Recently read: Strange Fortune

Title:  Strange Fortune

Author:  Josh Lanyon

Publication info:  (c) 2009, Blind Eye Books

Format:  trade paperback

Genre:  fantasy

Back cover copy:

Strange Days Indeed

Valentine Strange, late of his Majesty’s 21st Benhali Lancers, needs money.  Happily, the wealthy Holy Orders of Harappu are desperate to retrieve the diadem of the Goddess Purya from an ancient temple deep in the mountainous jungle  – an area Strange knows well from his days quelling rebellions.  The pay is too good and the job seems too easy for Strange to refuse.  But when Master Aleister Grimshaw, a dangerous witch from a traitorous lineage, joins the expedition, Strange begins to suspect that more is at stake than the retrieval of a mere relic.

Grimshaw knows an ancient evil surrounds the diadem — the same evil once hunted him and still haunts his mind.  However, experience has taught him to keep his suspicions to himself or risk being denounced as a madman.  Again.

Harried by curses, bandits and unnatural creatures, Strange and Grimshaw plunge onward.  But when a demonic power wakes and the civilized world descends into revolution, their tenuous friendship is threatened as each man must face the destruction of the life he has know.

The blurb is somewhat exaggerated IMO.

What did I think?  I enjoyed the book as speculative fiction set in an alternative colonial India in which magic and witches are active.  The adventure was engaging.  But the back copy led me to believe that there would be more…introspection, perhaps?  The relationship between the two men was pretty ancillary to the plot.  TBH, while I grasped the larger context of the civil conflict between the Albans and Hindush, some pieces of the plot (like Lady Isabella, and the mutineers) felt not-well-integrated.  I wonder if I knew more about the Anglo-Indian colonial experience, would I feel like the book was more cohesive?  Or maybe it is fine, just not up to the standard of the book I was rereading before this one, The Curse of Chalion, which is my absolute benchmark for fantasy as alternate histories of sorts.

What about the book as object?  Blind Eye Books is a reputable publishers and the book’s presentation is lovely.  I especially like the colors and patterns used to decorate the book cover, although I don’t love the cartoon style hero.  There were a fair number of either copy editing or typesetting misses, mostly little things like quotation marks facing the wrong way or being doubled, some dropped punctuation and missed letters and the like.

Would I recommend the book?  Yes.  With the caveat that it is not at all like Lanyon’s other work, so readers should not expect Adrien English-in-India.

Loved, liked, and meh

Book I read last week that I loved: Novik’s latest Temeraire book, Crucible of Gold 

Several years and books ago, Novik hinted about the alternate history of the New World as a result of the existence of dragons, and in this book readers get to learn more.  But better than that, the dull, dragging narrative and clunky pacing of the last book have vanished.  While I understand intellectually that Tongues of Serpents was a set up book, it needed better editing and pacing.  (Like the second and third books, which felt like a single long book chopped in two for marketing/business purposes, I wondered a little if it would have been better off coupled with either Victory of Eagles or Crucible for better pacing and plotting because it was a disappointment on its own — that seems to be the general consensus among the readers I know.)

Anyway, I love the way the Inca and Tswana dragons and their view of their human families are a foil for the European mindset about dragon ownership, and yet at the same time highlight the possessive natures of the dragons in Temeraire’s coterie.

One particular part left me goggle-eyed and startled, because I did NOT see that coming.  Not shocked or offended in any manner and it sort of fits in retrospect, but just startled.  Sort of the way I felt when JK Rowling casually announced that Dumbledore was gay.

And the ending was good, circling back perhaps to clear up some dangling threads in the next book.

The book I liked well enough:  Fair Game by Patricia Briggs

I liked but didn’t love this book and I haven’t quite figured out why beyond a few general quibbles.  First, Anna’s development from cowering and fearful in the first book of the series to organizing and managing in this third book.  Told not shown, and not particularly believable to me given how hard Briggs worked to present her as hesitant, self-doubting and reticent.  Second, in the early books, Anna’s delicacy and short stature were made much of IIRC but in this book she is average height or taller.  Did she suddenly have a growth spurt after maturity?  Lastly, I’m growing uncomfortable with serial killers and rapists in urban fantasy and Briggs’ use of rape and/or threatened sexual assault to the female narrators and characters in her books in particular.  It’s all down to personal taste and YMMV, obviously, since a lot of other readers really loved this book.

The meh book:  Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Some of the entries in this short survey are obvious (Joan of Arc); others are less so (Carry Nation); and still others are original and inspiring (Ida B. Wells).  The tone and style are extremely casual and informal, with the author making comparisons to Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, etc. — very pop culture referential, as if the author felt she had to equate each woman    It’s hard to condense the history of a complex character like Eleanor of Aquitaine to 15 pages or less, and the difficulty is very apparent here; in many of the biographies, the emphasis is on the trivial and the titillating rather than substance, which is an unfortunate waste of an opportunity.  There’s no significant analysis and the approach is not serious , and the bibliography and citations are somewhat lacking IMO.  Perhaps I’m the wrong audience; maybe a 20 year old who knows very little about history would be fascinated by this introduction to the wild women of days gone by.  Or maybe they could find the same information at Wikipedia for free.

SBD: A Game of Thrones

Today’s SBD:  A Game of Thrones.  High fantasy.  

In case you’ve missed it, HBO is currently airing a miniseries based on George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.  I haven’t been watching, but I have seen all of the chatter on the InterTubes about the series, as well as screen caps of favorite actors and characters.  So I picked up a copy of the book — due to the miniseries, there were no used copies to be found, but plenty of reissues at B&N.

It’s 800 pages.  Which would be fine if it told the whole story.  But no.  The series (originally envisioned as a trilogy) is going to be seven books, of which only four are currently published.  In fact, the last book is actually half of one book, split because it was deemed too large.  Apparently Martin fans have been unhappy with him because he keeps pushing the publication date back.  

I get that a lot of people love this series; it’s won awards.  But I am not joining the legions of fans.  I trudged through the 800 pages and all could think for the vast majority of them was FFS, drop the puck, Martin. And become less enthralled with your own voice. Too many POVs, too slow yet simultaneously too busy.  One note characters for the most part.  By the end of the first installment, I wanted everyone except Arya Stark and Jon Snow to just die already.  Not prepared to invest any more time in the series, or even to watch it on HBO, despite the pretty pretty eye candy.

Island of Icarus by Christine Danse

Title:  Island of Icarus  

Author:  Christine Danse (new to me)

Publisher:  Carina Press

Release Date:  November 29, 2010

Source:  Net Galley

Field Journal of Jonathan Orms, 1893

En route to polite exile in the Galapagos Islands (field work, to quote the dean of my university), I have found myself marooned on a deserted tropical paradise. Deserted, that is, except for my savior, a mysterious American called Marcus. He is an inventor—and the proof of his greatness is the marvelous new clockwork arm he has created to replace the unsightly one that was ruined in my shipboard mishap.

Marcus has a truly brilliant mind and the gentlest hands, which cause me to quiver in an unfamiliar but rather pleasant way. Surely it is only my craving for human companionship that draws me to this man, nothing more? He says a ship will pass this way in a few months, but I am welcome to stay as long as I like. The thought of leaving Marcus becomes more untenable with each passing day, though staying would be fatal to my career…

Why this book?  I was browsing at Net Galley by publisher and ran across this one.  I’ve had good luck with the Carina Press books I’ve read so far, so it’s one of the publishers I make sure to check periodically.  The "steampunk" subject also caught my eye — I’m new to steampunk romance but have enjoyed the little I’ve read so far.  Make it m/m steampunk romance and I’m sold!

What did I think of the book?  On the whole, I enjoyed it.  Was predisposed to doing so, given the category.

The story opens with our narrator, a biologist at an English university who has recently lost both his fiancee and an arm, being sent off on sabbatical to the Galapagos Islands.  At the end of an unremarkable journey, a storm blows up; venturing above decks unwisely, Jonathan is washed overboard and wakes on an island north of the Galapagos.  His rescuer, Marcus, is an American surgeon and engineer.  Once the survivor of a shipwreck, Marcus is now the lone occupant of the island by choice.  Marcus’s specialty is prosthetics (how serendipitous!) and he is able to repair and improve Jonathan’s prosthetic arm, which had been damaged at sea. Marcus’s obsession is flight — so many things can be mechanized, why not human flight?  Surely if he can design proper wings and the proper engine, he’ll be able to fly.  Jonathan is anxious to be rescued by a passing ship — they call in periodically and Marcus trades with them — but also intrigued by Marcus’s experiments.  

Since this is a romance novel, you can probably imagine what happens as they live together on the island with only each other as company.  The relationship development is slightly complicated by the fact that they are men:  part of Marcus’s self-imposed exile is his frustration with societal attitudes about homosexuality, while Jonathan has never really acknowledged that he is gay or at least bisexual.  In fact, one of the most irritating lines of the book is one of his musings that he "was a ruined man, destroyed by [his] affections for a woman."  Readers later learn that he lost his arm because he was distracted by his fiancee’s desertion and got caught in a "library difference engine", which might explain that comment.  But it smacks of self-pity and blame-shifting since Jonathan later admits that he neglected her, avoided her presence and hurt her, and that leaving him was the only thing she could do.   

The steampunk elements in the book were limited primarily to Jonathan’s prosthetic arm and Marcus’s inventions.  The library difference engine and Langley’s aerodrome are also mentioned, however it’s not clear that whatever industrial or mechanical or social changes that are usually inherent with steampunk exist in this setting.  There’s the Panama Canal (real); Darwin’s journey on The Beagle (real); shadowgraph (which sounds like an x-ray in context, also real).  Is that standard?  [The little steampunk I've read to date has taken a culture or society and completely changed it via the steampunk elements, which is why I'm wondering.]

Would I read this author again?  Certainly.

Keep or pass on?  This was an eARC from NetGalley, so I can’t do either.  But if I’d purchased a copy, I certainly would keep it.

Related only generally, take a look here for some gorgeous steampunk cakes.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled reading program…

My reading plans were abruptly interrupted when my copy of Cryoburn arrived.  Tore through it in one night and am ready to go back for a re-read to appreciate all the things I rushed over in my haste.  And I would like to write a review.  But I can’t even imagine how to do so right now without giving away monumental spoilers.

Maybe my favorite lines are Miles’ musings early on

Only five days on this beknighted world, and already total strangers wanted to kill me.  Sadly, it wasn’t even a record. 

SBD: Thank You, Mrs. M., and Doubleblind

So, I read two books this weekend, and I’ll share my impressions for SBD:

Doubleblind by Ann Aguirre

It’s not easy to tread lightly wearing steel-toed boots.

Sirantha Jax isn’t known for diplomatic finesse. As a “Jumper” who navigates ships through grimspace, she’s used to kicking ass first and taking names later—much later. Not exactly the obvious choice to sell the Conglomerate to the Ithtorians, a people whose opinions of humans are as hard as their exoskeletons.

And Ithiss-Tor council meetings aren’t the only place where Ambassador Jax needs to maneuver carefully. Her lover, March, is frozen in permanent “kill” mode, and his hair-trigger threatens to sabotage the talks—not to mention their relationship.

But Jax won’t give up on the man or the mission. With the Outskirts beleaguered by raiders, pirates, and the flesh-eating Morgut, an
alliance with Ithiss-Tor may be humanity’s only hope. Which has Jax wondering why a notorious troublemaker like her was given the job…
 

The Sirantha Jax series is a scifi fantasy series published by Ace, the most recent release is the third of the series so far.  I’m feeling rather ambivalent about the series, have from the start, and have a hard time figuring out just why.  I love Ms. Aguirre’s writing; her Corine Solomon series is an autobuy for me now after only one book.  But I’m just not warming to Sirantha Jax.  My notes in LibraryThing for the second book of the series (Wanderlust) read, This series works much better for me as straight SFF; it works least when the narrative is focused on the relationship between Jax and March, which I just don’t buy.

I could say the same thing about this third book.  The world building is complex and layered.  The conflict is believable on the large and small scale.  I love that all of the inhabitants on this universe are NOT humanoid.  I just don’t care about Sirantha Jax, which is problematic since she’s the narrator.  When she stuck to the politcal things, to observations about what was going on in the negotiations, I was fine.  But I just didn’t care about her relationship with March.  It’s a trainwreck waiting to happen.  She walked away once, so I don’t believe her as she vows not to walk away again.  More than that, I thought the way she handled homicidal March was TSTL, and wouldn’t have mourned if he’d killed her when he had the chance. 

Much more interesting to me was the political maneuvering and the entire construct of the Ithiss-Tor world and culture.  Vel, a secondary character whose importance to the series seem to grow with each book, was in the spotlight, and I found him *much* more intriguing than March.  The sidetrack in the end to rescue March? Eh.

B- from me.

Thank You, Mrs. M. by Kate Rothwell
 

“You want honesty. An hour’s worth a day of normal speech, nothing prepared is necessary. Yeah, okay. But I’m pretty certain I’m not supposed to talk normally. No fucking way, because every other fucking word is fuck… I’ll tone it down for you, okay? I assume you’re an old lady with some style. For you, I can stop.”

I just wanted that effing college education and you said you’d pay for it…along with just about everything else. The cost—my effing life’s story jabbered into a digital recorder just for you. How screwed is that? The thing is, I wasn’t the only one telling a story. You tried to hide from me. Too bad I’m smart, Mrs. Moneybags, and I got you figured. But know what? I can keep your secrets. You and me—we made it work.

Note: A reverse take on the classic story Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster.

Okay, just to be compliant with the new FTC rule (which I guess applies to me?), I won a free copy of this ebook in a contest at Kate Rothwell’s blog.  And some M&M’s.  I’ll share my opinion of the book, but not the M&M’s ’cause I’m selfish when it comes to chocolate.  Especially since according to Jonathan Ross, the Achocolypse is upon us.

I’ve never read the story Daddy Long Legs, so I had no idea what to expect from this book.  Which was fine, because I selected it at random from the PDFs that Kate sent me.

TYMM is a year in the life of Ben, a slightly older student who is raising his sister and brother.  He’s very rough around the edges.  He narrates a year of his life plus some of his history in one hour increments for Mrs. Moneybags, who is funding his education in exchange for his time and voice. 

I loved observing the changes in Ben as the year progressed and things changed in his life.  Changing neighborhoods, changing crowds (even though he held on to some of his old friends), changing his outlook from the the past to the future. 

The ending came too soon, because I wanted to stay a voyeur, reading Ben’s monologues about his past and his present, and I wasn’t ready for the wrap up.  I guessed who Mrs. M was early on, but am still confused about how/why she did what she did: random chance?  altruism?  If I take a step back and think about it, it makes me vaguely uncomfortable and I’m not entirely sure why.  Maybe because it reminds me of Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle?

There is a sweet thread of romance in the book, but it is not a traditional genre romance.  Maybe in a larger sense it is a love story?  I’m not sure.  If pressed, I would say that it was closer to lad lit than romance.

B+ from me.

Off to read more.
 

SBD: More Bujold

It’s Monday.  Thus, verily, ’tis time for the SBD. 

I’ve been trying for more than a week to write about Bujold’s The Sharing Knife Volume 4: Horizon.  Everytime I set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, all tha comes out is a gush of Bujold-love.  [I can get a prescription to fix that C says.  Haha, so funny.  Not.] 

Even if I could get it together enough to write a thoughtful review, I would necessarily have to give spoilers for the first three volumes of the series.  While a reader could pick up Horizon and muddle through it, the book is best read after reading books one, two and three.  Or volume three at the very least.

Background:  this is fantasy, but not "high" fantasy with courts and mages in European-like lands with castles.  Instead, the world is a wilderness rather like the Ohio River valley of the 17th or 18th century.  Lakewalkers hunt malices, earth-born mages who steal ground, or life-force.  Their weapons:  sharing knives, made of the bones of their loved ones, carrying in turn their own mortality, which when stabbed into a malice teaches it how to die.  Farmers are settlers without any defense against malices.  Gradually moving northward to clear fresh ground, they are fertile fodder for malices but at the same time are suspicious of the mysterious and "cannibalistic" Lakewalkers, who hold themselves apart and who the Farmers believe just don’t want to share the bounty of the unsettled land.

Book One (Beguilement): Farmer Fawn meets Lakewalker Dag and slays a malice.  The two fall in love and marry, after gaining the approval of Fawn’s Farmer family.

Book Two (Legacy):  Fawn and Dag travel to Dag’s home camp, hoping that their marriage will be accepted.  Dag returns to patrolling for malices, and what his patrol encounters demonstrates what can happen when Farmers aren’t warmed or don’t believe in malices — it has serious consequences for both Farmers and Lakewalkers.

Book Three (Passage):  Dag and Fawn are back on the road.  Or rather, the river.  Dag is troubled by the malice outbreak that occured in the last book, and they use this wedding trip down the Grace and Grey Rivers to the sea to seek answers about how the problem can be solved.

Book Four (Horizon):  Picks up immediately after Book Three, with Dag and Fawn struggling to find a way to bend the two worlds together.

While the series is not genre romance, it is romantic fantasy.   The two of them are looking for a place to belong together.  At the same time, Dag is looking to remake himself.  Fawn remakes herself as well, but the transformation seems…I don’t want to say less violent, because it was, but her transformation, after the first book, is a much more tradition one, one of growing into herself.  Dag’s is rather like a snow globe — everything had settled, but then someone (Fawn) came along and shook everything to the foundation, and when things settled again eventually, they were utterly different.  And as the two travel, they pick up and build what is really a family of sorts — others who have been abandoned, cast out, or who are seekign something else themselves, even if they don’t know exactly what.

Well-paced, well-plotted, with adventure and humor and some sadness as well, this book is the best book of the year so far for me. 

I would LOVE to read more set in this world, and hope that eventually Bujold returns to it, either to write about future generations of Lakewalkers and Farmers, or perhaps to write about the civilization that preceded them and is hinted at in Lakewalker legends.

In a world where malices—remnants of ancient magic—can erupt with life-destroying power, only soldier-sorcerer Lakewalkers have mastered the ability to kill them. But Lakewalkers keep their uncanny secrets—and themselves—from the farmers they protect, so when patroller Dag Redwing Hickory rescued farmer girl Fawn Bluefield, neither expected to fall in love, join their lives in marriage, or defy both their kin to seek new solutions to the perilous split between their peoples.

As Dag’s maker abilities have grown, so has his concern about who—or what—he is becoming. At the end of a great river journey, Dag is offered an apprenticeship to a master groundsetter in a southern Lakewalker camp. But as his understanding of his powers deepens, so does his frustration with the camp’s rigid mores with respect to farmers. At last, he and Fawn decide to travel a very different road—and find that along it, their disparate but hopeful company increases.

Fawn and Dag see that their world is changing, and the traditional Lakewalker practices cannot hold every malice at bay forever. Yet for all the customs that the couple has challenged thus far, they will soon be confronted by a crisis exceeding their worst imaginings, one that threatens their Lakewalker and farmer followers alike. Now the pair must answer in earnest the question they’ve grappled with since they killed their first malice together: When the old traditions fail disastrously, can their untried new ways stand against their world’s deadliest foe?Available in hardcopy and ebook. 
 

Available in hardcopy and ebook.  Excerpt of the first several chapters here. 

Also, the book pimp has struck again.  I got a colleague who does not like fantasy to read the excerpt of TSK: Volume One, and she immediately downloaded a copy to her Kindle.  Hah!  But I have to ask — why does Amazon have the first and third volumes available for Kindle, but not the second and fourth?

What’s next for Bujold?

Check out this interview with SF Revu, in which Bujold mentions the possibility of future books set in the Sharing Knife world.  Not a promise, mind you, just a mention of general ideas that could be addressed. 

TBR Challenge: An Accidental Goddess

I read Linnea Sinclair’s An Accidental Goddess for the TBR Challenge.

(c)  2005, Bantam Spectra

Why this author?  Because I want to like her…so much.  I really enjoyed Gabriel’s Ghost and Finders Keepers, but the other Sinclair books I’ve tried haven’t really hit the spot for me.

What did I think of the cover art?  Well, the newer art (here) is much prettier than the older art (here) IMO.  I like the style of the new/reissued covers, although the posing couples aren’t my favorite thing.

Blurb:
 

Raheiran Special Forces captain Gillaine Davré has just woken up in some unknown space way station, wondering where the last three hundred years have gone. The last thing she remembers is her ship being attacked. Now it seems that while she was time-traveling, she was ordained a goddess…. Gillaine’s only hope of survival rests with dangerously seductive Admiral Mack Makarian, who suspects her of being a smuggler—or worse. But he can’t begin to imagine the full extent of it. For Gillaine is now Lady Kiasidira, holy icon to countless believers, including Mack—a man who inspires feelings in her that are far from saintly…feelings she knows are mutual. But when their flirtation is interrupted by a treacherous enemy from the past, Gillaine’s secret—and secret desires—could destroy them both….
 

What did I think of the book?  Well, it worked more as science fiction/fantasy than a romance for me.  The romance was just…too abrupt.  And the heroine lied to the hero about who/what she was for most of the book, which is a Deal Breaker for me. 

Will I read this author again?  Absolutely.  Gabriel’s Ghost is a keeper, and I’m looking forward to her Hope’s Folly.

Victory of Eagles

Release date: July 8, 2008
First hard back of the series
Fifth book of the series (His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, Empire of Ivory)

Warning: there will be spoilers because I couldn’t figure out how to write about this book without them.

It is a grim time for the dragon Temeraire. On the heels of his mission to Africa, seeking the cure for a deadly contagion, he has been removed from military service–and his captain, Will Laurence, has been condemned to death for treason.

For Britain, conditions are grimmer still: Napoleon’s resurgent forces have breached the Channel and successfully invaded English soil. Napoleon’s prime objective: the occupation of London.

Separated by their own government and threatened at every turn by Napoleon’s forces, Laurence and Temeraire must struggle to find each other amid the turmoil of war and to aid the resistance against the invasion before Napoleon’s foothold on England’s shores can become a stranglehold.

If only they can be reunited, master and dragon might rally Britain’s scattered forces and take the fight to the enemy as never before–for king and country, and for their own liberty. But can the French aggressors be well and truly routed, or will a treacherous alliance deliver Britain into the hands of her would-be conquerors?