Books: Manley, Leckie, Hale, and Reisman

Kip Manley — The City of Roses episode 23 and 24

Feb 8, Feb 16

The first "season" of City of Roses ruled. It also -- for all the loose ends and lingering mysteries and uncertainties -- ended in a fairly decisive way, so I was really curious about how a second series was going to work.

And it looks like the answer is "by mutating significantly," which, good. Jo is still Jo, but her new responsibilities have changed her quite a bit and are in the process of changing her even further. Ysabel is changed as well, but maybe less so, and that adds a bit of friction, but Jo is generally closer to her level these days too, which offsets that.

Structurally, too, it's the beginning of a very different story; one where our heroines start from a position of power and an intrusive threat is gathering just barely off-stage. And the flavor of that threat is very different -- more lurid and less elliptical, which makes it an interesting foil now that Jo has reached something of an accommodation with the elliptical forces of the court; an insult to The Way Things Are Done Around Here.

Anyway, I enjoyed these first two chapters a lot.

Ginn Hale — The Rifter (The Shattered Gates, The Holy Road, and His Sacred Bones)

May 21, June 2

This dark portal fantasy was a page-turner; well-written, with compelling conflicts and characters and a freaky-ass cosmology. And also some themes that I tend to like a lot: other-lives and wrong-memories type of stuff, sort of adjacent to reincarnation plots but not quite overlapping.

I read it pretty compulsively, and enjoyed it a lot. I have a lot of lingering discomfort with the implications of the final act — I have to wonder whether the eventual villain was actually that much worse than John. Setting the sadism and bitterness aside, I mean, and talking about methods and results across the whole story. Like, when you tally up the body counts and the suffering. Sure, John is trying to rebuild and repair after the big one, but isn't that sort of what (spoiler)'s also trying to do? And would their plan have actually worked? Because if so, that's a much harder call to make.

I guess John has a solid shot at permanently breaking the cycle of Rifters, whereas success in (spoiler)'s plan would have sabotaged one loop but potentially left the cycle open. But maybe not! The Fai'daum were apparently making solid progress in the other timeline, right? If they'd been successful, then... maybe there never would have been another chance to summon a Rifter, and with a lower body count to boot. And couldn't you ignore the ecological damage of opening the gate one last time, because a successful intervention would reset the flow of events to stop John's initial crossing?

I dunno. It was all murky enough that the ending left me feeling a bit queasy. But it was a really good story!

Also, this is the second thing I've read from Blind Eye, and they've both been really solid. (The other was Smoketown.) Have any of you read other books they've put out? Anything I should take a look at?

Ann Leckie — Ancillary Sword

June 23

A very different animal from Ancillary Justice; different enough that it seems like the previous story was paused completely, and we're taking a, like, murder mystery vacation with Breq.

Still, even though it breaks up the unity and clarity of direction I was hoping for from this series, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I mean, it's a story about a rogue (but severely limited) inhuman intelligence rolling into town with a crew of very nervous underlings and stirring up shit with every established social hierarchy she can get her fingers into; any way you slice it, that is solid material for a novel's worth of intrigue.

So it's a side-story to the main story I signed on for. A very good side-story, but, yeah: I'm hoping Ancillary Mercy will be a more thorough development of the chaos Breq kicked off in the first book.

Jessica Reisman — Brilliance (short)

July 30

A short story set in the same universe as The Z Radiant. It had flashes of what made TZR so intensely enjoyable for me, the sense of place and themes of chosen family and the sense of a whole universe moving at cyclone speeds just beyond the shelter of the eaves on a rainy night, but I really think the effect works better at novel length.

Free online.