Month: December 2012

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Riodan, Rick: Kane Chronicles (The Red Pyramid, The Throne of Fire, and The Serpent’s Shadow)

Let me pick a random thing from the never-to-be-cleared backlog: Rick Riordan’s Kane Chronicles, consisting of The Red Pyramid, The Throne of Fire, and The Serpent’s Shadow. I was a big fan of his Percy Jackson books, but didn’t want to start the sequel series until it was complete. (Well, also, I tried the first book at least twice and found that I missed Percy’s voice a lot, so clearly some distance is a good thing all around.)

The Kane Chronicles are about the ancient gods of Egypt; they technically take place in the same world as the Percy Jackson books, but you’d only notice the reference if you’d read them. I was inclined to like them from the start, because the central two characters are biracial siblings, a girl who looks more like their white mom and a boy who looks more like their black dad, and they both have sharp things to say about people’s racial prejudices as applied to their family. And I like that it sets up a general belief that the ancient gods of Egypt are dangerous and uncontrollable and then demonstrates that no, no more so than the ancient Greek gods.

But in the end, I didn’t think this series was nearly as good as the Percy Jackson books. Maybe I’ve gotten wise to Riordan’s plotting, but there was nothing that surprised me. Between books two and three, I actually said, “Could X be as simple as Y?” (spoilers, obviously). And alas, it was. More, the costs were surprisingly low, which combined with the predictability made me feel that it was all just too easy.

Finally, these books anchor their first-person POV to a specific device—voice recordings that the siblings are making for others to listen to—which is a mistake, because every time one of them mentions that, I lose my suspension of disbelief, because there is no way that these are narrated out loud. If you’re not going to commit hard to the form of a first-person narration, leave it free-floating and unspecified (see this journal post for a bit more discussion).

Short version: if what you liked about the Percy Jackson books was their tension and high stakes, these are not likely to be satisfactory substitutes.

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Bujold, Lois McMaster: (116) Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance

Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance is the most recent Vorkosigan book by Lois McMaster Bujold. It’s set between Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn, it alternates between Ivan POV’s and a new character, and it is very, very fluffy.

I wanted to like this, I did, and mostly it was pleasant. There’s a great late set-piece, and some terrific Simon stuff, and Ivan is enjoyable company. But twice I was mentally tapping my fingers, waiting for the plot to happen, for much longer than was optimal, and once I said, “Uh, we’re going to be happy and fluffy about this?” I also continue to side-eye the way that same-sex relationships apparently only exist on Athos in this universe, a pattern that becomes particularly conspicuous in this book. And in the end, it felt like Ivan changed and grew more in A Civil Campaign, where he was one viewpoint character of five, than here, which is nominally “his book.”

I don’t know what Bujold’s plans for this universe are (I don’t know if she knows). But this feels very much like a deliberate wrapping-up—there is, no kidding, an epilogue where the characters read each other letters from all their family members—and I confess to very mixed feelings about this. As I said with regard to Cryoburn, and also in a journal post about my issues with the later Vorkosigan books, Bujold and I are clearly no longer interested in the same things in this universe. And of course that’s her right as an author and my right as a reader, and no blame is implied or should be inferred. But I don’t know what to wish for, that our Vorkosigan-related interests come back into alignment or that she leaves the series as it stands to let me imagine things going more to my taste.

Anyway. If you don’t mind a fluffy leisurely Ivan-centric story, then Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance is probably worth a read. If you were hoping for more than that, you’ll probably be disappointed.

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