July 18, 2008 at 10:49 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
101. The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold (Fantasy) 470 p.
This is a re-read for me. It’s the third in a series, loosely connected to The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, set in the same universe but without being a sequel. I am a huge fan of Bujold (or at least, everything except her latest series–I was disappointed with Beguilement and thought Legacy was crap.) If you aren’t familiar with her work, Lois McMaster Bujold is a four-time Hugo award winner who is best known for the Vorkosigan saga, a fun and fast-paced space opera series which so far consists of 14 novels, which are some of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read.
The Hallowed Hunt is a different kind of book. It’s set in a fairly standard medieval-type fantasy world, but one which rises above the usual mediocrity of such settings by (a) being more realistic than romantic, and (b) having an interesting and well-explored religion that drives the plot (and in various ways, the characters.) That plot is the main engine of the story, but the main characters are so well-developed that it almost feels character-driven.
The Quintarian religion is probably the most-cited element when the series is praised, and for good reason. Unlike many fictional religions, it actually feels real–it seems like one in which real human beings might participate, rather than an afterthought tacked on to make a pseudo-historical fantasy setting feel more realistic. It’s also not just Christianity in disguise, despite a few overlapping terms (”saint” and “holy family”, for instance, do not mean the same thing to a Quintarian as they would to a Catholic.)
As fascinating as the world-building is, though, it’s the plot and characters that make The Hallowed Hunt such an absorbing book. Lord Ingrey, a man whose soul is defiled by a spirit animal (through no fault of his own) arrives at Boar’s Head Castle to escort the corpse of a murdered prince back to the capital for burial, and to bring his murderer back for trial. The case, though disturbing, seems clear: Lady Ijada, who unfortunately caught the prince’s eye, was forced into a room alone with him against her will. When the prince’s guards, after ignoring her screams for some minutes, finally opened the door, they found Lady Ijada splashed with blood, holding the war hammer she’d used to kill the prince.
Although there is no doubt of Ijada’s responsibility for Prince Boleso’s death, there are a number of mitigating factors, including the prince’s madness and the evidence that he was dabbling in sorcery, and Ijada would certainly be acquitted by any fair court. But when those factors would embarrass so many members of the royal family, Ingrey knows very well that a fair trial is the last kind Ijada is likely to get.
As they travel back to Easthome, Ingrey discovers something even more disturbing–an uncontrollable compulsion to kill Ijada whenever his mind wanders. It’s clear that someone in Easthome doesn’t want Ijada to return alive for trial, and Ingrey has very little idea who might be using him as a tool to elminiate her.
I was disappointed with this book the first time I read it, but I liked it much better this time, mostly because I knew what to expect. Don’t go into The Hallowed Hunt expecting it to be full of action, because it isn’t. Even though things do happen, Ingrey himself spends most of the book reacting to events, trying to figure out what’s going on, and not really succeeding, because he just doesn’t know enough. Even when he figures out who the main villain is, he doesn’t have enough information to guess at what his antagonist’s plan is. That doesn’t stop The Hallowed Hunt from being a riveting novel, but it means it’s a story that’s most about thought and investigation than action.
Some of the minor characters, like Fara and Jokol, are so interesting that I want them to star in their own novels, as Ista did in Paladin of Souls. Particularly Jokol, who is a sweetheart. I would love to read about his relationship with Breiga, who also sounds like she would make a great character.
The Chalion series is a great work of fantasy, and although I’d recommend starting with The Curse of Chalion, The Hallowed Hunt is also a good place to begin.
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pages read: ?
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Chalion, Chunkster Challenge 2008, Lois McMaster Bujold
July 9, 2008 at 7:23 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
96. Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card (Science fiction) 467 p.
Ender’s Shadow can be read as a standalone novel, but it’s intended as a companion to Ender’s Game and as the first in the Bean sequence of Enderverse novels. Bean was the greatest of all Ender’s lieutenants, but we saw relatively little of him in Ender’s Game, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from this novel, which is partly a retelling of the events of that book, but from Bean’s point of view.
Growing up an orphan on the streets of Rotterdam, never even given a name until he is four years old, Bean wants nothing more than to survive, and maybe to have enough food to eat and a safe place to sleep. Even his formidable intelligence can’t make up for his youth and small size, so when he gets the chance to go to Battle School, he takes it.
At first, some of Bean’s history seemed implausible, but it quickly became apparent that there would be an explanation, which turns out to be one of the more interesting ideas in the book. (And Card’s science fiction ideas, even when they’re impractical or implausible in the real world, are always fascinating to think about and explore.)
Seeing Ender and the Battle School through Bean’s eyes was a revelation, because Bean has a far more analytical mind than Ender does, and far less trust in institutions. Where Ender might occasionally rebels against a system, when he feels his trust has been violated, Bean will never fully buy into that system in the first place, which gives him a unique perspective, combining both an insider’s and an outsider’s point of view.
I also just plain liked Bean. Some of his interactions with the Battle School staff, namely Dimak and Graff, were hilarious (as is pretty much every conversations Graff has with anyone. I love Graff, and I hope to see more of him later in the series.) His background is so tragic that the story could easily have been maudlin or sentimental, but Bean has no self-pity in him, and his personality defies it in others.
As I said at the beginning, this book can be read alone, but you’ll get much more out of it if you read Ender’s Game first. (Also, this book contains a number of spoilers for Ender’s Game, less in terms of plot (though there are some) than in terms of character development.)
I’m so glad I tried Orson Scott Card’s books, because missing out on them would have been a huge loss, even though I would never have known it. Ender’s Shadow is about as close to a perfect science fiction novel as any I’ve ever read!
Rating: 10 out of 10
Pages read: 28,298
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Bean quartet, Cardathon Challenge Redux, Chunkster Challenge 2008, Enderverse, Orson Scott Card
July 7, 2008 at 3:51 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Children's Literature, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
89. Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer (Juvenile fiction, science fiction, fantasy) 497 p.
This is the fourth Artemis Fowl novel, following Artemis Fowl, The Arctic Incident, and The Eternity Code.
Opal Koboi, one of the villains from the The Arctic Incident, is once again on the loose, and this time it’s personal: she’s after Julius Root, Holly Short, and all the others, both human and fairy, who helped to foil her plot–including Artemis Fowl. The big problem? No one knows she’s escaped, she soon has Holly on the run from the law, and at the end of The Eternity Code, Artemis was mind-wiped to prevent him from ever divulging fairy secrets. Somehow, Holly has to find him, convince him that fairies really exist, and enlist his aid against one of LEPrecon’s greatest foes–all without being apprehended herself.
The Opal Deception is another fun, fast-paced adventure. Despite the handicap of remembering nothing he once knew about fairies and fairy technology, Artemis is at his brilliant best, and Holly is as tough and competent as ever.
Rating: 9 out of 10
Pages read: 26,131
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Artemis Fowl, Chunkster Challenge 2008, Eoin Colfer
April 22, 2008 at 4:44 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
62. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card (Science fiction) 592 p.
I didn’t love Xenocide quite as much as Ender’s Game or Speaker for the Dead. Not to say that it wasn’t a complex, exciting, wonderful, challenging book, because it was all of those things. Unfortunately, I didn’t like several of the things that happened. They weren’t wrong for the story, but they annoyed me, as did many of the characters, even as they also engrossed me. I still stayed up late because I couldn’t put the book down, though. In quality, Xenocide is every bit as good as its two prequels, but for personal reasons, I didn’t enjoy it quite as much.
This book is a close sequel to Speaker for the Dead, and takes up pretty much where that book left off. Valentine, her husband Jakt, and their family are halfway to Lusitania, about to meet up with young Miro Ribeira. By the time they arrive, 22 years have passed, and the Lusitania fleet, sent by Stairways Congress to take control of, and probably destroy, Lusitania Colony, is less than a year away. Tensions rise between the sentients species on Lusitania, and some kind of xenocide seems nearly inevitable, although who will be the victims and who the perpetrators is somewhat less clear.
Meanwhile, on the far-distant colony world of Path, a 16-year-old girl named Qing-jao (”Gloriously Bright”) makes a decision that may seal the fate of more than one species.
Orson Scott Card is at his brilliant best in the world-building he does in Xenocide. Path is a simply fascinating place, one of the most original future societies I’ve ever read about. As usual, OSC is a master at combining small-scale human concerns with sweeping moral investigations and implausible but gripping scientific speculation.
(I went looking to find out which novel beat out Xenocide for the 1992 Hugo, since both Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead won the award in previous years. Turns out it was Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barrayar. Bujold is one of my favourite SF authors, and I even love Barrayar, which a lot of fans don’t, but better than Xenocide? Come on.)
ETA: If you pick this up, you’re better off not reading the blurb or the author’s note, since both of them give away plot details that would be more fun to find out in the course of the book.
Pages read: 17,871
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Cardathon Challenge, Chunkster Challenge 2008, Ender quartet, Enderverse, Orson Scott Card
April 17, 2008 at 10:42 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Historical Fiction, Mystery and Suspense, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
57. The Grand Tour or The Purloined Coronation Regalia by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (Young adult historical fantasy) 469 p.
The sequel to Sorcery and Cecelia, this takes up only a few weeks after that book leaves off. For their honeymoon trip, Kate, Cecy, and their new husbands have decided to go on the Grand Tour, with Kate’s mother-in-law, Lady Silvia, accompanying them across the Channel to Paris. In Calais, however, a package left for Lady Silvia proves to contain an important and valuable artifact. All five know that it must not fall into the wrong hands, but this knowledge does them little good when the artifact is stolen by highwaymen on the road to Paris. The two couples continue their journey, but now in an attempt to foil a sinister plot.
I liked this almost as much as Sorcery and Cecelia, but not quite. It was a good deal longer, partly because the plot was more complex, but partly because the story was slower-paced. I’m also not that fond of watching couples fawn over each other, in real life or in books, because I find it boring and kind of annoying. There wasn’t a lot of it in The Grand Tour, but still too much for me.
The story was marvellously entertaining, though. I’m a little surprised by how much I liked both books, because if there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s a story told entirely through letters or diary entries. Kate and Cecy have such vivid personalities, though, and it comes through in their writing, so instead of being a little dull and removed from the action, their accounts are full of life.
I definitely recommend both books, and I hope I come across a copy of the third book sometime soon!
Pages read: 15,925
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Caroline Stevermer, Chunkster Challenge 2008, Kate and Cecelia, Patricia C. Wrede
March 22, 2008 at 12:19 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
41. Widdershins by Charles de Lint (Urban Fantasy) 560 p.
I’d heard enough good things about Charles de Lint that when I got the chance to buy Widdershins, with its very attractive cover, at half off the remaindered price, I jumped at the chance. I didn’t know much about this book before I read it today, except that it was urban fantasy and part of a loosely-connected series of novels set in the imaginary North American city of Newford. I didn’t know how much I was going to love this book.
Actually, even after I started it, I wasn’t sure I was going to like it at all. The beginning, where a young Celtic fiddler named Lizzie is stranded by car trouble and has her first encounter with the magical world, caught my interest in a limited way. I liked Lizzie, and I wouldn’t have minded seeing a good bit more of her, but the point of view shifted in the next chapter, to a character I wasn’t nearly so interested in (although luckily Lizzie returned throughout the book.)
I’m not a fan of perspective shifts; they only work for me when I’m equally interested in all of the characters, and when the author resolves suspenseful episodes before skipping to another point of view. Charles de Lint doesn’t do that, unfortunately, and it continued to be something of a problem for me throughout the book—although less so as I got to know and be interested in more of his characters.
As Charles de Lint mentions in his author’s note, Widdershins was written partly because of requests from his fans that he write more about a particular character, Jilly, and show her getting together with her friend Geordie, since everyone but the two of them can see that they’re made for each other. I’m very grateful that de Lint didn’t limit the scope of his book to Jilly and Georgie, because I found them by far the least interesting characters in the book—especially when they were together! Maybe it’s because this book was written with established fans in mind, but there was a lot more telling than showing when it came to their personalities; I still don’t feel like I know much about the two of them beyond the things said by other characters in the book.
So I was reading along, mildly interested, but not enough to carry me through a 560-page book. The urban fantasy element wasn’t much different from other things I’d read, the plot wasn’t really going anywhere yet, and the characters weren’t wonderful enough to carry the story on their own. Then I got to page 111, and I started to sit up and take notice.
He was a curious little man, born a treekin—a kind of fairy about the height of a man’s knee, made of twigs and mulch and leaves and moss, all held together in the shape of a human body with a weaving of braided grasses and vines. Treekin needed to replenish their body parts from time to time—when a twig got old and chipped, or when a grass braid snapped and the press of leaves and moss that gave shape to limbs began to fall away. The materials they needed for repair were easy to find, even in a city, for there were always gardens and parks to plunder amongst the tall towers of concrete and steel.
But in the past few decades, many of the treekin began to utilize bits and pieces of electronics and computer parts for their repairs, metamorphosing over time into creatures made as much of wiring and circuitry as they were of organic material. Eventually, some, like Edgan, became creatures entirely made of synthetic castoffs; each techno treekin—as they came to be called—as individual as the materials they were able to scrounge. In Edgan’s case, he had a torso built up around a computer motherboard; his limbs and head were a complicated tangle of wiring and less identifiable objects, though his nose was certainly a spark plug and his eyes a pair of camera lenses.
He was in Computer World tonight because he’d recently seen another of the techno treekin sporting an iPod in the twisting snarl of wires that held her torso together, and he simply had to have one himself. He already had a PDA wired into his motherboard body—as well as a digital camera and a pair of cell phones—but its memory capacity couldn’t match the sixty gigabytes of the iPod. The iPod would be perfect for storing the data he pilfered from the Internet, but he also liked the shiny whiteness of its case for how it matched his spark plug nose.
I don’t know why, but that passage really appealed to me, and from that point on, I was fully engaged in the story Charles de Lint’s characters were telling me. In the end, it’s an intriguing one, about a potential war between the fairies, who came over from Europe with the first North American immigrants, and the Cousins, or First People, who were there before them. It’s also a story about hurt, malice, abuse, and vengeance, and how those things can keep hurting even after the fact. Ultimately, it’s about love and understanding, and about finding common ground. The message was a little heavy-handed, but the plot had a strong enough hold on me that I didn’t much mind.
There were a few other things I was going to mention that could have been better, but on the whole I loved the book so much I don’t want to add too many complaints to my review. Even characters I wasn’t very fond of at first tended to grow on me, and the majority are people I’d like to read more about. That’s why I’m going to end this on a positive note, with another quote (a short one this time!) Here’s an exchange between the crow girls that for no good reason had me in stiches:
“Don’t be rude,” she tells Zia.
“They’re not bribes?”
“Why would out veryvery good friends Geordie and Jilly ever need to bribe us?”
Zia shrugs. “So that we’ll behave?”
“Don’t mind her,” Maida says to me. “She was brought up in a tree by an old magpie.”
Pages read: 11,424
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Cardathon Challenge, Charles de Lint, Chunkster Challenge 2008, Newford, Once Upon a Time II
February 21, 2008 at 3:26 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Historical Fiction
19. Trade Wind by M.M. Kaye (Historical Fiction) 551 p.
I think, if I had to choose the one word that would best describe this book, it would be “fraught”. Or “harrowing”, perhaps. Imagine a Gothic romance, set in mid-19th century Zanzibar, with an American heroine who happens to be a passionate do-gooder and a committed abolitionist. And a hero who is a smuggler and occasional slave-trader.
If you think you can see where this is going, you may have read too many historical romances. Although the book’s own blurb leaves no doubt that Hero Hollis and Emory Frost will end up together, how they get there is more than a little surprising. At least, it surprised me.
The best thing about M.M. Kaye’s writing is how genuine it is. Even when composing a novel that would have been trashy in most other authors’ hands, she keeps her characters both human and psychologically believable, and she is meticulous in her historical research. (She does take a few liberties with the history of the period, but the changes are scrupulously noted in a postscript.)
The only drawback about this book is its attitude toward rape, which I found a little disturbing, but not surprising, given the time and social milieu in which it’s set.
I always enjoy a book by M.M. Kaye, and Trade Wind is no exception. Raiders, slave traders, witch doctors, sultans, gold, jewels, shipwrecks, picnics, kidnapping, disease, gun running…seriously, this book has something for everyone!
Pages read: 5,944
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Chunkster Challenge 2008, M.M. Kaye, What's in a Name?, World Lit Challenge II
January 14, 2008 at 6:21 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Historical Fiction, Mystery and Suspense
5. Touchstone by Laurie R. King (Historical Suspense) 548 p.
I’ve been a fan of Laurie R. King’s writing since the day my mother first put The Beekeeper’s Apprentice into my hands. In late 2002, when it felt like my life was falling apart and I needed something to take my out of myself, it was her newly-released Justice Hall I turned to—making it the first book I ever bought at full price while it was still in hardcover.
No surprise, then, that I’ve been eagerly awaiting her newest book, Touchstone. Unlike all but two of her seventeen previously published works, it’s a standalone novel. Set in April of 1926, almost on the eve of the British General Strike, it makes the most of King’s familiarity with the language and social customs of the time (the eight novels in the Mary Russell series are set in the 1910’s and 20’s, mostly in Britain.) And no one writes historical fiction like Laurie R. King. So it’s understandable that I had very high expectations for this book.
I started Touchstone on Friday, and I have to admit that at first I wasn’t too impressed. King’s books usually suck me in right from the first page, but this time I had trouble getting into the story, which begins with a prologue. I don’t know why, but I have an irrational hatred of prologues. I don’t like reading them, and I almost always feel the story would have been better without them.
Touchstone’s prologue I found especially off-putting, because it’s very emotional, almost melodramatic. Rather than being drawn into the story, I was left standing outside it. I couldn’t engage with the character. The prologue also seems to reveal information about the plot that I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Even though it later becomes unclear whether that information means what it seems to mean, the passage raises questions, introduces ambiguities; without it, Touchstone would have been a very different experience.
The main narrative begins by introducing the protagonist, Harry Stuyvesant, an agent of the American Bureau of Investigation, who has come to London unofficially to gather evidence against a man he believes is responsible for three bombings in the United States. The city seems unable to think of anything but the upcoming Strike, hampering Stuyvesant’s investigation, but the chance mention of a name leads to a man who may be able to help him.
Major Aldous Carstairs takes Stuyvesant to Cornwall to have him enlist the help of Bennett Grey, who may be able to provide Stuyvesant with an entrée to his suspect’s world. Stuyvesant’s job is to convince Grey to help him—and to overlook the fact that working with Stuyvesant may bring Grey closer to the one man he hates more than any other: Carstairs. It helps that Stuyvesant himself dislikes everything he’s seen of the Major.
(As do I: at the end of the section, King succeeds brilliantly at making Carstairs repellent to me, by having him do something that disgusts me more than anything she could have written. Partly because I have a particular phobia about it, but I think most people would be suitably enraged at Carstairs.)
Stuyvesant may be interested in Grey for who he knows, but Carstairs wants the man for what he can do. Near the end of the war, Grey was blown up by an incendiary bomb that landed at his feet. He survived the experience physically intact, for the most part, but some essential muffling layer that protected him from the world was destroyed, leaving him unable to block out the smallest sounds, the lightest touches, the most subtle smells. And he knows things. He’s not a mind-reader, but he knows things about people he meets that no ordinary person could.
Touchstone is an interesting book for many reasons, one of them being the fact that it is not a story about Grey or his abilities. Harris Stuyvesant is the main character; the story is mainly told from his point of view. Grey is essential to the story, but on the periphery. As are a number of other complex, fully-fleshed characters. One of the things that puts King head and shoulders above so many mystery and suspense writers is the exquisite care she puts into characterization in what is, in the end, a plot-driven genre.
Once Stuyvesant’s investigation begins, the plot picks up for me, and I enjoyed the book immensely from that point on (not that I didn’t like it at all before that, but I wasn’t loving it, either.) The only shadow on my enjoyment came at the book’s climax; I’m still not sure what to do with the way the plot was resolved. Like the prologue, I just don’t know how to feel about it. That’s not a bad thing, though—Touchstone made me think, and I’ll be more than happy to re-read it sometime soon. Just to clarify my thoughts about it, you understand.
I have some other thoughts, about the way men, women, and sex are treated in the book, but I’m tired enough that I’ll leave those for tomorrow.
In the meantime, that’s one book down for the Chunkster Challenge!
Books read: 5
Pages read: 1,637
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Chunkster Challenge 2008, Laurie R. King
January 10, 2008 at 2:32 pm · Filed under Books Etc
I always thought the Chunkster Challenge sounded a bit daunting. Not because of the length of the books, per se, but because I tend to assume long books will also be tedious. However, a number of books on my TBR list that I’m salivating over also qualify as chunksters, so I’m committing myself: 4 12 books of at least 450 pages in 2008.
Here’s my list:
- Touchstone by Laurie R. King (548 p.)
- Trade Wind by M.M. Kaye (551 p.)
- Widdershins by Charles de Lint (560 p.)
- The Grand Tour by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (469 p.)
- Xenocide by Orson Scott Card (592 p.)
- The Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer (497 p.)
- Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card (467 p.)
- The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold (470 p.)
Total pages: 4,154 (an average of 519 pages/book)
Alternates:
- The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray (819 p.)
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (576 p.)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (784 p.)
- The Tiger Claw by Shauna Singh Baldwin (565 p.)
- Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
- Downbelow Station or Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
- Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
- London or The Forest by Edward Rutherfurd
- White Teeth by Zadie Smith
- Don Quixote » Cervantes
Tags: Book Lists, Chunkster Challenge 2008
