After reading a series of books that I didn't end up enjoying much, I decided it was time to read something I was sure I would like. Continuing with the urban fantasy theme, I chose Neverwhere.
At least in my memory, Gaiman's career has gone something like Sandman > Good Omens > Neverwhere > Terrifying Levels of Fame. I might have a few of those steps out of order. My copy is from 1996 and has the BBC cover. I got it at the Harvard Book Store, where I was working at the time. I read it promptly and have been carrying it around ever since; eighteen years later, I remembered literally nothing except for the bit about de Carabas' heart and the final page.
I enjoyed the reread. I think it's a better book than, say, Guilty Pleasures. Why?
Point one: we are not in the real world. Both Dead Until Dark and Guilty Pleasures are set in worlds exactly like our own, except for the vampires and werewolves wandering around. Neverwhere is built on the premise of two worlds--the ordinary everyday experienced by most people (London Above), and the mytho-poetic scavenger society, adrift in space-time, in which the adventure takes place (London Below). Since London Below only has to follow its own inner logic, there is no point at which the real world is subject to painful distortions in service of the story, no point at which I said, "But how is that supposed to WORK?"
Point two: characterization. This one is more arguably personal preference. Some people like a wish-fulfillment POV character, and for them, Anita and/or Sookie might fit that bill. I found both of them deeply annoying, Sookie because of her general clueless ineptitude and Anita because her behavior was consistently baffling.
Richard Mayhew is not a badass, not a Batman, and has no magic powers. He's an amiable nonentity. He gets himself into trouble by demonstrating compassion for an injured girl, whom he finds on his way out to an important dinner with his fiancee. He spends much of the book in a potentially-fatal state of confusion, but he has a good heart.
We get to see a fair amount of Door, including some scenes from her POV, which is believably sketched. Most of the supporting cast are self-interested to a greater or lesser degree. Croup and Vandemar are monsters, not people; we are not expected to understand them. Although they may veer into mythic archetype on occasion, there is no point at which the reader looks at these people and says, "But why would ANYONE do THAT?"
Point three: plot. Bad People (in the persons of the delightful Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar) are after a girl called Door, having already disposed of her family on behalf of a mysterious employer. Richard helps her, and as a consequence his life in London Above is erased, forcing him to join her and her band of protectors in hopes of getting back what he has lost.
That's it. Simple, straightforward motivations and actions. Hunters and hunted leapfrog across the bizarre world of London Below on a quest in which item A leads to item B leads to item C leads to Goal. Other than the identity of the killers' employer, there is little obfuscation. Although there are plenty of flourishes in this story, every element, every character has their role. The structure is simple and graceful.
Point four: writing. This is where things get a little gooey--and snobbish, but this is a post about why I think one book is better than another, so you're stuck with my opinion. Like all of Gaiman's work, Neverwhere drips with mythic references. It is a fairy tale. A man is taken away from the world he knows, has an adventure, and finds himself changed. The logic that governs is not that of our world, but it is logic we still find familiar.
(The first time I read this book, I didn't like the ending. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but I think it's mostly because London Below is not presented to us as a place where people can actually live. We see scavengers and supernatural menaces, but no place into which it seems Richard might fit. Perhaps he'll go live with Door.)
The references give it a sense of layering and also of consistency. The book's foundation is strong in a particular literary place, so while the tone of a particular scene may be comic or tragic, it never strays far from its birthplace. You can feel all of its extended family crowd around while you read.
I'm not sure, as I sit typing this, whether it's possible to write a good fantasy novel without that kind of awareness of where it comes from, without invoking (or arguing with, perhaps) some kind of tradition. (I welcome suggestions to the contrary.)
One of the things that bothered me about the vampire books as I was reading them was their emptiness. There is nothing in them to reward a close reading, nothing below the surface. Their vampires and shapeshifters owe nothing to anyone but themselves, and the authors don't build out their worlds to any extent; as a consequence, those worlds feel small and thin. They might as well be cartoons.
Neverwhere isn't perfect by any means. I can see plenty of reasons why someone might not find it appealing. I don't, however, see any ground on which to argue that it's badly written--not in comparison to my other recent reading, at least.
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
6. The Blade Itself
The first relatively new fantasy I have read in what feels like forever. I kept putting it down for some reason, but I finally finished it last night. Definitely an interesting book, though I didn't find it flawless.
The characters are the standout feature of this series for me so far. The setting is fine, the dialog is mostly very good, very occasionally slides into didacticism, the plot I'll get to later in this post. The action scenes are, as one of the blurbs promised, excellent. The people are occasionally frustrating, but on the whole they reward patience.
They are not uncomplicated, and that is a very good thing and, I think, difficult to pull off. Logen is easily the most sympathetic of the main characters--the barbarian warrior grown philosophical and somewhat ashamed of his life's path--but that past can't be disowned, and by the end of the book we've seen just how well-deserved is his epithet of "the Bloody-Nine." His little band are somewhat heavily painted with the Noble Savage palette--violent, dangerous men, but who at least live according to some code--and therefore rather show up most of the Union characters. Logen appears to be the only main character who possesses something like a normal sense of humor, which goes a long way toward making him likeable.
Jezal is the hardest for me to put up with; he's vain, shallow, and arrogant, and his only good quality seems to be that he's occasionally aware that he's lacking in quality, which gives one some hope that he'll improve over the series. (This morning I listened to a few chapters of Persuasion on the treadmill; he would have fit perfectly into the Austen milieu of petty, self-obsessed nobility.) Making his love interest a much more interesting character is a bit of a dangerous move, but it does give him something to strive for, and just when you thought his associate West was all Boy Scout, he goes and proves just how wrong that idea was. I'm hoping that Jezal will interact more productively with the other characters in the second book, perhaps grow a sense of perspective.
Glokta is downright fascinating. The smartest character in the cast (with the possible exception of Bayaz), he's an extremely ambiguous figure at this point. The slight softening of his character at the end of the first book was entirely surprising, but it's difficult to take him at face value, and one wonders whether emotion ever has a chance of trumping his survival instinct. His repeated wondering about his own motives got under my skin; for someone so keenly perceptive about humanity, and so evidently self-aware, to not be sure why he's doing what he's doing seems out of place to me. I expect that eventually we'll get an answer; I just hope that it lives up to the long tease. The deftly drawn internal politics of the Inquisition are one of the best parts of the book, I think. I also hope that at some point we get to see someone beat the living daylights out of Severard.
Maljinn is introduced later than the other viewpoint characters, and though it seems like she will have an important role, is something of a cypher at this point. I was surprised when she showed up, the book up to that point having a strongly male cast. I don't need female protagonists to enjoy a novel, and the society is reasonably realistic in its androcentrism, so I wouldn't have minded either way. I did find myself at one point wondering what GM allowed such a blatantly munchkined-out character into the campaign; so far her role has been to kick copious amounts of ass and be hinted about mysteriously.
There were a few things that niggled at me. Around 3/4 through I found myself thinking that he was being a bit too heavy-handed setting up the socio-political situation in the Union (see TV Tropes), to the point where at one point I sighed and went Yes, I remember that history class from my sophomore year. Get ON with it. Another niggle has to do with the map. There is no actual map in this book, but there is an extensive canvas and, as The Tough Guide to Fantasyland promises, we are obviously going to visit every. Last. Corner. of it. (The Tough Guide is hysterical, btw, and useful if you have ever thought about writing fantasy.)
The third problem is the plot. There is an insane amount of stuff going on here, and my fear as I finished up this volume is that it's all going to spin out of control. There's a double threat from the north in the form of Bethod and the Shanka, and from the south in the form of the Empire and this Prophet who is evidently their motivator. As presented so far, it's dubious as to whether the Union is worth saving; the lords are abusing the peasantry and oppressing the rising merchant class, the merchants are conniving against everyone, and the peasantry are being shipped off to be slaughtered by the northern aggressors. The Inqusition is running its own schemes. There are evil magic-users all over the place (I love the concept and portrayal of the Eaters), and they seem to know more about what's going on than we do.
Then at the end there's the whole mysterious business with Bayaz and the Seed, and suddenly most of the main characters are going off on a sea voyage that seems to be only loosely connected to what has happened so far. Half of this would have been enough to keep most people busy for three books. I'll have to pick up the next one and see where this goes.
The characters are the standout feature of this series for me so far. The setting is fine, the dialog is mostly very good, very occasionally slides into didacticism, the plot I'll get to later in this post. The action scenes are, as one of the blurbs promised, excellent. The people are occasionally frustrating, but on the whole they reward patience.
They are not uncomplicated, and that is a very good thing and, I think, difficult to pull off. Logen is easily the most sympathetic of the main characters--the barbarian warrior grown philosophical and somewhat ashamed of his life's path--but that past can't be disowned, and by the end of the book we've seen just how well-deserved is his epithet of "the Bloody-Nine." His little band are somewhat heavily painted with the Noble Savage palette--violent, dangerous men, but who at least live according to some code--and therefore rather show up most of the Union characters. Logen appears to be the only main character who possesses something like a normal sense of humor, which goes a long way toward making him likeable.
Jezal is the hardest for me to put up with; he's vain, shallow, and arrogant, and his only good quality seems to be that he's occasionally aware that he's lacking in quality, which gives one some hope that he'll improve over the series. (This morning I listened to a few chapters of Persuasion on the treadmill; he would have fit perfectly into the Austen milieu of petty, self-obsessed nobility.) Making his love interest a much more interesting character is a bit of a dangerous move, but it does give him something to strive for, and just when you thought his associate West was all Boy Scout, he goes and proves just how wrong that idea was. I'm hoping that Jezal will interact more productively with the other characters in the second book, perhaps grow a sense of perspective.
Glokta is downright fascinating. The smartest character in the cast (with the possible exception of Bayaz), he's an extremely ambiguous figure at this point. The slight softening of his character at the end of the first book was entirely surprising, but it's difficult to take him at face value, and one wonders whether emotion ever has a chance of trumping his survival instinct. His repeated wondering about his own motives got under my skin; for someone so keenly perceptive about humanity, and so evidently self-aware, to not be sure why he's doing what he's doing seems out of place to me. I expect that eventually we'll get an answer; I just hope that it lives up to the long tease. The deftly drawn internal politics of the Inquisition are one of the best parts of the book, I think. I also hope that at some point we get to see someone beat the living daylights out of Severard.
Maljinn is introduced later than the other viewpoint characters, and though it seems like she will have an important role, is something of a cypher at this point. I was surprised when she showed up, the book up to that point having a strongly male cast. I don't need female protagonists to enjoy a novel, and the society is reasonably realistic in its androcentrism, so I wouldn't have minded either way. I did find myself at one point wondering what GM allowed such a blatantly munchkined-out character into the campaign; so far her role has been to kick copious amounts of ass and be hinted about mysteriously.
There were a few things that niggled at me. Around 3/4 through I found myself thinking that he was being a bit too heavy-handed setting up the socio-political situation in the Union (see TV Tropes), to the point where at one point I sighed and went Yes, I remember that history class from my sophomore year. Get ON with it. Another niggle has to do with the map. There is no actual map in this book, but there is an extensive canvas and, as The Tough Guide to Fantasyland promises, we are obviously going to visit every. Last. Corner. of it. (The Tough Guide is hysterical, btw, and useful if you have ever thought about writing fantasy.)
The third problem is the plot. There is an insane amount of stuff going on here, and my fear as I finished up this volume is that it's all going to spin out of control. There's a double threat from the north in the form of Bethod and the Shanka, and from the south in the form of the Empire and this Prophet who is evidently their motivator. As presented so far, it's dubious as to whether the Union is worth saving; the lords are abusing the peasantry and oppressing the rising merchant class, the merchants are conniving against everyone, and the peasantry are being shipped off to be slaughtered by the northern aggressors. The Inqusition is running its own schemes. There are evil magic-users all over the place (I love the concept and portrayal of the Eaters), and they seem to know more about what's going on than we do.
Then at the end there's the whole mysterious business with Bayaz and the Seed, and suddenly most of the main characters are going off on a sea voyage that seems to be only loosely connected to what has happened so far. Half of this would have been enough to keep most people busy for three books. I'll have to pick up the next one and see where this goes.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
4. Bicycle Diaries
There is a distinct shortage of famous people in this book. Maybe if you're part of the art world you'll know more of the names (are there any famous artists these days?). It's a fun little ramble of a book. David Byrne is a fairly standard-issue US liberal, so I didn't come across much by way of philosophy that I found startling, but given all of the musical and other projects he's involved in, he does have a unique perspective. Since I've never been to the vast majority of the cities he talks about, I found plenty of interest, particularly the ones outside the US.
I always feel a bit sheepish when I read screeds about the unsustainable nature of our car-based culture; yes, I know, I'm part of the problem.
I always feel a bit sheepish when I read screeds about the unsustainable nature of our car-based culture; yes, I know, I'm part of the problem.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
3. Iorich
I hate to say this, but I am starting to wonder if Brust is losing his touch. I liked this one a lot better than the previous book (Jhegaala), but it felt rushed and a bit sloppy. The plot was okay to my mind, and it was nice to see Vlad back in his element, to meet up with characters we haven't seen in a while (I am fond of Kiera, though I almost wish Vlad had never found out, as I'm getting tired of the winking). I was astonished and somewhat peeved to find that we have skipped eight years in what I think of as the mainline continuity. We do finally get to see Cawti and young Vlad, though in a somewhat perfunctory fashion.
Perfunctory is also the word I want to use to describe the ending to Iorich. I think it would have been more interesting if Vlad had screwed it up, to be honest--had gotten the wrong guy, or something like that. For all of the years and the weird things he's been through, in this book he seemed to be operating on an autopilot keyed to the first couple of books; I'm not seeing the growth I would have expected to see with such a time lapse.
There is a lot of snappy dialog, lots of bits that I liked, and things move along briskly to a happy ending, but as a whole work...? I am starting to worry that Brust has no idea where to take the series at this point. There were Vlad's early years, and those were fine, and then his life sort of fell apart and we got into the whole massive meta-plot with the gods and the Jenoine and the Great Weapons, and then... well, I have no idea what happened, but we seem to be back in a new stasis, forward in time.
Vlad has been on the run from the entire Jhereg forever now (and yet manages to spend this book running around Adrilankha without a major problem), and has now managed to piss off the Left Hand as well as the Right. He's in a completely untenable position, it's getting a little old for this reader, and I'm not sure the author has a plan to get him out of it.
Of course, he also has a Great Weapon, which has yet to do anything, so far as I've noticed. It does, if I remember the early years of the series correctly, offer Vlad a hedge against the fact that the Jhereg wants to destroy his soul, and I will be quite interested to see if it is ever so employed.
Basically I enjoyed this book, I just wish that we would get some kind of resolution, or even discernable forward motion, on... something.
Perfunctory is also the word I want to use to describe the ending to Iorich. I think it would have been more interesting if Vlad had screwed it up, to be honest--had gotten the wrong guy, or something like that. For all of the years and the weird things he's been through, in this book he seemed to be operating on an autopilot keyed to the first couple of books; I'm not seeing the growth I would have expected to see with such a time lapse.
There is a lot of snappy dialog, lots of bits that I liked, and things move along briskly to a happy ending, but as a whole work...? I am starting to worry that Brust has no idea where to take the series at this point. There were Vlad's early years, and those were fine, and then his life sort of fell apart and we got into the whole massive meta-plot with the gods and the Jenoine and the Great Weapons, and then... well, I have no idea what happened, but we seem to be back in a new stasis, forward in time.
Vlad has been on the run from the entire Jhereg forever now (and yet manages to spend this book running around Adrilankha without a major problem), and has now managed to piss off the Left Hand as well as the Right. He's in a completely untenable position, it's getting a little old for this reader, and I'm not sure the author has a plan to get him out of it.
Of course, he also has a Great Weapon, which has yet to do anything, so far as I've noticed. It does, if I remember the early years of the series correctly, offer Vlad a hedge against the fact that the Jhereg wants to destroy his soul, and I will be quite interested to see if it is ever so employed.
Basically I enjoyed this book, I just wish that we would get some kind of resolution, or even discernable forward motion, on... something.
Monday, January 25, 2010
2. What We Eat When We Eat Alone
A delightful little dessert of a book, this makes no pretense to being a scientific survey. Instead it muses, in a pleasant, rambling fashion that recalls the best after-dinner discussions, exactly on what the title says: the things we feed ourselves when there is no one else to take into account, and why. There are recipes, and many of them sound worth making, but this isn't really a cookbook, more a browsing book.
Monday, January 11, 2010
1. Castle Perilous
I am going to steal an idea from my friend Brian and number the books as I post about them; that should make it easier to keep track of whether or not I'm meeting my modest little goal.
Which is off to a modest little start. Castle Perilous is an old book, my edition was published back in '88. I'm pretty sure that I haven't read it before. I have no memory of buying it, and must have picked it up during my tenure at the Harvard Book Store. It has two stripes on the bottom, indicating that it has been sold there twice as a used book, and they're going to get it back again if they want it. It was an undemanding read, but most of the time I was doing so all I could think of was how my new coterie of critiquers would rip into it.
The characters barely exist as such. They are bodies that do things (mostly running), not people. They spend most of their time being lost, complaining about being lost, and eating. The plot is simplistic. The villains verge on motiveless. The ending, I found enormously unsatisfying. It might make a halfway decent fantasy-action film--the shallow characterization and Lots of Shiny Stuff would be pretty easy to translate--but it's an inch of shelf space I'll be getting back now.
Which is off to a modest little start. Castle Perilous is an old book, my edition was published back in '88. I'm pretty sure that I haven't read it before. I have no memory of buying it, and must have picked it up during my tenure at the Harvard Book Store. It has two stripes on the bottom, indicating that it has been sold there twice as a used book, and they're going to get it back again if they want it. It was an undemanding read, but most of the time I was doing so all I could think of was how my new coterie of critiquers would rip into it.
The characters barely exist as such. They are bodies that do things (mostly running), not people. They spend most of their time being lost, complaining about being lost, and eating. The plot is simplistic. The villains verge on motiveless. The ending, I found enormously unsatisfying. It might make a halfway decent fantasy-action film--the shallow characterization and Lots of Shiny Stuff would be pretty easy to translate--but it's an inch of shelf space I'll be getting back now.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Unseen Academicals
I will never be able to turn this into a book review blog, because I always feel like I ought to read a book twice before I can properly review it, and who has time for that? But I do want to make sure I keep track of what I'm reading, what with the New Years resolution and all.
We have a long-observed Christmas tradition in which D* gets me whatever new work Terry Pratchett has put out (he now has more shelf feet than any other author in our library). Even a bad Pratchett book is usually pretty good. Unseen Academicals is not a bad book, but it may be impossible to fully grok unless you've been brought up with English football; I don't think American sports fandom works quite the same way. I liked it quite a bit, not least because he continues to introduce new characters and themes to the Discworld. I laughed out loud at several points. He plays somewhat fast and loose with his own continuity, which is entirely normal for him, so I don't mind.
One of my recurring thoughts about Shakespeare is that he could not leave well enough alone, that given a stereotype or a hackneyed storyline he would happily use it, but could never resist adding complications just for the hell, or the poetry, of it. I had that same thought after reading this book; there's a couple of fun cameos from other books, but the main characters are entirely new, and they carry the story along well--and I wondered at points if they carried the author along, as well, having started out as simple sketches and finishing as something quite other.
Reading any Pratchett book now is a somewhat melancholy experience, but so far, he's still got it.
We have a long-observed Christmas tradition in which D* gets me whatever new work Terry Pratchett has put out (he now has more shelf feet than any other author in our library). Even a bad Pratchett book is usually pretty good. Unseen Academicals is not a bad book, but it may be impossible to fully grok unless you've been brought up with English football; I don't think American sports fandom works quite the same way. I liked it quite a bit, not least because he continues to introduce new characters and themes to the Discworld. I laughed out loud at several points. He plays somewhat fast and loose with his own continuity, which is entirely normal for him, so I don't mind.
One of my recurring thoughts about Shakespeare is that he could not leave well enough alone, that given a stereotype or a hackneyed storyline he would happily use it, but could never resist adding complications just for the hell, or the poetry, of it. I had that same thought after reading this book; there's a couple of fun cameos from other books, but the main characters are entirely new, and they carry the story along well--and I wondered at points if they carried the author along, as well, having started out as simple sketches and finishing as something quite other.
Reading any Pratchett book now is a somewhat melancholy experience, but so far, he's still got it.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Reconsidering Use of Weapons (spoilers)
Now that I've cooled off a little bit, I am not so annoyed as I was when I first finished reading. There's a lot of great writing in this book, and it rewards repeat reading. Kind of wish we knew how things turn out, but maybe it's better this way; really, there's nowhere good it can go from here. I must say that I do think there was some authorial cheating involved, namely his inclusion of scenes from the POV of the actual Zakalwe, and two instances where he plays tricks with pronouns. I still think it would have been a perfectly fine story without the twist, but it's his book. Just for my own amusement, and in no particular order, here are the problems I had.
I blame Sma
I do, too. How do you say "background check" in Marain? If you're going to put the fate of entire civilizations into the hands of one guy with a gun fetish, perhaps you should put a tiny bit of effort into finding out what makes him tick over the course of the decades he's working for you. Particularly since there's already been one meeting with Livueta--why didn't the whole story come out at that point? How do they know she's so immensely important to him without even wondering why, especially after she tried to kill him?
While I'm on the subject, that was an incredibly shitty stunt they pulled on him on Balzeit. (You can tell I like a book when I get indignant on behalf of a character.)
Say you will forgive me
Let me think about this a second you made her sister into A FUCKING CHAIR. With a cushion. How does "no" sound? You seem like a reasonably smart guy; anyone with the fraction of emotional intelligence required to even pretend to relate normally to other people ought to be able to figure out that there isn't a miracle big enough. Especially after eighty years to think about it.
If he had just killed her, "sorry about this, but you need to know that I am not fucking around here" fashion, I might have been able to buy it; you take hostages, sometimes you have to follow through, war sucks, etc. Coming up with something that Hannibal Lecter would approve of is considerably harder to take.
I don't want to talk about it
I understand that, but since we only understand the story through you, we have a problem: When we finally come to the root events, we learn jack about the motivations behind any of it--we don't know what the civil war was about, or how these two came to be on opposite sides, and he's pretty coy on the topic of who won. In order to set up his gotcha, Banks has us follow the wrong character at the crucial point; we never find out what he was thinking. He does nothing remotely comparable elsewhere in the story, leaving us with this singularly grotesque, wildly disproportionate act, and no explanation.
Was that really his name?
I am also left unconvinced by the name change. It strikes me as a melodramatic thing to do, and there doesn't seem to be an ounce of melodrama in his character.
All of which said, I really like the book. Glad I finally got around to reading it. I will be taking a bit of a break from Banks, though--got lots of books for Christmas!
I blame Sma
I do, too. How do you say "background check" in Marain? If you're going to put the fate of entire civilizations into the hands of one guy with a gun fetish, perhaps you should put a tiny bit of effort into finding out what makes him tick over the course of the decades he's working for you. Particularly since there's already been one meeting with Livueta--why didn't the whole story come out at that point? How do they know she's so immensely important to him without even wondering why, especially after she tried to kill him?
While I'm on the subject, that was an incredibly shitty stunt they pulled on him on Balzeit. (You can tell I like a book when I get indignant on behalf of a character.)
Say you will forgive me
Let me think about this a second you made her sister into A FUCKING CHAIR. With a cushion. How does "no" sound? You seem like a reasonably smart guy; anyone with the fraction of emotional intelligence required to even pretend to relate normally to other people ought to be able to figure out that there isn't a miracle big enough. Especially after eighty years to think about it.
If he had just killed her, "sorry about this, but you need to know that I am not fucking around here" fashion, I might have been able to buy it; you take hostages, sometimes you have to follow through, war sucks, etc. Coming up with something that Hannibal Lecter would approve of is considerably harder to take.
I don't want to talk about it
I understand that, but since we only understand the story through you, we have a problem: When we finally come to the root events, we learn jack about the motivations behind any of it--we don't know what the civil war was about, or how these two came to be on opposite sides, and he's pretty coy on the topic of who won. In order to set up his gotcha, Banks has us follow the wrong character at the crucial point; we never find out what he was thinking. He does nothing remotely comparable elsewhere in the story, leaving us with this singularly grotesque, wildly disproportionate act, and no explanation.
Was that really his name?
I am also left unconvinced by the name change. It strikes me as a melodramatic thing to do, and there doesn't seem to be an ounce of melodrama in his character.
All of which said, I really like the book. Glad I finally got around to reading it. I will be taking a bit of a break from Banks, though--got lots of books for Christmas!
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Use of Weapons
One of the things I find interesting about the Culture books (I have now read three, all this year) is their implicit self-criticism. It's clear that as a civilization, the Culture thinks rather highly of itself, and that it has plenty of reason for it. Mortals aren't likely to get any closer to perfection. That it still has need for Special Circumstances, that SC has its uses for broken people, makes it plain without actually saying so that paradise is far from perfect.
Of course, if everything was perfect there wouldn't be a plot. The books generally use the Culture itself as a backdrop, a source of contrasts and grist for philosophizing; the story itself comes out of wilder, more barbarous places where drama is still in vogue. Hardly any of Use of Weapons takes place in the Culture at all, but it is always present even when silent. The story is much smaller in scope than the last one I read (Matter). It is, basically, all about this one guy and the various wars he finds himself in. I am tempted to shelve it next to The Lions of al-Rassan, which is also about war, why we do it, why we don't, what human life should be about and what it often is instead.
In my last Banks review I mentioned that his characters are difficult to get inside. They tend to be either distant or fairly unlikeable. This one gets much, much deeper into an individual character, getting the closest I have come so far to sympathy, so that halfway through this book I wanted to smack the author on his behalf--he goes through an awful lot in the course of this book. You could certainly argue that he brings it on himself, but there were several points where I put the book down for a moment and thought it would be awfully nice if he would catch a break, just once.
At the end, I wanted to smack Banks again, but for entirely different reasons. He had a perfectly fine story and just had to throw in a twist that threw this reader right out of said story and into indignant WTF?!-land. It's a cheap gotcha, and at a remove of five minutes after finishing the book, I am unable to reconcile it with the rest of what happens--it creates a huge, inexplicable, human-nature-defying hole, and the only way I can rescue it from itself is to think that we are treated at the end to an unreliable speaker. The alternatives seem to be:
Finish the story, and there is this vast sucking sound as a lacuna labeled WHY? appears in the middle of it. Somebody who would do that is so far around the bend that the light from sanity will never reach them. To even think up something like that means that you are the kind of person who lies awake at night trying to invent new and exciting ways to be psychotic; it's not a crime of passion, not an accident, not something that you're going to wake up from the next day thinking "hey, maybe I shouldn't have done that...." It is not something that could in any conceivable universe be atoned for, and it makes complete hash out of everything that happens afterward (time-line speaking -- the novel unfolds past and present in parallel).
On another note, I also find it interesting that Banks can't seem to write women, or doesn't want to (Zelazny never got the hang of it either). Djan Seriy in Matter doesn't come across too badly, and Diziet Sma has her moments, but one doesn't get any particular sense of these people as being female. Apparently, you either get to be a desexualized action hero or an oversexed manipulator.
I'm going to read this one again, see if maybe I missed something that will be obvious in hindsight, but I'm also likely to exercise what I call fan prerogative and pretend the ending is different. (It's my brain, I can do that if I want.) Or maybe I'll go read something cheerful instead....
Of course, if everything was perfect there wouldn't be a plot. The books generally use the Culture itself as a backdrop, a source of contrasts and grist for philosophizing; the story itself comes out of wilder, more barbarous places where drama is still in vogue. Hardly any of Use of Weapons takes place in the Culture at all, but it is always present even when silent. The story is much smaller in scope than the last one I read (Matter). It is, basically, all about this one guy and the various wars he finds himself in. I am tempted to shelve it next to The Lions of al-Rassan, which is also about war, why we do it, why we don't, what human life should be about and what it often is instead.
In my last Banks review I mentioned that his characters are difficult to get inside. They tend to be either distant or fairly unlikeable. This one gets much, much deeper into an individual character, getting the closest I have come so far to sympathy, so that halfway through this book I wanted to smack the author on his behalf--he goes through an awful lot in the course of this book. You could certainly argue that he brings it on himself, but there were several points where I put the book down for a moment and thought it would be awfully nice if he would catch a break, just once.
At the end, I wanted to smack Banks again, but for entirely different reasons. He had a perfectly fine story and just had to throw in a twist that threw this reader right out of said story and into indignant WTF?!-land. It's a cheap gotcha, and at a remove of five minutes after finishing the book, I am unable to reconcile it with the rest of what happens--it creates a huge, inexplicable, human-nature-defying hole, and the only way I can rescue it from itself is to think that we are treated at the end to an unreliable speaker. The alternatives seem to be:
- SC can't tell when they have a certified sociopath on their hands, in which case what good are they
- SC knows and doesn't care, in which case the normally entertaining question of their moral authority has been definitively answered in the negative
- the character in question is no longer a sociopath, which means that in a book that is 3/4 back-story, the author decided to leave out a crucial point of character development purely so he could say "ha ha" at the end, which is a dick move in my opinion
Finish the story, and there is this vast sucking sound as a lacuna labeled WHY? appears in the middle of it. Somebody who would do that is so far around the bend that the light from sanity will never reach them. To even think up something like that means that you are the kind of person who lies awake at night trying to invent new and exciting ways to be psychotic; it's not a crime of passion, not an accident, not something that you're going to wake up from the next day thinking "hey, maybe I shouldn't have done that...." It is not something that could in any conceivable universe be atoned for, and it makes complete hash out of everything that happens afterward (time-line speaking -- the novel unfolds past and present in parallel).
On another note, I also find it interesting that Banks can't seem to write women, or doesn't want to (Zelazny never got the hang of it either). Djan Seriy in Matter doesn't come across too badly, and Diziet Sma has her moments, but one doesn't get any particular sense of these people as being female. Apparently, you either get to be a desexualized action hero or an oversexed manipulator.
I'm going to read this one again, see if maybe I missed something that will be obvious in hindsight, but I'm also likely to exercise what I call fan prerogative and pretend the ending is different. (It's my brain, I can do that if I want.) Or maybe I'll go read something cheerful instead....
Friday, December 18, 2009
Matter
After several weeks of chipping away at it, I finally finished Iain Banks' Matter. I am not sure that I can write a proper review of it without reading it again, which I really don't have time for right now. It's a big book. There was an awful lot in it that I liked. I'm not sure it would be possible to top this one for spectacular scenery--I am going to be carrying the image of the Morthenveld nestworld around for a good long while.
Much as I enjoy his writing, Banks strikes me as a little weak on characters; they tend to be interesting people to follow around, but one doesn't often really like them, and I never seem to bond with them the way I do some. In this book, the minor characters actually often struck me as better drawn than the main ones, which may be odd. I was more sad about the Liveware Problem than about anybody else (one of the joys of the Culture books is just how much personality the ships have).
The plot is vast and intricate, operating on both large and small scales, and that may have turned out to be a problem for him. I found the ending of the book extremely unsatisfying, in ways that are quite impossible to explain without including spoilers, which I would hate to do. It was a very enjoyable read for about nine tenths of the way through, but I'm not sure what I think of the way he wrapped everything up--or actually, the way he didn't wrap everything up, since a thousand loose ends were either ignored or literally nuked out of existence. The epilogue should, in my opinion, not have been written; resolving that one issue just pointed up the way everything else didn't get resolved, and it read as if he'd done it in five minutes, to boot.
Continuing the Banks kick, I am now halfway through Use of Weapons and trying to discern whether any other character on my bookshelves has survived as much crap as this one. The only candidate I have come up with so far is Tempus from Thieves' World, and he got vivisected. Maybe if you take the entire Black Company as an aggregate...? Not a sentimentalist, Mr. Banks.
Much as I enjoy his writing, Banks strikes me as a little weak on characters; they tend to be interesting people to follow around, but one doesn't often really like them, and I never seem to bond with them the way I do some. In this book, the minor characters actually often struck me as better drawn than the main ones, which may be odd. I was more sad about the Liveware Problem than about anybody else (one of the joys of the Culture books is just how much personality the ships have).
The plot is vast and intricate, operating on both large and small scales, and that may have turned out to be a problem for him. I found the ending of the book extremely unsatisfying, in ways that are quite impossible to explain without including spoilers, which I would hate to do. It was a very enjoyable read for about nine tenths of the way through, but I'm not sure what I think of the way he wrapped everything up--or actually, the way he didn't wrap everything up, since a thousand loose ends were either ignored or literally nuked out of existence. The epilogue should, in my opinion, not have been written; resolving that one issue just pointed up the way everything else didn't get resolved, and it read as if he'd done it in five minutes, to boot.
Continuing the Banks kick, I am now halfway through Use of Weapons and trying to discern whether any other character on my bookshelves has survived as much crap as this one. The only candidate I have come up with so far is Tempus from Thieves' World, and he got vivisected. Maybe if you take the entire Black Company as an aggregate...? Not a sentimentalist, Mr. Banks.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Green Rider Comment
50 pages in, and I wonder if I'm being too harsh on this book, but... "Eletians?" Call an elf an elf, woman.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Vacation Reading
Once upon a time, I left for vacations with a big stack of books in my luggage. Eventually, I realized that I never read them, and I stopped bringing books. For the past few years the only thing I ever managed to read up at the lake was the cottage copy of Terry Pratchett's Lost Continent (I still have no idea how it got there), and maybe a magazine or two.
In high school, college, and early adulthood, it wasn't rare for me to read a book every single day. Not generally demanding books, granted; I do gravitate toward the fluffier end of the SF/F spectrum, but still. How I've gone from that to struggling toward a goal of a book a month is a long story, mainly to do with children and the decisions that came after them.
With this vacation, I tried to be a little more ambitious; after all, Lydia is older and more able to self-entertain, and JJ still naps in the afternoon. I had my copy of Jhegaala. I had an Ian Rankin novel (The Black Book) a coworker loaned me. (I still have the third of the Dresden Files, come to that, but I kind of dread resuming it.) I even lugged along The Middle Sea, which I got for my birthday--two years ago, or three?
And... I read! Jhegaala turned out to be something of a disappointment, which is always sad because when Brust is on, he is on, and when he's not, you feel like a massive opportunity has been missed. It was okay, but it was an episode that didn't really add anything to the Story of Vlad. It's set in Fenario, which is fine, but all the action is in one tiny town, so it can't be said that we get to know the land or the people. None of the old characters show up (I spent pages waiting for Aliera to appear and kick some ass... never happened; in fact, there was a striking shortage of ass-kicking throughout). The characters are almost universally people I have no interest in meeting again, which is good I guess, because we're not likely to do so. Vlad doesn't get any insights into his own situation or nature. I can't even figure out exactly when in his timeline it's supposed to have taken place--before Issola, since he still has Spellbreaker and doesn't know some rather important things, but after his split with Cawti, but including epilogue-type action it covers about a year so that doesn't seem to work... I confess to being confused.
Spoilers ahead! The Black Book was my first exposure to Ian Rankin. I'm not really into the modern crime-mystery genre, and I found this to be an okay book, but I'm not likely to read more of him. There were a ridiculous number of characters and a truly baroque plot, which the author seemed to think all had to be wrapped into a single final package, even if it didn't quite fit in the box. I found the entire McPhail subplot extraneous and pretty distasteful. Eddie and Pat's murder of Willie seemed waaaaay out of line for either character. Getting the final plot explanation in the form of a dead character's journal seems to be cheating. The whole thing left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied. Maybe if I'd read the earlier books, it would all have made a bit more sense.
I'm nowhere near done with The Middle Sea, but so far it has also been something of a disappointment; other than some stuff on the Norman settlements in southern Italy, Mr. Norwich has presented little that is new to me, mainly giving out a blazingly fast overview of ancient and early medieval times, much like you would find in any general history of the era. For some reason, I had expected the sea itself, and the surrounding landscape, to play something of a role in the story, but so far this has not really been the case. It makes me want to write the book I wanted this one to be, which is always a dangerous notion.
I also spent time browsing through two new cookbooks: 660 Curries, a longtime darling of the Cooking Light forums, and Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics. The first looks fun and challenging, though a bit complicated, and the author's tone is occasionally intrusive, and Ina Garten can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. I am hoping to get back into a new recipe groove once I have a chance to sit down and do some planning. Farmer's market today, we'll see what they have....
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
This Is Not a Game
I started reading TINAG some time last month, read half of it in a day, hit a snag of some sort--possibly involving exhaustion--and set it down. This past weekend as part of my "read, dammit" resolution, I picked it back up. After the long hiatus, it was something of an act of will, but I'm certainly glad that I did it, quickly picked up the steam I had lost and finishing the read in good time.
I am delighted to find myself in the target audience for this book: people who are reasonably plugged in to the internet, aware of how software and its creators work, and who know a thing or two about role-playing.
TINAG is possibly the most fun thing Williams has done since Drake Maijstral. Between this and Implied Spaces he seems to have found a new devil-may-care attitude toward writing, a bit of a change from the occasionally frowning seriousness of some earlier work. Not that these are humorous books by any stretch, but he doesn't seem to be sweating the small stuff, instead focusing on deliciously complicated plots, a handful of compelling characters, and vast quantities of Cool.
It's right-now setting and fast pace contribute to something that might even be called hip, unless that's become a pejorative. The cast is intriguing (Austin, BJ, Charlie, Dagmar--I am still trying to figure out if that means something, or is just an authorial whim), the supporting characters in particular, and it's clear that Williams knows something about gaming, and gamers who--hurrah--get to be included in as something other than Cheetos-stained comic relief.
I'm not sure it's High Art, and it's probably not going to age very well--too much is dependent on the current technological and political world--but I found it an extremely fun read and recommend it without hesitatation.
With this one under my belt, I have read a whopping seven new books this year. Not exactly something to brag about, but better than I've done in some years, and I should be able to read five more by the end of the year.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Blueberry Crumble Bars
Work has slowed down some. I have time and mental energy to do other things, and I find myself spending a great deal of time thinking about food. This feels both pleasant and right, a return to the self I am used to having around. I've been catching up on my magazines, reading a lot of food blogs, enjoying the glimpses of other people's lives, sometimes wondering if all of this new media might have a salutary effect, making us slightly more empathetic toward one another.
On Sunday I got my act together and did some baking while everyone else was out. It had been weeks since I made any bread, and I was getting tired of store-bought. Besides which, L will only eat what she calls "yellow bread" from the store, but she'll eat my half-whole-wheat--not sure why. Texture, perhaps, as I do tend to make my sandwich bread relatively soft. Anway. I did that, and I made some mini-muffins, the same recipe I always use because I always have the stuff around.
And I made blueberry bars. The advent of famer's market season means that new berries will soon be moving in. I had a bag left over from last year and needed to do something with them--something that wouldn't make a big deal of the fact that they were not particularly pretty. I had made this recipe once before and thought it was all right, and a change from my usual cakes. I made up a pan of these and brought most of them in to the office on Tuesday.
Nearly every single person who had one thanked me. I got one audible, "Oh my God!" and two requests for the recipe. I didn't get that reaction last time, but I'll take it any day!
Blueberry Crumble Bars
Tish Boyle, "The Good Cookie"
Crust:
1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
2/3 c firmly packed light brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
11 Tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 large egg
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Blueberry Filling:
3/4 c granulated sugar
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
2 c blueberries
Crumb Topping:
1 c all-purpose flour
1/3 c firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/4 c granulated sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
Make the crust:
Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350F. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9x13-inch baking pan.
Place the flour, brown sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times to blend. Scatter the butter cubes over the flour mixture and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal, with a few pea-sized pieces of butter, about six seconds.
In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, lemon zest, and vanilla extract until blended. Add the egg mixture to the food processor and process for a few seconds, just until the dough is blended but still crumbly. (Do not allow the dough to form a ball around the blade, or the crust will be tough.)
Turn the dough out into the prepared pan. With floured fingertips, press the dough evenly into the bottom of the pan.
(Note: Do *not* prepake this crust.)
Make the filling:
In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and ginger. Add the blueberries and toss to coat well. Spread the mixture evenly over the crust.
Make the topping:
In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, sugars, cinnamon, and salt until blended. Stir in the melted butter until the mixture comes together. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the blueberry filling.
Bake the bars for 48-50 minutes, until the topping is lightly browned and the filling is bubbling. Cool the bars completely in the pan on a wire rack. Cut into 24 bars.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Fool Moon
I am happy to report that the second of the Dresden Files is considerably better than the first. Mainly because, after a few rather painful chapters of setup (dialog still sucks), the book is almost entirely action, which as I mentioned before he seems to be decent at.
However, I'm starting to wonder if Butcher (I do hope that's a pseudonym) learned to plot from watching action films. That is literally the only reason I can think of for the inclusion of a sex scene about three quarters of the way through the book. I have to admit that I skipped past it, shaking my head the while. I mean... seriously? Our Hero has spent the past several days being bounced from one bruising experience to another, including being shot, his only moments of respite the result of being knocked unconscious, not to mention having recently witnessed a scene of slaughter that would have most people in therapy for the rest of their lives, and he's going to have sex with his girlfriend? Now?
Later on, he jumps out of a moving car. Mr. Butcher, it seems, has not yet settled on what degree of realism these books are going to support, which is kind of a problem when you a) set those books in a real-life city and b) have your main character going on and on about real-world problems, including how much it hurts to get shot, punched, kicked, and so forth. Dresden still needs to shut up and stop whining so much.
The next one is called Grave Peril. If it turns out to be about zombies, I'm going to have to give him another heavy ding for ripping off Tanya Huff's Blood series as well as for the bad puns. I'm getting a little curious about the understory he's developing, though; we'll see if he gives it proper attention. You just can't have an entire police precinct slaughtered by werewolves and still have a city--and more importantly a police force--that entirely refuses to believe in the supernatural. It's just not going to fly.
However, I'm starting to wonder if Butcher (I do hope that's a pseudonym) learned to plot from watching action films. That is literally the only reason I can think of for the inclusion of a sex scene about three quarters of the way through the book. I have to admit that I skipped past it, shaking my head the while. I mean... seriously? Our Hero has spent the past several days being bounced from one bruising experience to another, including being shot, his only moments of respite the result of being knocked unconscious, not to mention having recently witnessed a scene of slaughter that would have most people in therapy for the rest of their lives, and he's going to have sex with his girlfriend? Now?
Later on, he jumps out of a moving car. Mr. Butcher, it seems, has not yet settled on what degree of realism these books are going to support, which is kind of a problem when you a) set those books in a real-life city and b) have your main character going on and on about real-world problems, including how much it hurts to get shot, punched, kicked, and so forth. Dresden still needs to shut up and stop whining so much.
The next one is called Grave Peril. If it turns out to be about zombies, I'm going to have to give him another heavy ding for ripping off Tanya Huff's Blood series as well as for the bad puns. I'm getting a little curious about the understory he's developing, though; we'll see if he gives it proper attention. You just can't have an entire police precinct slaughtered by werewolves and still have a city--and more importantly a police force--that entirely refuses to believe in the supernatural. It's just not going to fly.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Implied Spaces
After finally finishing Storm Front I wanted to keep going, but wasn't ready to face the second in the Dresden series*, so I picked up a book I had started reading months ago and then put down for some reason, Walter Jon Williams' Implied Spaces. This time I read it straight through in the course of the weekend, and it left me refreshed, thrilled, and eager for more.
Williams is one of the most philosophically-minded writers I have encountered. In that (and no other way, mind you) he reminds me considerably of Terry Pratchett. He can't seem to stop writing about death, for one thing. Knight Moves is primarily a dialog between chosen immortal and chosen mortal, with a supporting chorus of those who do not have the choice; in Aristoi the human lifespan has been incredibly extended, though that extended body is liable to catastrophic breakdown at some unpredictable point, lending a certain tension to existence; and in Implied Spaces a combination of memory backups and nanotech-based regeneration have rendered the entire issue moot: if you die, a new you can be created, your memories (since the last backup) and identity intact.
That this would in no way solve the fundamental problem of humanness is a large part of the point.
Despite its extistentialist backdrop, this is not a meditative novel--Williams handwaves a lot of things he's not interested in right now, such as why there would still be money, or jobs for that matter, in this future, and whether an identical copy of you is really, well, you. He's got places to go and neat stuff to do; I kept thinking about Steven Brust's inspirational maxim, now I'm going to show you something really cool. And he does, in spades. This book is some of the best of what science fiction can be--imaginative, thought-provoking, laugh-out-loud funny in places, a fast-paced adventure with moments of brilliant beauty and a number of unexpected twists. It brightened the weekend (which was otherwise mostly spent with a sick little kid) considerably.
Oh, and I looked it up, and squinch is in fact a word. I wonder if that was the germ of the entire book?
* Fool Moon, which I have since started reading. Though there were several places in the first chapter that made me cringe outright, it picked up a bit after that. It suffers from the curse of all not-exactly-series novels, in that it has to repeat a fair amount of background and description in every book, since readers can start anywhere; I'm not sure how many times I'll be able to stand the description of Harry's apartment, and find it more than a little annoying when secondary characters are forced to spout bits of canned background.
Williams is one of the most philosophically-minded writers I have encountered. In that (and no other way, mind you) he reminds me considerably of Terry Pratchett. He can't seem to stop writing about death, for one thing. Knight Moves is primarily a dialog between chosen immortal and chosen mortal, with a supporting chorus of those who do not have the choice; in Aristoi the human lifespan has been incredibly extended, though that extended body is liable to catastrophic breakdown at some unpredictable point, lending a certain tension to existence; and in Implied Spaces a combination of memory backups and nanotech-based regeneration have rendered the entire issue moot: if you die, a new you can be created, your memories (since the last backup) and identity intact.
That this would in no way solve the fundamental problem of humanness is a large part of the point.
Despite its extistentialist backdrop, this is not a meditative novel--Williams handwaves a lot of things he's not interested in right now, such as why there would still be money, or jobs for that matter, in this future, and whether an identical copy of you is really, well, you. He's got places to go and neat stuff to do; I kept thinking about Steven Brust's inspirational maxim, now I'm going to show you something really cool. And he does, in spades. This book is some of the best of what science fiction can be--imaginative, thought-provoking, laugh-out-loud funny in places, a fast-paced adventure with moments of brilliant beauty and a number of unexpected twists. It brightened the weekend (which was otherwise mostly spent with a sick little kid) considerably.
Oh, and I looked it up, and squinch is in fact a word. I wonder if that was the germ of the entire book?
* Fool Moon, which I have since started reading. Though there were several places in the first chapter that made me cringe outright, it picked up a bit after that. It suffers from the curse of all not-exactly-series novels, in that it has to repeat a fair amount of background and description in every book, since readers can start anywhere; I'm not sure how many times I'll be able to stand the description of Harry's apartment, and find it more than a little annoying when secondary characters are forced to spout bits of canned background.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Storm Front
So about, um, six months ago now one of my co-workers loaned me the first three of the Dresden File books. I just finally got through the first one, Storm Front. Overall rating: meh.
His action scenes are good, and some of the magic was entertainingly inventive. Some of it, of course, was blatantly cribbed from urban fantasists of yore (there's a fairy summoning almost straight from War for the Oaks), and from Harry Potter (potions and dog Latin, for pity's sake... I find very difficult to forgive--is the real thing that difficult?).
But then, the entire book feels like it was written after spending much time in careful study of Glen Cook's Garrett books, which is kind of depressing, since while Garrett has his moments, Cook has written a lot of other things that are much better. And even if he hadn't, what was refreshing and interesting in Sweet Silver Blues now just comes across as if Butcher had it open on the table while he wrote. The dialog is downright painful in places ("are you a good guy?" seriously?), the secondary characters are simplistic--there is Good Cop, Sloppy Cop, Cool Mob Boss, and in the end, Villain, all straight out of the box. The only one who seems to have an inner life and some potential to be interesting gets killed off.
And finally, Harry spends way too much page time thinking variations on, "I'm screwed." We know that; Harry starts the book screwed, in so many different ways that when the actual plot shows up it feels like piling on. It's not fun when a first-person narrator spends much, if any, amount of time feeling sorry for himself; the rest of us would like to get on with it, please.
I've got two more to go through, so I'll see if he improves with practice.
His action scenes are good, and some of the magic was entertainingly inventive. Some of it, of course, was blatantly cribbed from urban fantasists of yore (there's a fairy summoning almost straight from War for the Oaks), and from Harry Potter (potions and dog Latin, for pity's sake... I find very difficult to forgive--is the real thing that difficult?).
But then, the entire book feels like it was written after spending much time in careful study of Glen Cook's Garrett books, which is kind of depressing, since while Garrett has his moments, Cook has written a lot of other things that are much better. And even if he hadn't, what was refreshing and interesting in Sweet Silver Blues now just comes across as if Butcher had it open on the table while he wrote. The dialog is downright painful in places ("are you a good guy?" seriously?), the secondary characters are simplistic--there is Good Cop, Sloppy Cop, Cool Mob Boss, and in the end, Villain, all straight out of the box. The only one who seems to have an inner life and some potential to be interesting gets killed off.
And finally, Harry spends way too much page time thinking variations on, "I'm screwed." We know that; Harry starts the book screwed, in so many different ways that when the actual plot shows up it feels like piling on. It's not fun when a first-person narrator spends much, if any, amount of time feeling sorry for himself; the rest of us would like to get on with it, please.
I've got two more to go through, so I'll see if he improves with practice.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Toujours Provence
This is the book that I picked up while we were in Providence on Valentine's Day. I hate to leave a used book store without buying something--it's so hard to keep these stores going--and I figured that even with my schedule of late, I should be able to get through this.
I've read three of his other collections, and found myself disappointed by this one. Without any sort of organizing theme, it's really just a collection of anecdotes that didn't make the cut previously, and probably shouldn't have this time; some are amusing, but too many of them touch on subjects we already know without adding luster. A "gotta get paid" book if ever I saw one. I'll keep rereading French Lessons regularly, and probably give this one a miss.
I've read three of his other collections, and found myself disappointed by this one. Without any sort of organizing theme, it's really just a collection of anecdotes that didn't make the cut previously, and probably shouldn't have this time; some are amusing, but too many of them touch on subjects we already know without adding luster. A "gotta get paid" book if ever I saw one. I'll keep rereading French Lessons regularly, and probably give this one a miss.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Whole Wheat Orange Juice Muffins
Lately it seems like baking anything other than bread is something I do for company. This is not good for my mental health, or for my baking skills. This morning, after another up-and-down night with the Little Guy Who Does Not Sleep, Not Even When He's Tucked All Cozy Between Mommy and Daddy, I got up around 5:30, checked my email, did my usual web rounds, and did my usual musings to the effect of, Everyone else is still in bed. I could do something useful.... Except this time, instead of heading off to another pointless web site, I actually did it! I got up from my chair and made muffins.
OK, I realize this does not exactly qualify as heroics, but it's the little things, right? In this case, the very little things, since in a moment of wild abandon I hauled out my mini-muffin pans. I have no idea why I have these, and I have only previously used them to make party appetizers. But today I wanted to make muffins, and the idea of a bounty of miniature ones pleased me, so here we are.
This is my standard muffin recipe, since it uses things I always have around. Plus of course it's tasty, appallingly easy, and you can tell yourself it's okay to eat a lot of them because there's whole wheat flour. Yum. I am doubly pleased with myself, because I have been meaning to do this for weeks--why suffer through stale grocery store bagels or overpriced donut shop fare, when it only take five minutes to whip up a batch of these suckers?
Whole Wheat Orange Juice Muffins
Also, I have been rereading bits of Much Depends on Dinner, which D got out recently and left where I could pick it up (I get a lot of my reading material from things he's left lying around). It's a fascinating book, full of weird trivia (like the fact that there are caverns under Detroit where salt has been mined out... I've never wanted to visit Detroit before!). It's not entirely free of preachiness, the besetting sin of food writing, but it does at least endeavor to take a balanced approach, and has just a ton of fascinating historical tidbits. A fun read, even if it does make me long for summer's fresh corn more than is good for me in January.
OK, I realize this does not exactly qualify as heroics, but it's the little things, right? In this case, the very little things, since in a moment of wild abandon I hauled out my mini-muffin pans. I have no idea why I have these, and I have only previously used them to make party appetizers. But today I wanted to make muffins, and the idea of a bounty of miniature ones pleased me, so here we are.
This is my standard muffin recipe, since it uses things I always have around. Plus of course it's tasty, appallingly easy, and you can tell yourself it's okay to eat a lot of them because there's whole wheat flour. Yum. I am doubly pleased with myself, because I have been meaning to do this for weeks--why suffer through stale grocery store bagels or overpriced donut shop fare, when it only take five minutes to whip up a batch of these suckers?
Whole Wheat Orange Juice Muffins
Also, I have been rereading bits of Much Depends on Dinner, which D got out recently and left where I could pick it up (I get a lot of my reading material from things he's left lying around). It's a fascinating book, full of weird trivia (like the fact that there are caverns under Detroit where salt has been mined out... I've never wanted to visit Detroit before!). It's not entirely free of preachiness, the besetting sin of food writing, but it does at least endeavor to take a balanced approach, and has just a ton of fascinating historical tidbits. A fun read, even if it does make me long for summer's fresh corn more than is good for me in January.
Monday, January 5, 2009
I hate Runny Babbit
With apologies to the late Mr. Silverstein, but Runny Babbit has to be the most annoying children's book I have yet come across. The conceit gets old on page 2, leaving the book nothing more than a lengthy and obnoxious earworm. And of course, for several weeks before the holidays, L wanted to hear nothing else every night before she went to bed.
Fortunately, we have gotten off that since Christmas, and on to a collection of Just So Stories that I got her. "The Beginning of the Armadillos" is the current favorite, and many of the characters have started appearing in her play.
Fortunately, we have gotten off that since Christmas, and on to a collection of Just So Stories that I got her. "The Beginning of the Armadillos" is the current favorite, and many of the characters have started appearing in her play.
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