Month: March 2008

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Pierce, Tamora: (210) Melting Stones (audio)

Tamora Pierce’s Melting Stones is a novel that has been released first as a full-cast audiobook; it won’t be out in hardcover until October. It takes place at the same time as The Will of the Empress: Briar has accompanied Sandry and his other foster-sisters to Namorn, leaving his student Evvy with his former teachers Lark and Rosethorn. But Evvy’s gotten in some minor trouble at the temple, so Rosethorn takes her along when she goes to the Battle Islands to investigate the widespread death of plants and animals.

Melting Stones is told by Evvy, which initially made me reluctant to listen to it because I’d found the actress’s voice difficult to listen to in a prior audiobook: Evvy did a lot of whining in that book, and the actress was really good at it. Fortunately Evvy does much less whining here and I generally found her a listenable narrator, though on occasion I found the emotion in her voice a little overstated. (Your mileage will almost certainly vary.) On a similar note, the recording uses sound effects to convey earthquakes, which I found more obtrusive than I’d have preferred.

I usually find audiobooks more tense than text, but I was surprised how much more tense I found the story when I knew that there was no text and that I was bound to the audiobook’s pace. The audio-only format also hampers my ability to review the story, as before I write up audiobooks, I usually flip through the text versions, reminding myself of different aspects and reassessing the pace. I can say that I liked the resolution, which avoided an obvious misstep; that the arc of the character Mertide was underwritten; and that I really wish Pierce had written the story of Briar, Evvy, and Rosethorn in Yanjing pre-Will before this, because its absence continues to be a great big gaping hole in the series, one whose filling I fear will be made awkward by the additional details about it here.

If you’ve liked prior audiobook versions of Pierce’s books, or if you can’t wait until October, try the audio sample at Audible. (It’s downloadable there, or you can get it on CD from Amazon at a steep discount.)

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O’Brian, Patrick: (17) The Commodore (audio)

The Commodore is the seventeenth Aubrey-Maturin novel and an enjoyable single-mission tale. Home from their circumnavigation, Aubrey is given command of a squadron with the public purpose of suppressing the slave trade and the private purpose of confounding France’s planned invasion of Ireland.

I really enjoyed the parts of the book where they set about the slave trade (poor dear Jack, I hate to see him distressed but was glad to see his complacency about slavery shattered). I was also glad to return to Jack and Stephen’s families. I’m not quite satisfied with the book’s ending, but thought this was a solid installment overall.

Finally, a bit of conversation that expresses my own feelings so well I may quote it at people:

When Jack came in he found [Stephen] sitting before a tray of bird’s skins and labels. Stephen looked up, and after a moment said “To a tormented mind there is nothing, I believe, more irritating than comfort. Apart from anything else it often implies superior wisdom in the comforter. But I am very sorry for your trouble, my dear.”

“Thank you, Stephen. Had you told me that there was always a tomorrow, I think I should have thrust your calendar down your throat.”

I do so love Jack and Stephen.

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Pratchett, Terry: Only You Can Save Mankind (audio); Johnny and the Dead; Johnny and the Bomb

More backlog catchup, Terry Pratchett’s Johnny Maxwell trilogy. I’d been vaguely meaning to re-read this for a while, and bumped it up my list after the news that Pratchett had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Yes, as he said, he’s not dead, but I think it’s best to pay tribute while people are still around to appreciate it.

I listened to the first book, Only You Can Save Mankind, read by Richard Mitchley. Johnny Maxwell is playing a bog-standard computer game in which he’s supposed to shoot as many alien spaceships as possible . . . but then the aliens surrender to him. Defending the aliens turns out to be a lot harder than killing them.

There’s quite a lot I hadn’t remembered about this book, such as its being set during the first Gulf War. I’d like the resulting parallels better if they weren’t paired with explicit statements of The Message, which I found suboptimal for listening purposes. A happier rediscovery was Johnny’s home life and friendships, which I thought were pleasingly complicated and realistic, as best I can judge. Overall, I like the concept of this book better than the execution, particularly since I’m not sure the worldbuilding ends up being coherent.

I read the next two books, because they don’t appear to exist in unabridged audio format. My favorite of them is Johnny and the Dead, but I read it very quickly as pre-bed distraction during a difficult time, and thus didn’t subject it to nearly as much analysis at Only You. In this book, Johnny starts seeing dead people in a local publicly-owned cemetery, which is scheduled for sale to a corporation. As I said, I’m not sure whether this book is actually less anvilicious than the first, but even it’s not, I like the way the central message comes around in the end. I also enjoyed the look at a 1990s British city; so many fantasies are set in a non-modern Britain that this was a nice change of pace.

The last Johnny book, Johnny and the Bomb, is a World War II time-travel story. I am—not precisely allergic to stories of time travel, but tend to be unable to get my head around them. As a result, I have nothing useful to say about this book, other than it still has Johnny and his friends, and I like reading about them.

[For many years, these were only available in the U.K., but have been recently printed in the U.S.; actually, on checking, Johnny and the Bomb will be released next week.]

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Stroud, Jonathan: (02-03) The Golem’s Eye (audio); Ptolemy’s Gate

Some backlog catchup, here. I’d read Jonathan Stroud’s The Amulet of Samarkand because I was interested in the audiobooks narrated by Simon Jones. A year and a half later, I finally got around to the rest of the series, The Golem’s Eye and Ptolemy’s Gate.

I listened to The Golem’s Eye, and though Jones does a fine job, I didn’t find the book well-suited to the audio format. As the first book provided Nathaniel’s backstory, so this book provides Kitty’s backstory. And I like her, but her backstory is slow, anvilicious, and copious, or at least feels that way out loud.

The book does have good action sequences and Bartimaeus remains entertaining (though the combination of his first-person narration and the omniscient of the rest of the series is a bit odd), so I went on to read the concluding volume, Ptolemy’s Gate. This had the virtues of the prior books, with the bonus of Bartimaeus’s backstory. I was, however, dissatisfied with the ending, which resolved less than the series had promised—and in a manner that suggested I wasn’t supposed to notice. Yes, problems are easy and solutions are hard; but if you can’t solve a problem, at least don’t try to disguise your inability with sleight-of-hand.

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Kirstein, Rosemary: (02) The Outskirter’s Secret

Rosemary Kirstein’s The Outskirter’s Secret (reprinted as the second half of The Steerswoman’s Road) is even better than The Steerswoman and made me extremely happy. In it, the steerswoman Rowan and her friend and traveling companion Bel journey to the Outskirts, where Rowan hopes to find the source of the mysterious jewels that brought her in conflict with the wizards.

Exploring Outskirter society and the Outskirts is one of the best things about this book, as they are fascinatingly different from those of the first book. Early on, Rowan and Bel meet an Outskirter tribe that is very stereotypically barbarian, living only by stealing and treating the non-warriors with contempt. And just as this stereotype fully registers, Bel expresses her disgust with their primitive and dishonorable ways. Rowan, and through her the reader, is often reminded of her assumptions about Outskirter culture as the book unfolds and the reasons for Outskirter customs and organization are explored.

One of the fun things about reading these books is that the reader gets to be a steerswoman or steersman too, putting clues together with their external knowledge to assemble a bigger picture than is available to the characters. The Outskirts and their inhabitants eventually resolve into such a picture, and I think an author’s really done an excellent job when three little words (big spoilers, see sidebar for ROT13) — “ebhgvar ovbsbez pyrnenapr” — can crystallize an entire understanding of a world.

The plot and the characters here are also better, more layered, more twisty, and (I think) more exciting; I particularly admire the handling of the title character. The prose continues to be transparent, which was why I picked it up Friday night: my weird prose sensitivity (see prior entries) had recently continued with an inability to sink into the retrospective omniscient of David Anthony Durham’s Acacia, plus I had a headache and was tired. Which last admittedly was not helped by my staying up later than I’d planned to finish this . . . but the lift in my mood from reading a really good book made up for it. All in all, my only complaint about this book is that now I’m torn between finding out what happens next and saving the other two published books for when I really need them.

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