January 9, 2008 at 5:58 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
123. A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear (Fantasy) 302 p.
I’m almost caught up with reviewing my December reads, and finally, here’s one I can rave about. Ever since I read her first books, Mélusine, I have been madly in love with the way Sarah Monette writes. Four books later, and she has never disappointed me. I was a little wary about A Companion to Wolves, though, because I haven’t had such a great experience with Elizabeth Bear. I’ve made several attempts to enjoy Carnival, but for some reason reading it has been a slog instead of a pleasure. It’s very frustrating, because she seems to be an excellent writer and I have a feeling that if I could get into it I would like it a lot, but I haven’t been able to. Of course, it’s possible that Carnival just isn’t the book for me, because judging by A Companion to Wolves, Elizabeth Bear is my kind of author.
Njall is the sixteen-year-old son and heir of the jarl of Nithogsfjoll when he is unexpectedly chosen to join a wolfheall, a group of fighting men bonded to trellwolves, whose job it is to defend inhabited towns from trolls. Neither Njall nor his father is happy that his duty is to join the pack, in great part because the homosexuality practised in the wolfheall is seen as weak and degrading by ordinary men. As Njall, now called Isolfr, begins to be accepted and to find his place in the pack, the trolls begin to come south in greater numbers than ever before, threatening both Isolfr’s old family and his new one.
I found the set-up of A Companion to Wolves intriguing, since it has the feel of high fantasy to me (partly because it is steeped in Norse myth), but also has a lot in common with other kinds of fantasy. The bond between man and wolf puts me in mind of Mercedes Lackey’s Heralds and their Companions, while the wolfheall reads something like a werewolf pack—although Monette and Bear’s world is far more realistic than most werewolf stories, and far less gag-worthy than anything Ms. Lackey ever wrote. The wolves feel like wild animals, rather than pets, and the structure of the wolfheall is engrossing, springing naturally from the behaviour of an ordinary wolf-pack. I loved the characters, both humans and wolves, and even the villains of the piece, the trolls, had an interesting and cleverly conceived society.
[spoilers]
The only slight quibble I had was with the feminism-heavy ending, which felt out-of-true with the rest of the book, even though I could see how Isolfr’s character development clearly led him to the decision he made. I think it was the emphasis it was given by being at the very end of the book—to me, the story was mostly about Isolfr, and yes, his gradual awakening to the oppression of women in his society is an important part of his life, but it wasn’t necessarily the most important part of it to me, and I’m not entirely convinced it would be for Isolfr, either. Or maybe I should say, I’m intellectually convinced, but I don’t feel it.
But that’s a very, very minor complaint.
[/spoilers]
If you like fantasy, try this book. If you love it even half as much as I do, you’ll be glad you did.
Books read: 123
Pages read: 36,474
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette
November 4, 2007 at 10:17 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Mystery and Suspense, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
116. The Bone Key by Sarah Monette (Fantasy Horror) 253 p.
It’s taken me a few days to review this book, and I suppose I should start by confessing that I loved it. Yeah, I know: I loved a book by Sarah Monette; what a surprise! But it was, to me, a little surprising. Her three previous books, which I love as much as anything I’ve ever read, are fantasy novels, while The Bone Key is a series of short stories, connected by the protagonist, Kyle Murchison Booth, who narrates all ten. The genre? Horror, which a week ago I would have dismissed as being not to my taste. However, I trusted that Ms. Monette would be able to reconcile me to just about anything, and of course she did. But reading The Bone Key reminded me of something I’d forgotten: that I actually like horror; at least, the old-fashioned kind.
Kyle Murchison Booth is an intelligent, introverted archivist for the Samuel Mather Parrington Museum in his hometown. When his only friend, a man he hasn’t spoken to in years, comes looking for his help, he has his own reasons for agreeing to help him. Participation in a necromantic rite leaves him sensitive to the occult, and he becomes entangled in a number of supernatural problems.
I pre-ordered The Bone Key online from Chapters in July, and it was due to be released on August 15. It was shipped this week and I received it on Monday, only slightly more than two months late. As I was beginning to wonder whether Chapters would ever actually receive any copies from the publisher, I’m just happy it came at all. Especially since it’s so awesome. And it was a perfect book to read the night before Halloween.
Even though The Bone Key is a short story collection, it read a lot like a novel, because so much of Booth’s history and character are revealed over the course of the book. And he himself is a charming narrator, perceptive and rather amusing. One of the stories from the collection, “Wait for Me“, is archived at Sarah Monette’s official website. (Quite a few of her short stories are available online, including two of my favourite standalone stories, “A Light in Troy” and “A Night in Electric Squidland“.)
Books read: 116
Pages read: 34,384
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Kyle Murchison Booth, Sarah Monette
August 4, 2007 at 1:34 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
76. The Mirador by Sarah Monette (Fantasy) 426 p.
Third in the series begun with Mélusine and continued in The Virtu. The Mirador begins a full two years after the conclusion of The Virtu. Felix, Mildmay, and Gideon are still sharing Felix’s suite in the Mirador, while Mehitabel Parr is a tragedienne and second female lead for the Empyrean Theatre in Pharaohlight. The Mirador, as ever, is full of scandals and plots, and all three become caught up in intrigues both old and new.
Usually I appreciate being able to read quickly, but there are times when I wish I could slow down, draw out the enjoyment of reading a throughly good book. This was one of those times—my only criticism of The Mirador is that I finished it much too quickly. The plot built up momentum slowly, with all the threads coming together only at the end. The structure of it really worked for me in this book, maybe because it felt more natural for things to happen that way.
Felix and Mildmay’s voices are as sharp and entertaining as ever, and this book adds a third narrator, Mehitabel Parr. I didn’t think I’d like that at first—I enjoy having Felix and Mildmay be the centre of the story, and although I came to like Mehitabel more over the course of The Virtu, I never warmed up to her entirely. I also wasn’t that keen on her section of the first chapter, which I read on Monette’s website. I should have trusted her—I love Mehitabel now, and her voice was perfect. It also allowed another, slightly more trustworthy perspective on Mildmay, about whom she has some amusing descriptions:
Mildmay did that horrible thing he did sometimes to conversational gambits: let it drop to the floor and lie there twitching. After a very long pause, he said, “That an order?”
Mildmay doesn’t seem to let his affection blind him to Felix’s worse nature, but Mehitabel’s observations about him were still acute and entertaining:
Felix—tall, beautiful Felix, as molly as de Fidelio’s dormouse—wasn’t as difficult to read as Mildmay, but I’d found his skew eyes made his face unpredictable. I even had a conceit, half fancy, half uneasiness, that his yellow eye and his blue eye governed different expressions.
I didn’t mention it before, but I love the names in this series, especially the place names: Mélusine, Vusantine, Britomart, Pharaohlight, St. Millefleurs, Rosaura, Mutandis, Coeurterre, the Mirador, and so many others. None (or very few) of the names are Monette’s inventions, but she uses them in a way that just feels right. I’m such a sucker for the way words sound.
[spoilers]
I’ve always been impressed by the way Monette handles first-person narration, especially the realism in the way all three are mostly but not completely reliable. Even the most acute observer has blind spots, and although she doesn’t draw deliberate attention to them, it isn’t hard to see where they are. I particularly liked the dinner scene between Mehitabel and Stephen Teverius, when Mehitabel asks him if he loved his first wife:
He didn’t take offence, seeming to consider the question a perfectly reasonable one. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, really. I doted on her, and I enjoyed the role of protector—ha! Didn’t mean the pun. Sorry. I love her memory, but I’m not sure I’d love her now.” His mouth quirked. “Easy to love a memory.”
I thought, without at all wanting to, of Mildmay and the torch he was still carrying for Ginevra, and I was grateful that the manservant—butler or whatever he was—reappeared just then to announce dinner.
I think it’s interesting that Mehitabel thinks immediately of Mildmay and Ginevra there, but not her relationship with Hallam. Not that I think she’s wrong about Mildmay, but I wonder if she’s missing something about herself.
I actually guessed who two of the villains were, but I think it’s a credit to Monette’s writing that it didn’t make the book one jot less enthralling. I was amused by the further mentions of incest in this book; I think in my review of The Virtu I brought up the way so many people seem to automatically assume that Felix and Mildmay are lovers (I would love to see how their relationship looks to the average outsider, rather than to someone like Mehitabel, who is very observant and knows them pretty well by the time we hear her point of view.) Now we know denizens of the Lower City were perfectly willing to believe that Mildmay and Kolkhis were brother and sister as well as lovers. When Mehitabel talks about, “. . . Cat and Toad, the two silent boys—lovers or brothers, I’d never been able to determine which . . .”, all I could think was, in Mélusine? Probably both . . . .
I loved the interaction between Felix and Mildmay, as usual, and even when Felix was being a hideous asshole, I still loved him (though not as much as Mildmay, of course!) I really hope that Summerdown will see them become closer and start to communicate more. I’d also like to believe that Mehitabel’s narration in The Mirador was partly a set-up to allow us to follow things in Mélusine in Summerdown, while Felix and Mildmay will, presumably, be in Tibernia. I’ve really grown to enjoy Mehitabel as a character over this last book, and I’d be sorry to lose her in the next book.
I was so happy to see that Shannon Teverius regretted his behaviour toward Felix, because I wanted to like him, and up until this book he’s given me so many reasons not to. I was very glad to see the back of Robert of Hermione—one down, only Thaddeus de Lalage to go! (Please, please, let something nasty happen to Thaddeus. If there was one fictional character whom I would be happy to see have his tongue cut out . . . it would actually be Robert, but Thaddeus would be a very close second.)
[/spoilers]
There are so many things I loved about The Mirador that I can’t even think of all of them, which is much the same way I felt about both Mélusine and The Virtu. This series is one of the best I’ve read in quite some time. I’m especially grateful to Sarah Monette after being disappointed by Laurell K. Hamilton and Lois McMaster Bujold’s latest offerings (not that I blame those authors for not delivering exactly what I wanted, but it’s always a letdown not to enjoy a long-anticipated book as much as you expected.) My copy of The Bone Key has been ordered and will be in the mail as soon as it’s released, and I look forward to reading it with pleasure.
Books read: 76/100 (76%)
Pages read: 22,886/25,000 (92%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Doctrine of Labyrinths, Sarah Monette
June 13, 2007 at 4:05 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
56. The Virtu by Sarah Monette (Fantasy) 439 p.
Oh my God. My love for Sarah Monette is confirmed. She rocks my socks.
I mentioned in my last post that I’d wanted to read Mélusine for a long time, and was lucky enough to find it in hardcover at the Book Depot for $7.99. When I finished it yesterday I was dying to read the sequel, The Virtu, right away. When I checked the Indigo website, it told me that there was one copy left in my area, a trade paperback marked down to $6.99. I would rather have had a hardcover, to match the first in the series, but I wanted to read it too badly to be picky, and the price was right.
So I went downtown to the World’s Biggest Bookstore (after a stop at BMV, my favourite used bookstore, conveniently located next door,) and found, when got there, that the copy listed on the computer as a trade paperback was actually a hardcover. So my copies do match after all! A little thing, maybe, but it made me happy. (I was also already in a good mood after finding Elizabeth Marie Pope’s The Perilous Gard, one of my favourite books from childhood, in hardcover for $3.50—my original paperback copy has been read so many times that it looks ridiculously bedraggled and pathetic, even though it was new when I first got it. I also found a Patricia Wentworth mystery that I’ve never read for $1, and I paid only $3.50 for a paperback copy of The Complete Adventures of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit, another favourite childhood author, although I’ve never read any of these particular books.)
Anyway, The Virtu is even better than Mélusine. I can’t understand why I haven’t heard more about Sarah Monette. Maybe I just don’t read enough of the right book blogs. The Virtu picks up pretty much where Mélusine left off, and continues the shift between Felix and Mildmay’s first-person POV’s, a technique that works just as well in this book as it did in the first one. The sections are still labelled with the POV character, which is a courtesy to the reader that more authors who use similar techniques could stand to employ, although with Monette it’s probably not necessary—she’s done such an amazing job giving Felix and Mildmay distinct and wildly different voices that it would be difficult to confuse the two.
There was a brief incident in Mélusine which I had wondered if Monette would pick up again in The Virtu. I wasn’t sure she would, since it was only briefly mentioned and happened while Felix was mad, but to my delight, she explored it in some depth in The Virtu. The relationship between Felix and Mildmay is still my favourite thing about the series; it’s certainly one of the most interesting fictional relationships I’ve read about in a long time. I’m not too keen on Felix in this book, but I’m hoping that he’ll grow as the series progresses, even despite himself. Mildmay is as charming and wonderful a character as ever.
[spoilers]
The Virtu starts with Felix and Mildmay in Troia, still in the Gardens of Nimphele, but it’s not too long before they start to make their way back to Mélusine. I like how the plot basically mirrors that of Mélusine, with the first half of the novel devoted to travel, and the second half set in Mélusine, the reverse of how it was in the first book. It helps to highlight the contrast between the journey out to Troia, while Felix was mad and Mildmay was dominant, and the journey back to Mélusine, when Felix is definitely the one in control. The difference between Felix vulnerable and confused and Felix back to his old self (who we’re actually meeting for pretty much the first time) is really startling. The gap between the two is vast, exacerbated by the fact that Felix initially remembers very little of what happened during his year of madness. He remembers people and how he feels about them, but not the circumstances that led to those feelings. And since he can’t remember much about his madness, he’s forgotten most of what he learned from the experience.
He and Mildmay make their way back across the sea, and back across Kekropia, picking up a few companions on the way. One of things I like about Monette’s writing is that she doesn’t rush to the finish line, doesn’t put overmuch stress on the resolution of the main plot. It makes her books infinitely more lifelike, and lends her narrative a certain fluidity, as well as allowing her to introduce new characters and situations that don’t necessarily have any connection with the main plot.
I was glad to see Gideon, Mavortian, and Bernard again. I didn’t think she’d just drop them, and it was nice to be right about that. One of the best things about Mélusine was how it turned some of the traditional heroic character traits on their heads; neither Felix nor Mildmay is a traditional hero, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s Felix, by far the less likable of the two, who comes closest to fulfilling that pattern. Mildmay is a very good man, but not a fantasy hero, and nowhere is that more obvious than when he leaves Gideon, Mavortian, and Bernard behind in Mélusine. It’s not just that he leaves without them—there are plenty of justification for it, some of them which could even be used by a fantasy hero—but that he doesn’t even try to find out what’s happened to them, or even really decide to abandon them. It just that going back to investigate or help them in any way doesn’t even occur to him. Still, it wouldn’t have made sense not to bring back the other three in this book, since a sudden and unexplained disappearance is a loose end just begging to be resolved.
Really big spoilers! I’m serious—don’t read this if you might read the books.
Mildmay and Felix. When I first read the blurb for Mélusine, I thought it would be a fairly traditional (except gay) fantasy romance. I was a little confused when it started to look like Mildmay was straight, although Felix was pretty flaming. By the time I discovered that they’re actually brothers, I was so invested in Monette’s world that I actually liked that turn of events better than the one I’d anticipated (and I still do think it’s a lot more interesting than having the two of them become lovers.) I was considerably pleased with Felix’s attraction to Mildmay in Mélusine, and, as I said above, delighted to see it continued and expanded on in The Virtu.
The most interesting thing about it, though, is how many other people read a sexual aspect into the relationship between Felix and Mildmay. Astyanax makes that out-of-the-blue dig at Felix about hoping Mildmay’s good in bed, and he’s only the first in a long line of people to allude to, or outright speculate about, a sexual relationship between the two. It makes me wonder just how obvious Felix is being in his attraction—we know he flirts with Mildmay, although presumably that’s mostly a social reflex and a way to keep Mildmay off-balance and at a distance, rather than an expression of his attraction. But since we’re clearly shown that most people don’t recognize that about Felix—that his flirting is a way to control his relationships with people and get what he wants, and not a genuine expression of desire or intimacy—it’s possible that they misread the way he treats Mildmay (sort of.) I also have to wonder how much Gideon sees of that—he knows Felix isn’t having sex with Mildmay, but is he aware that Felix wants to? That Felix would rather be sleeping with Mildmay than with him?
[/spoilers]
Awesome book. The release of the next book in the series, The Mirador, on August 7 gives me another new book to look forward to. I can hardly wait!
Books read: 56/100
Pages read: 16,605/25,000
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Doctrine of Labyrinths, Sarah Monette
June 12, 2007 at 4:12 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
55. Mélusine by Sarah Monette (Fantasy) 421 p.
I’ve been wanting to read this for a long time, so when I saw it for sale at my favourite discount bookstore, I had to buy it. I loved the name, and the summaries and reviews I’d read made it sound really good…I was just afraid it wouldn’t live up to my expectations. Luckily for me, Mélusine did that and more.
At the beginning of the book, Felix Harrowgate is an aristocrat, one of the elite of the city of Mélusine, but it’s not long before his safe world begins to crumble around him. Abused, maligned, deprived of friends and allies, he is quickly on the brink of madness and despair. Mildmay the Fox, a cat-burglar for hire in the Lower City, is the only person willing to help him or believe in him.
I love books that confound my expectations, and present me with turns in the plot that are better than anything I could have thought of on my own. Mélusine is one of those books. I love the characters, and I can’t wait to see what happens next in the series (the next book, The Virtu, is already out, with The Mirador scheduled for release August 7, 2007, and Summerdown to be published sometime in 2008.)
Books read: 55/100 (55%)
Pages read: 16,166/25,000 (65%)
Days passed: 163/365 (45%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Doctrine of Labyrinths, Sarah Monette
