Books read, early July

[mrissa]

Tony Hillerman, The Sinister Pig and The Wailing Wind. I am mostly still reading these because I started, honestly. One of the things that's happened is that I no longer cheer for the romantic subplot, nor do I believe in its successful conclusion at volume's end: we have been here before, and there is one factor in common (well, within the fictional universe one factor at least). I recommend the earlier volumes in this series much more strongly. Two more to go, and I am enough of an obsessive completist to finish them.

Sarah Monette (truepenny), Corambis. This, on the other hand, I read because I wanted to see how it came out, not because I spell anal-retentive with the hyphen in. So many things I like in this book. Trains! It's a fantasy novel with trains! They are not irrelevant trains! People are continuing to try to figure things out, old things and new things both! Magical machines! Bookshops that fit their time and place! Am very pleased with how it all came out. (It all came out with trains! How could I not be pleased?)

Elizabeth Moon, Hunting Party and Sporting Chance. I don't usually like to start talking about books in terms of the physical object. And I'm definitely glad that Baen makes omnibuses available so that one can get the whole story without having to be on hand when the earlier volumes come out. But look: there is a point at which the omnibus is no longer physically comfortable, and this? This is past that point. It is over a thousand pages of tall trade paperback. It took me forever to read Sporting Chance in part because it's just not very physically comfortable for me to hold the book to read; I will read the last of the trilogy pretty soon just to get the book out of my hands. The Auden I read last fortnight was more comfortable than this, and it's a thumping great Complete Works Of sort of thing. Also, the tag line on the front looks like it was selected by someone who hated the book and wished they weren't publishing it: "Space Opera is back, and Elizabeth Moon writes it!" This is what we in Minnesota use as the enthusiastic neutral: "This is very flavorful!" you say in a bright, cheerful voice, carefully avoiding the specification that the flavor it tastes strongly of is rancid goat's milk, or, "Gosh, your house is certainly pink!" "This certainly is space opera!" says the jacket copy. "We won't swear that it's any good, but it's definitely well within its sub-genre! Boy howdy!"

None of this is the fault of either book; both books deserve better. One of the things I think Moon does very well is people who are part of families growing beyond their previous roles within those families and finding new ways, seeing new dimensions in family members they had previously taken for granted. There was a very sympathetic older character injured in Sporting Chance, and I had some difficulty getting through that with family stuff this year, but that doesn't mean anything bad about the book, just the place where I am right now.

Also, I try not to draw personal conclusions about authors based on their books, but I am beginning to suspect that Ms. Moon does not think so highly of pastels. (Is okay. Neither do I.)

Pearl North, Libyrinth. Discussed elsewhere.

Tamora Pierce, Beka Cooper: Bloodhound. It took me a bit to really get into this one, and I thought the pacing was a bit slow, but on the other hand, it reversed several of the trends I was thinking I was seeing for the worse in Pierce's books, so that made me happy. I'll be interested to see where this goes: it's listed as a trilogy, but police procedurals can go on for quite a few volumes if the author gets interested in doing them that way. I guess the YA nature of these might restrict that some: Beka will at some point be a full-fledged police officer, and that may feel like the end of a YA series. But I don't feel like it would necessarily have to. Also, not enough fantasies deal with forgery. Hurrah forgery and the dealing therewith. Murder is not the only crime!

Red Stangland, Ole & Lena Jokes, Book III. Grandpa's. Grandpa loved Ole and Lena jokes. By the time you get to a third volume of them, even though each volume is more a pamphlet really, you're telling a lot of jokes with a thick fake Norsky accent and calling them Ole and Lena jokes, because the ones that actually rely on Ole and Lena being Norwegian and not Italian or Chinese got used up in the first volumes. This reminded me of Grandpa. In case you hadn't noticed yet, being reminded of Grandpa is a good thing for me.

Comments

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed Corambis. And thank you for saying so.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The trains weren't the only thing. But I have this theory:

My grandpa used to say, of people who were particularly frustrating him, "When God was handing out brains, he/she thought He said 'trains,' and he/she didn't want to go anywhere." Whereas if I thought God said trains, I would say, "OOOOH TRAINS YAY TRAINS GIVE ME LOTS OF ONES WITH THE OBSERVATION DOME BIT AND THE TIDY LITTLE SCHEDULE TABLES." Which sort of explains a lot about how it functions in here, really. (I find the rows and columns comforting.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it's obvious from the book that I am entirely pro-train my own self. :)

[aedifica]

What were some of the trends you've been seeing in Pierce's books? (I tend to like her books but haven't read all the most recent ones, and I stopped reading the Circle books early on.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I'd also be interested in knowing this. The Trickster duology disappointed me rather sorely -- nothing ever seemed to go seriously wrong for the characters, and there was a big plot obstacle in their way that got disposed of for them by the villain, thus saving Our Heroes from having to make a difficult choice -- but I do love Pierce, so the Beka Cooper books are still on my to-read list.

[aedifica]

Whereas I really enjoy the Trickster books because they're all about a smart person using her brain. That's why I enjoy Card's Shadow books even though Card pisses me off these days, and why I read Hobb's Farseer books (I think that was the series) even though the world was so grim. (Those, though, I won't re-read because they were so gloomy.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I adore books about smart people using their brains; I just don't like it when I can see the Hand of the Author smoothing the path in front of them at every turn. (In retrospect, I think I was wrong in my above statement -- I think it was a natural disaster or something that took out the one really difficult problem between the protagonists and their goal. Which made it seem extra ex machina.)

[aedifica]

I'm sleepy enough I can't remember the events clearly. The biggest problem I remember at the moment was the one that was resolved by the action of a willful teenager. :-)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I haven't read them since they came out, and I'm trying to avoid spoilering anyway, so my description is admittedly vague.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I thought she was getting much worse on issues that are hot-buttons for teens in our own culture--it was feeling to me like she was falling into a current-culture party-line a great deal more than I like to see. On the subject of alcohol, for example, I felt like this book was a lot better at being specific that Beka didn't like to drink much and that was a specific character trait and set of choices--What Beka Is Like rather than a reflection of What Heroines/Good Girls Are/Should Be Like.

I also felt like the peril was more perilous and more directly connected to character actions. There was less divine intervention in this book--the explicit divine presence was doing other things, and the implicit Hand Of Author seemed less intrusive to me.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yay for re-fanged peril. Also yay for going back to the present time, as mentioned below -- I'm not uninterested in Tortall's past, but the gradual building up of that later era through the accumulated strata of narratives is one of the things I particularly like about these books.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

I think I liked BLOODHOUND more than the first Beka Cooper book. I am not sure if I could articulate why.

[numinicious.livejournal.com]

Tamora Pierce, Beka Cooper: Bloodhound.
I feel the need to point out that in Hungarian, "frog" is "béka".

So, yea. I'm imagining the Michigan J. Frog wearing a hat and smoking a pipe a la sherlock holmes.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oooookay then!

[skwirly.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I'm fairly sure Tammy Pierce does intend to stop the Beka books with 'Mastiff,' which she's writing now. After that she goes back to the 'current' time, with one prequel (about Numair's early life) and one sequel (about Maura, Diversity Girl). Of course that doesn't rule out more Beka or Beka-type stuff later.

I heart this universe unabashedly - the series as a whole was one of the things that made me want to write fiction for other people eventually. Tammy has bought jewelry from us at a couple of conventions and I've had to restrain myself from doing something extremely undignified and fangirly. ;)

Also, I'm with you on the GIANT OMNIBUS OF DOOM issues. I re-read the books recently in that same omnibus and found I was pretty much forced to read in bed, where I could plunk it in front of me and lay on my stomach.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Pierce was the author I went back to first when I started thinking about writing YA (which was a decade ago now, I guess).

I don't know...maybe I read too many mysteries, but it's easy for me to see Beka just sort of jumping in every few years and demanding another book of her own. After Bloodhound, I don't think I'd have a problem with that.

[skwirly.livejournal.com]

I could see it happening, too - although I suppose it would depend on what sort of closure occurs in the final book in the trilogy. I can't see it being anything that would prevent further books, though, just based on Beka's character.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I read the Hillerman books as they came out, so it has been several years since I read the ones you mention. But I loved the series all the way through, and I am sad that there will be no more.

[pameladean]

I just found a copy of The Sinister Pig in Baxter, Minnesota, and am reading it. wincing at the extreme clunkiness of the exposition at the beginning. Also, I really prefer Hillerman when he is NOT exploring the mental state of psychopaths and sociopaths. I hate it when he does that.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah. Not his strong suit.