Iorich is set four years after Dzur, and unquestionably has a great premise: Vlad comes back to Adrilankha because Aliera has been arrested on charges of practicing Elder Sorcery—a capital crime. And it gets a great deal of the feel of legal stuff right.
But it's four years after Dzur and Vlad is in basically the same position he was at the end of that book. (There's one thing mentioned in passing that's different, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on him here.) Four years! This is the book that made me realize that, for all that he's shown skulking in the woods in Issola, I just can't see it: I can't envision him having that kind of existence in the time between books. I gave Dzur a pass on not making progress on Vlad's big-picture problems because I loved the characterization so much, but this book frustrated me when I was finished because its ending seems to promise future movement Real Soon Now, which just pointed out how much still needed to be resolved.
I also wanted this to be a different book because Vlad's POV is unfortunately limited. The plot does not make a lot of sense to me (Chad and I, in fact, came up with completely opposite understandings of it), and I suspect much of the problem is that at least one major player simply would never tell Vlad just why they acted as they did.
There are some very good things about the book, among which are a non-annoying Cawti, a great moment with Kragar, and some hilarious "deleted scenes" at the end. Almost everyone who's not me likes it a lot. If you haven't read it yet, you probably will too. (Hey, I said I was being unfair.)
(Note: I originally read this in an ARC from the publisher.)
]]>More sadistic violence against women, in service of a plot that not only doesn't make sense but doesn't even really try.
Which is to say: I didn't like it.
]]>I initially picked this up in the bookstore because of the cover, and then was intrigued by the fourth paragraph as the narrator describes his wakening:
I lay on the floor naked as a shedding snake, and we contemplated our situation.
As regular readers know, I am a terrible sucker for narrative voice, and those pronouns were thus guaranteed to catch my attention, and then to keep it:
I tried moving my leg and found the action oddly giddying, as if this was the ultimate achievement for which my life so far had been spent in training, the fulfilment of all ambition. Or perhaps it was simply that we had pins and needles and, not entirely knowing how to deal with pain, we laughed through it, turning my head to stick my nose into the dust of the carpet to muffle my own inane giggling as I brought my knee up towards my chin, and tears dribbled around the edge of my mouth.
A Madness of Angels is a fantasy novel set in a very concrete and specific present-day London. Matthew Swift was killed two years ago as the opening shot in a sorcerous war and now finds himself resurrected. He sets out to find out who killed him, who resurrected him, what's hunting him now (a particularly creepy entity calling itself Hunger, among other things), and why, a process that ends up bringing him into contact with most of London's magical population.
The book's virtues are its location, its magic—which is inextricably intertwined with its location, as urban magic arises from and is shaped by the rhythms of life in different places—and its narrative voice, which is a lot smoother than I'd have thought a mix of singular and plural first-person could be. Its weaknesses are that its energy is mostly in the above and it doesn't have as much left over as I would like for characterization or pacing (most obvious in a regrettable plot cliche at the end). However, its location and magic and voice are enthrallingly vivid and, if you like those kind of things, very much worth a look. Try the Prologue, which is, yes, rather long, but which concludes with a really great bit of magic that is too long to quote and that I'd hate to spoil anyway.
Meanwhile, here's a short bit of London description to wet your whistle:
The bus shelters in London are, more often than not, badly designed. Roofed with thin plastic sheets that sag under any weight, curving downwards to form a slight bowl, they collect pools of rainwater on their tops, which can remain there for days. Most of these shelters are below tree height, so that fallen leaves can rot down in these pools, creating the odd muddy pond with its own fungal subculture that nothing can erase, short of a burning August drought.
The flatness of these shelters allows other things to be left on top of them. A single, decomposing sock is a common feature, or a laceless left-foot plimsoll. Half a shopping trolley has been known, or a bicycle handlebar, as have Ikea catalogues and plastic bags full of broken bananas. However, above everything else, on the top of every other bus shelter in London there is almost invariably a rotting copy of the Yellow Pages.
People tend not to ask what a copy of the Yellow Pages is doing on the roof of a bus shelter, nor how it got there, and this is probably a good thing — a poor reflection on the curiosity of the human spirit, perhaps, but an excessively useful defect for the struggling sorcerer, for inside every Yellow Pages left on the top of the shelter, and those pages only, are the exclusive listings.
And this is just because it amuses me:
We had never been to the cinema before. The plot was something about a genius arms dealer who discovered redemption, cardiac conditions and an interesting and potentially lethal use for spare missile components in a cave. It wasn’t my thing. We were enthralled, and staggered out blinking from the cinema two and a half hours later with our mind full of pounding noise and our eyes aching from the overwhelming brightness, resolved to see more films as often as possible.
(The mass market paperback will be out at the end of the month. A sequel, about which I admit some doubts, will be out in March.)
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Long-time readers of this booklog will have noticed that this is the first time a new Wheel of Time book appears here. I stopped reading the series after Winter's Heart, but had Chad tell me the plots during long car drives. The only thing that sounded interesting about Crossroads of Twilight, Perrin's thread, also sounded painful, and while Knife of Dreams sounded like an improvement, by that point I had decided to wait until the series was finished.
Sadly, of course, Robert Jordan died before then, but left a great deal of material from which Brandon Sanderson is completing the series (in three volumes, projected to be out at year intervals). In preparation, I skimmed summaries and read selected chapters out of Knife, the prior book. While I have no desire to read the entire thing, I could tell that the pace had improved and was pleased that there were some very good bits: I would hate to be looking forward to the last volumes only because Sanderson was writing them, you know?
Thus, The Gathering Storm. Is it a Wheel of Time book? Yes, definitely; there are a few wobbles here and there, but the events very much feel part of the series to date. Is it a good Wheel of Time book? Yes, definitely. Exciting things happen, there's strong character and plot movement, and it ends satisfyingly.
It's easier to say (in this non-spoiler post) what didn't work. I didn't buy the couple of chapters Mat was in, and I'm not convinced that Sanderson has a handle on him yet. His dialogue was the only place where I was consistently jarred by the prose; as Chad pointed out in a spoiler post, the rhythm is all off. And both his behavior and the events he was facing seemed out-of-place to me. (Otherwise there were only a handful of times where the prose intruded on me, and I might be overreacting; after all, it has been a while since I really immersed myself in these books.) Some themes that I disliked in prior books are still here ("go away, Robert Jordan's id! You are scary!"). And characters who were annoying before have not magically gotten clues between books. Alas.
But there is very satisfying fantasy-of-political-agency material; some genuine surprises—yes, it's still possible to surprise readers, even after eleven books that have been very closely analyzed indeed; and tangible progress toward the Last Battle. Some of it was tough going emotionally, but not logistically, that is, I didn't have any trouble following the plot (I'm not sure how much of that was Sanderson carefully sprinkingly in helpful reminders and how much was the relatively streamlined nature of the book, which principally focuses on Rand and Egwene). And in the second half particularly, I had a heck of a time putting it down for things like sleep. If you liked the series up to, say, Lord of Chaos, I think you'd like this.
A spoiler post follows.
]]>This book is interesting in the way it creates its tension: we're promised, in the jacket copy, that the killer will catch Alyssa. But I, at least, didn't know when, which kept me on the edge of my seat waiting for him to pop out from behind the corner, as it were.
That's the part I enjoyed the most about this book. The principal secondary thread is a relationship between Dan Gillman, who has been rather a jerk for the recent part of the series and isn't out of the jerk woods yet [*], and a new character named Jennilyn LeMay. This, well, isn't complete, so I'll withhold judgment.
[*] Despite a horribly anvilicious encounter with a small child who, in phonetic babytalk, lays bare (some of) his secret pain. Ack.
The other interesting thing about this book is the ending, which strikes me as the kind of thing that only an author with fourteen other books in the series, many about Alyssa herself, can get away with. (Spoilers, ROT-13: bgurejvfr univat ure uhfonaq erfphr ure sebz gur ovt onq frevny xvyyre juvyr fur vf urycyrff jbhyq unir n engure qvssrerag rssrpg.)
So: if you like the Troubleshooter books for their suspense or for Alyssa, you'll like this one. I thought it was a fast entertaining library read.
]]>As that may suggest, there are two significant parts to this book, an introductory essay and then a large number of reproduced images. The essay is by Karen Wilkin and is titled "Mildly Unsettling." I think this gives you a reasonable way of calibrating your tastes against hers: as I've said before, I find Gorey's art considerably more than mildly unsettling, so a lot of the ways Wilkin's essay was useful to me was crystallizing the ways I didn't agree with her, that is, didn't have the same reactions. But it did a very good job of pointing out some characteristics of Gorey's art that I would not have consciously identified and describing the breadth of Gorey's work and some of his influences.
Between the essay and the images, I now have a short list of Gorey works that I want to see in their entirety:
The plates include some unpublished images, alternate covers and studies for later drawings; drawings that Gorey did for other authors; theater designs; and really cool illustrated envelopes he sent to his mother (never before printed). Oddly, nothing from The Curious Sofa is included, though it's mentioned in the essay and presumably they would have had access (since other works also reprinted in Amphigorey are included). I can only assume that the exhibition didn't want the controversy of displaying "pornographic" works, though they're nothing of the sort.
This would be particularly good for library collections, but those who like Gorey's work should definitely take a look.
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It's hard not to see this book as the series in minature: there's an odd reprise of the rushed ending of the last book, a long journey by sea, some politicking and battling, and some personal relationship stuff. But it feels a bit subdued to me: the political stuff is less vivid and clear than usual, and despite the importance of events to Jack's life the book is very heavily focused on Stephen. Which includes consequences of the thing that happened in the last book that I hated, la la la I can't hear you. (But if I could, I'd say that I also dislike them on their own merits.)
Finally, though I like the ending, it is extremely abrupt and convenient.
I'll read or listen to the unfinished book at some point, but I'm not in any hurry.
A spoiler post follows.
]]>This book is sort of the inverse of Locked Rooms, in that it's principally about the psychological effects of a family-related mystery on one main character from the perspective of the other. I seem to have lost my feel for this version of Holmes since the last book in the series; this portrayal seems reasonable enough, but it doesn't really delight me in that character-revelation kind of way that one might hope for, seeing an established character thrust into a difficult situation. But I was always more interested in Russell in these books, anyway.
There is an opening section involving Holmes' bees, the relevance of which entirely escapes me; I suppose it must be thematic, but that feels clunky. (Or it's just giving Russell something to do while Holmes is off getting the plot started.) And readers should be aware that the book literally ends on a "to be continued," though it contains a reasonable amount of closure. On the whole, this book doesn't change my general approach to the series, which is to get it out of the library.
]]>Let's start with Tamora Pierce's Bloodhound, sequel to Terrier. Like that book, this is the diary of Beka Cooper, now a full Guardswoman. It takes place mostly outside of Corus, Tortall's capital city, because she's sent to help track down a counterfeiting ring.
I didn't like this as well as the last one for a couple of reasons. It felt a little long and a little defensive about the importance and excitement of chasing counterfeiters. And for no reason that I can pinpoint, I find Beka's diary entries about romance and sex acutely embarrassing: I don't object to Pierce's handling of these topics generally, it's something about Beka's narration. Which also reminds me that every time Beka mentioned that she was out really late and wrote this before sleeping or whatever, it wrecked my suspension of disbelief. She's writing in a compressed cipher, sure, but it's a 500+ page hardcover, and so I have a really hard time accepting that she's actually handwriting out these entries in her copious free time.
My ancient notes to myself read "okay but never felt awesome," and I'm going to stick by that impression now.
]]>The first story is Lake's "In the Forests of the Night." This founders on an extremely predictable problem: if you create a character who is an amazingly compelling speaker with a beautiful voice, you have to both write those astonishingly-convincing words and get an audiobook reader who can voice the words in the manner described. I don't know whether Michael Hogan can, but he doesn't. Since I coudn't get past the crash and burn of my suspension of disbelief, I stopped listening.
Buckell's "Stochasti-city" caught my interest when it started with its first-person narrator getting into trouble after taking a mysterious job. Unfortunately Scott Brick doesn't voice the first-person narrator's thoughts any differently from his speech, at least that I could hear. The third time I couldn't figure out whether a statement was part of a conversation or internal monologue, I hit "skip." (Brick is a highly prolific and very well-regarded audiobook narrator; maybe it's just me, maybe he wasn't on his game for this.)
I didn't listen to Bear or Scalzi's stories, so that left Schroeder's "To Hie from Far Cilenia," read by Stefan Rudnick. I did get all the way through this one, but I can't call it a successful listening experience, because nothing happened. Our protagonist is hired to track down some missing plutonium, in the company of a woman who is looking for her son (as Farah Mendlesohn notes, "Men, it seems, have motives. Women have maternal feelings."). Based on information from a captured minor player in the smuggling (which I never really followed why they trusted), they end up looking in ARGs, alternate reality games. Much time is spent describing ARGs generally and the ones they're in specifically, and basically none on looking for the plutonium (or the son) in any systematic sensible way: from what I heard, I can only conclude that they just wandered around hoping. I was also dubious about the ability to "ride" other people remotely, i.e., using them to communicate your words and gestures; while this is presented as a good thing for autistic persons and the young, unskilled, uneducated, and alone, I would have liked to hear much more before accepting that conclusion. But in the end, whatever the merits of this story on the page, I did not enjoy it as audio because I couldn't skim all the exposition and worldbuilding.
(Scalzi's introduction didn't help it any; it promised me mind-blowing ideas, but what I got was virtual reality technology putting overlays over the physical world, Internet nations, and the aforementioned riders. I'm not that up on hard SF these days, but even I recognize those as part of the recent-ish toolbox for the genre.)
The other nominees in this category are all movies: The Dark Knight (enjoyed but not sure how well it holds up; spoilers), Hellboy II: The Golden Army (pretty but dumb; spoilers), Iron Man (boring; spoilers), and WALL-E (did not see).
]]>Here are brief comments on the short fiction categories (Short Story, Novelette, and Novella). Stories are listed in my order of preference. I've got a list of all review links that I can find over on LiveJournal.
Novella
Did not finish: "The Political Prisoner," Charles Coleman Finlay (online). I got halfway through and said, "You know, if I wanted to read about Soviet-style backstabbing and gulags and other such grimy, grinding unpleasantness, I could just re-read The Cardinal of the Kremlin or something."
Novelette
Note to bloggers: I have seen multiple people say that the protagonist is from Vietnam. He is not. He is from Laos. There is more than one country in Southeast Asia.
Did not read: "Shoggoths in Bloom" by Elizabeth Bear (online); "Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders" by Mike Resnick (online).
Short Story
Did not finish: "Article of Faith" by Mike Resnick (online). I got a couple screens in and said, "Wait, this is a Mike Resnick story, it is clunky and obvious and cliched, why am I reading this again?" So I stopped.
Next up, either some of the Campell nominees or some Best Related Books.
]]>A Random Walk Down Wall Street is more theory than practice, as it is a thorough but readable book aimed at one thing: making the case that it's not a good idea to pick stocks, or as Malkiel puts it,
No one can consistently predict either the direction of the stock market or the relative attractiveness of individual stocks, and thus no one can consistently obtain better overall returns than the market. And while there are undoubtedly profitable trading opportunities that occasionally appear, these are quickly wiped out once they become known. No one person or institution has yet to produce a long-term, consistent record of finding money-making, risk-adjusted individual stock-trading opportunities, particularly if they pay taxes and incur transaction costs.
He starts by describing where stocks get their value, then analyzes traditional and more recent ways that professionals try to pick stock, all in support of his proposition. There were occasionally points at which I had to stop and re-read, but I was often reading this with a sleeping infant in my arms, which has the usual small-mammal sedative effect. On the whole, I found this an engaging and—more importantly—convincing read. The last section has recommendations at a range of detail, from general principles to a specific portfolio. Malkiel has another book, The Random Walk Guide To Investing, but it wasn't in the library, so I don't know how it compares.
Tobias's advice in The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need tracks Malkiel's as far as they cover similar topics, but Tobias also has suggestions on things like reducing spending, tax strategies, and planning for your family. His book is much chattier, but it knows that it's not always taking itself seriously (example: the appendix titled "Cocktail Party Financial Quips to Help You Feel Smug"). If you don't mind that kind of tone, it's worth a look: its greater detail on specific financial products helped me get oriented and feel more comfortable on the more concrete level. I recommend them both.
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