[Book Reviews] Before and after fever dreams
I've had the Riyria Chronicles on my wishlist for some time, but it's only recently that I've gotten around to giving them a go. I picked up "The Crown Tower" first and liked it enough to read "The Rose and the Thorn" after. Moderately formulaic but still fun fantasy, you have a good-hearted naive swordsman and a sulky Raistlin-like assassin who team up to be thieves, but for good. (Not quite "He's a dark elf! But he's GOOD!", but close as tropes go. Lovable misunderstood antiheroes.) The swordsman pretty much keeps the assassin from doing anything that would lose the sympathies of the readers too much. I understand the main series is better; this set of prequels were entirely fine airplane books, but if I lent them out and they never came home I would cheerfully forget I'd ever owned them after a couple months. Three perfectly forgettable swordfights out of five.
I picked up "Daughter of the Sword" on a wander through my local Barnes & Noble's surprisingly well stocked sci-fi and fantasy section. I was in favor of a Tokyo modern detective trying to come to terms with swordfighting, and I really liked the way that the author intercut scenes from previous eras in with modern-day ones to tell the stories of the blades and how they affected their bearers. My inner history geek was mostly pleased. I also liked that characters did not magically come through everything unscathed because magic. The combination of these two factors got me to buy the sequel "Year of the Demon". While I was a little less fond of their mythical ninja clan, it was still basically fun. Three cases of unestablishable provenance out of five.
I'm a sucker for interesting worlds that talk about how we frame society, and so I was pleased with "Divergent". Also, dystopian Chicago is fun. It wasn't a very challenging book, and I do get a little tired of the "youth discovers world is unfair!" plots you get pretty often in YA novels, but it was still worth reading just for the world-building. I'd probably go see the upcoming movie, too, in no small part because I bet the special effects are really fun. However, the series kind of bogs down in "Insurgent", and having read spoiler threads, I am not even going to bother reading the third in the series, "Allegiant". It's kind of a pity that a really interesting premise didn't carry the writing past the first book; I'd have given four train-jumpers of five to "Divergent" and two to "Insurgent", so I guess we'll call it an even three for the both of them.
For contrast, I loved "Code Name Verity". It's a spy story and I'm a sucker for those, it's a tale of an enduring friendship and I love those too, and it's got enough intellectual heavy lifting to keep you engaged as a reader throughout, trying to figure out what actually happened. It's not a difficult read for language or concept, but the central framing of a confession to the Nazis after being captured as a spy may be an emotionally difficult read for some folks. But both heroines are people you root for throughout, I learned a ton about airplanes by Googling things as I read them, and it's a well crafted tale that never lets the reader down by failure of the author to live up to the expectations they've set. It's not a world where everything is going to be all right, but it's a world where the author doesn't just shoot your dog because haha you thought you were safe. I would particularly recommend this one to bright young readers who are capable of dealing with difficult material -- even in my thirties, I felt clever for having picked through the puzzles, but I would have been unbearably smug about it had I read this book when I was twelve. [grin] Five double blinds out of five.
stillsostrange's Necromancer Chronicles continue with "Kingdoms of Dust". I continue to enjoy Isyllt as a heroine, and the desert setting of this book was substantially different enough from a lot of the "oh no the world is going to be ended" fantasy I've read that it made it particularly fun. Kudos to the author for just having her setting *be* the world, and not "now we must travel to the SUPER EXOTIC desert to save everything". After the previous two books in the series which had a lot more spy intrigue in them, this one was more removed from interactions with the previous major political players... it will be interesting to see what happens to Isyllt now that she's burned so many of her interpersonal bridges. (I'm still kind of hoping for a future book on Savedra, though.) Four threats to all humanity out of five.
One of the better books I have read recently was Julia Alvarez's "In the Name of Salomé". She deals sensitively and well with the real-life poet Salomé Ureña and her extended family. (Before reading this book, I didn't know anything about the history there, or the poetry.) I was particularly impressed with her handling of the difficult emotional territory between being a person and some kind of icon for a cause, and how Salomé dealt with the latter. I was also impressed with the strong familial ties between generations and how that factored into being a major theme of the book -- that kind of thing is also present in my own different immigrant family, and so there was a lot of unexpected recognition and resonance there. But perhaps my favorite part here was the titular character's struggle to express her own authentic artistic voice, and her navigation of the space between what was wanted, expected, and what she herself felt when they were nearly the same but not quite. Five lessons in education out of five.
Another surprisingly outstanding book was Nicola Griffith's "Hild". I'm not sure if it's meant to be a YA novel or not, but this was another one that I really enjoyed as an adult but would have LOVED FOREVER as a child. Hild is as the book opens a small child, niece to the king of seventh-century Northumbria. Her mother positions her as a seer, and she's spared some of the brutality of nobility by filling that role. But this world is not magic-heavy, it's more historical, and Hild has to come up with correct prophecies through being very observant and able to put together information well. So my Encyclopedia Brown-loving child-self would effectively have thought that this was the best novel ever. [grin] As Hild's world goes from pagan to Christian, she has to navigate that change and keep her place at the side of the king, or risk death at his capricious whim. I handed it off to the person I know with the greatest expertise of time and place; we'll see if she likes it as much as I did. Five thwarted invasions out of five.
haikujaguar's "Mindline" is the second book in a duology about the training of two xenopsych therapists. I liked the first and was unsurprised to like the second... they're gentle books about friendship, which was just what the doctor ordered when I was ill. There's a bunch of interesting universe-building stuff in there; I had a lot of sympathy for the theme of trying to keep your doctors-in-training themselves healthy, through grueling rounds and demanding hours. (I think it looks daunting even when you're not on a planet with far higher gravity than you're used to! I can't even imagine what it'd be like if you were.) But it's immensely cheering to read about people who care about each other a lot, who spend their time entertaining friends and baking cookies and otherwise being nice to each other. The circumstances of the book provide sufficient dramatic tension; it doesn't need to be artificially introduced by making likable characters inexplicably stupid or less likeable. (That's a pet peeve of mine about many books. I am happy when that doesn't have to be applied with a hammer to get something worth reading.) Four lasting friendships out of five.
Another of haikujaguar's and set in the same universe as the previous -- what can I say, I love me some space elves. [rueful grin] "Rose Point" is the second in a trilogy about a merchant Martian spaceship captain and her crew. There's definite character development and forward movement here, and I was thrilled to get to see a lot more of the Eldritch world and culture. And horses. [grin] I enjoyed the political-thriller aspects of the last third of the book, too. But AAAGH it leaves you on such a cliffhanger, and I'm going to have to wait months to know what happens! It's definitely a middle book, it doesn't stand alone, and I'm sure I will be less full of aagh once I've read the third one. [grin] And I wouldn't aagh if I didn't care about the characters and what happens to them. (Liolesa!) But I'll just be sitting on the edge of my seat until I know, don't mind me. Four AAGHs out of five.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/354796.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.
I picked up "Daughter of the Sword" on a wander through my local Barnes & Noble's surprisingly well stocked sci-fi and fantasy section. I was in favor of a Tokyo modern detective trying to come to terms with swordfighting, and I really liked the way that the author intercut scenes from previous eras in with modern-day ones to tell the stories of the blades and how they affected their bearers. My inner history geek was mostly pleased. I also liked that characters did not magically come through everything unscathed because magic. The combination of these two factors got me to buy the sequel "Year of the Demon". While I was a little less fond of their mythical ninja clan, it was still basically fun. Three cases of unestablishable provenance out of five.
I'm a sucker for interesting worlds that talk about how we frame society, and so I was pleased with "Divergent". Also, dystopian Chicago is fun. It wasn't a very challenging book, and I do get a little tired of the "youth discovers world is unfair!" plots you get pretty often in YA novels, but it was still worth reading just for the world-building. I'd probably go see the upcoming movie, too, in no small part because I bet the special effects are really fun. However, the series kind of bogs down in "Insurgent", and having read spoiler threads, I am not even going to bother reading the third in the series, "Allegiant". It's kind of a pity that a really interesting premise didn't carry the writing past the first book; I'd have given four train-jumpers of five to "Divergent" and two to "Insurgent", so I guess we'll call it an even three for the both of them.
For contrast, I loved "Code Name Verity". It's a spy story and I'm a sucker for those, it's a tale of an enduring friendship and I love those too, and it's got enough intellectual heavy lifting to keep you engaged as a reader throughout, trying to figure out what actually happened. It's not a difficult read for language or concept, but the central framing of a confession to the Nazis after being captured as a spy may be an emotionally difficult read for some folks. But both heroines are people you root for throughout, I learned a ton about airplanes by Googling things as I read them, and it's a well crafted tale that never lets the reader down by failure of the author to live up to the expectations they've set. It's not a world where everything is going to be all right, but it's a world where the author doesn't just shoot your dog because haha you thought you were safe. I would particularly recommend this one to bright young readers who are capable of dealing with difficult material -- even in my thirties, I felt clever for having picked through the puzzles, but I would have been unbearably smug about it had I read this book when I was twelve. [grin] Five double blinds out of five.
stillsostrange's Necromancer Chronicles continue with "Kingdoms of Dust". I continue to enjoy Isyllt as a heroine, and the desert setting of this book was substantially different enough from a lot of the "oh no the world is going to be ended" fantasy I've read that it made it particularly fun. Kudos to the author for just having her setting *be* the world, and not "now we must travel to the SUPER EXOTIC desert to save everything". After the previous two books in the series which had a lot more spy intrigue in them, this one was more removed from interactions with the previous major political players... it will be interesting to see what happens to Isyllt now that she's burned so many of her interpersonal bridges. (I'm still kind of hoping for a future book on Savedra, though.) Four threats to all humanity out of five.
One of the better books I have read recently was Julia Alvarez's "In the Name of Salomé". She deals sensitively and well with the real-life poet Salomé Ureña and her extended family. (Before reading this book, I didn't know anything about the history there, or the poetry.) I was particularly impressed with her handling of the difficult emotional territory between being a person and some kind of icon for a cause, and how Salomé dealt with the latter. I was also impressed with the strong familial ties between generations and how that factored into being a major theme of the book -- that kind of thing is also present in my own different immigrant family, and so there was a lot of unexpected recognition and resonance there. But perhaps my favorite part here was the titular character's struggle to express her own authentic artistic voice, and her navigation of the space between what was wanted, expected, and what she herself felt when they were nearly the same but not quite. Five lessons in education out of five.
Another surprisingly outstanding book was Nicola Griffith's "Hild". I'm not sure if it's meant to be a YA novel or not, but this was another one that I really enjoyed as an adult but would have LOVED FOREVER as a child. Hild is as the book opens a small child, niece to the king of seventh-century Northumbria. Her mother positions her as a seer, and she's spared some of the brutality of nobility by filling that role. But this world is not magic-heavy, it's more historical, and Hild has to come up with correct prophecies through being very observant and able to put together information well. So my Encyclopedia Brown-loving child-self would effectively have thought that this was the best novel ever. [grin] As Hild's world goes from pagan to Christian, she has to navigate that change and keep her place at the side of the king, or risk death at his capricious whim. I handed it off to the person I know with the greatest expertise of time and place; we'll see if she likes it as much as I did. Five thwarted invasions out of five.
haikujaguar's "Mindline" is the second book in a duology about the training of two xenopsych therapists. I liked the first and was unsurprised to like the second... they're gentle books about friendship, which was just what the doctor ordered when I was ill. There's a bunch of interesting universe-building stuff in there; I had a lot of sympathy for the theme of trying to keep your doctors-in-training themselves healthy, through grueling rounds and demanding hours. (I think it looks daunting even when you're not on a planet with far higher gravity than you're used to! I can't even imagine what it'd be like if you were.) But it's immensely cheering to read about people who care about each other a lot, who spend their time entertaining friends and baking cookies and otherwise being nice to each other. The circumstances of the book provide sufficient dramatic tension; it doesn't need to be artificially introduced by making likable characters inexplicably stupid or less likeable. (That's a pet peeve of mine about many books. I am happy when that doesn't have to be applied with a hammer to get something worth reading.) Four lasting friendships out of five.
Another of haikujaguar's and set in the same universe as the previous -- what can I say, I love me some space elves. [rueful grin] "Rose Point" is the second in a trilogy about a merchant Martian spaceship captain and her crew. There's definite character development and forward movement here, and I was thrilled to get to see a lot more of the Eldritch world and culture. And horses. [grin] I enjoyed the political-thriller aspects of the last third of the book, too. But AAAGH it leaves you on such a cliffhanger, and I'm going to have to wait months to know what happens! It's definitely a middle book, it doesn't stand alone, and I'm sure I will be less full of aagh once I've read the third one. [grin] And I wouldn't aagh if I didn't care about the characters and what happens to them. (Liolesa!) But I'll just be sitting on the edge of my seat until I know, don't mind me. Four AAGHs out of five.
This entry was originally posted at http://ivy.dreamwidth.org/354796.html and has
comments there. Please feel free to comment on either site; comments rock.