point to all the Dread Things With Capital Letters. Mocking tone aside, it was as solid an end to the series as one could ask for. If you like the books, you'll probably like this. If you don't - as you no doubt knew by the end of The Illearth War - you'd be wise to skip.
And to continue the tonal whiplash, let's move on to Happy Hour in Hell by Tad Williams. This is the second book about Bobby Dollar, an angel assigned to inhabit a mortal body on Earth. Advocates like him are supposed to keep in touch with the human perspective so as to fulfill their vital (if low level) duty of explaining why each departed's soul should be admitted to Heaven (while a Hellish advocate makes the counterargument). Except we don't really see Bobby doing his job or even interacting much with the characters from the first book. He's still in love/lust/something with the mid-level demon he had a brief affair with before she got taken back to Hell. With the surprise assistance of his boss, he's able to sneak into Hell in a demon body to try and find her. His travels through the realm of the damned are somewhat interesting, but much of the first book's tone is missing. Also, since this is noir, you can pretty much bet things aren't likely to turn out hunky dory for all concerned. I realize this is just a middle book, but it still seemed unnecessarily long and rambly. I'll give the third one a try, but I hope it tightens up a bit.
I'll wrap up tonight with the six book graphic novel series Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (Welcome to Lovecraft, Head Games, Crown of Shadows, Keys to the Kingdom, Clockworks, and Alpha & Omega). This is the story of the Locke family, three kids ranging from late teens down to about eight plus their mother. Their father died (and the survivors were brutalized in various ways) in a seemingly senseless assault, and they moved away to Lovecraft, the town where the father grew up. They move into his childhood home "Keyhouse", a large near-mansion dating back to the Revolutionary War.
The kids rapidly begin to uncover mysterious keys. Each magically opens something... like the door where if you walk through it you fall down dead and your ghost can flit around at will until you choose to reenter your body. Or the ceiling where the user becomes a giant. Or the one that opens people's heads up allowing them to add and remove things from their own minds. New keys keep turning up, and at first it all seems like a game. But there's a dark power manipulating them, and everything is just the second act of the story that empowered and then consumed most of their father's high school set.
Against the fantastic backdrop there's also the struggle of the maimed family to figure out how to function and how severely they've been damaged. The initial attack changed them all variously into victims, killers, and guilt-ridden survivors. How they view themselves, and how they react to others viewing them also plays a big role.
This is a good story, and I recommend it. Two warnings, though. First, the middle phase goes on a little too long while it establishes some characters and then leaves those characters fallow long enough I was a little fuzzy on who was who when they all popped back up for the end. Second, this is a dark series... not everyone is going to come through it unscathed. 'nuff said.
This brings my 2014 total to nine. You can probably guess there are just a few more coming.
This entry was originally posted at http://squidminion.dreamwidth.org/379688.html.
There are
comments there. You could add one via OpenID.
Or you can comment here if you'd rather; it's okay.