Things I Read During September

[roadrunnertwice]

I'm sorry, some day I will talk about something else. I basically spent September reading, so these posts are me flushing my system. Anyway, book reviews!

Things I Read During September

Yeah, remember what I said about the two-foot stack of YA? I brung it. And many other things.

Charles DeLint — Promises To Keep

(audiobook, at work. Available here for free.) I grabbed this one from the Subterranean Magazine archives along with Rude Mechanicals and "Wax," and it set off an interesting conversation with my sister about modes of reading. To wit: She rather liked it, and I decided that two tries was all I cared to spend on DeLint's fiction.

We think it comes to an issue of reading for different qualities. While both of us put character quality as paramount for an enjoyable read, the things that'll spike a book for us are quite different. In my case, DeLint's clunky and didactic dialogue and the fact that he doesn't care to exercise much subtlety in his treatment of theme were dealkillers. (Official diagnosis: afterschoolspecialitis.) In her case, the thematic material itself was likable enough that she could forgive a certain amount of manhandling, and the dialogue didn't drop below her threshold.

Terry Pratchett — Going Postal (9/2)

Probably one of my favorite three Discworld books now, with the best set of one-off characters since Small Gods¹ — especially Moist von Lipwig, who has a profoundly entertaining balance of calculating squirminess and balls of steel.

In yet another conversation with my sister about fiction (that's kind of a theme for this month, as you will see), I found myself trying to explain what Discworld does well. (She's tried to get into the series several times, and repeatedly given up on it with a "meh.") And one of the answers I kind of surprised myself with was that I like the series' sense of morality. Small Gods offers the clearest statement of it, but the whole series is, to a greater or lesser extent, steeped in it. I'm not sure what to say about that regarding Going Postal in particular, but it seemed worth sharing.

What else. The pin collecting and stamp collecting subplots were hilarious, and, like all the best Discworld books, it effectively reintroduced the appropriate sense of wonder to a handful of things that we have allowed to become commonplace.

This was also the best designed Discworld book I've seen yet. The stamp designs were fantastic, and added a nice graphic unity to the chapter heads. (Chapter heads? No! But yes!) Also, I love love love that odd Victorian habit of dumping a pile of baffling, misleading, and pun-strewn bullet points in the fronts of chapters. (I think it was To Say Nothing of the Dog that really turned me on to that.)

Steven Hall — The Raw Shark Texts (9/4)

Why do I get the impression that I've read this story and protagonist before? Oh well. It was a good enough ride, with a generous portion of Cool Stuff, and Hall ponied up with a good solid smash-bang cathartic climax, which is always a nice show of appreciation for effort spent.

Kage Baker — Rude Mechanicals (9/5)

(Free audiobook.) Another Subterranean Magazine audio-novella find. I enjoyed this one a lot more than I did the DeLint one or Elizabeth Bear's "Wax." (Loved New Amsterdam [see June didread post], but Wax was probably the weakest story from it.) Anyway, it's a cyborg time-travel period-piece farce about 1930s Hollywood, and it's pretty much as fun as it ought to be. Reminds me a bit of To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is never a bad target to shoot for.

Diana Wynne Jones — Howl's Moving Castle

(re-read.) MORE ANON. Way more.

Patricia C. Wreade — Dealing with Dragons (9/6)

(audiobook.) I've actually read this twice before, and I think Chris did too, but Katie hadn't, so we ran it during work time and part of a roadtrip to Ashland. It's high-quality YA fantasy, based on a sort of continuous subversion of fairy tale tropes, and I do still like it. Avoid this audiobook, though; the voice acting for everyone but the Stone Prince was kind of grating and overdone.

You know, the later books in the series got both better and worse. The romance between Cimorine and the king of the Enchanted Forest feels very much like a "because of course they have to!" sort of thing, and one of the best things about this first volume was the way it thumbed its nose at plot-mandated pair-offs. On the other hand, the refined wizard-melting spell, Morwen's cats, Killer the rabbit, and a bunch of the other stuff from the rest of the series were pretty awesome.

Elizabeth Bear — Hammered (9/8?), Scardown (9/14), Worldwired (9/17) (Jenny Casey series)

This was Bear's first published series, and it's pretty good. She's done better since. In particular, she's gotten better at knowing what needs to be explained in more detail, and what the reader can be expected to run and catch up for. Also, these books had a really annoying habit of stringing together twenty one-and-a-half page chapters, and I haven't seen that in any of her other stuff.

Lawrence Yep — Dragon of the Lost Sea (9/11), Dragon Steel (9/16)

You remember that book you read when you were a kid, the one that was totally awesome? Except that now you can't for the life of you remember what it was called, and have despaired of ever finding it again? Well, I totally found that book. Even more to my surprise, it actually IS as good as I remember.

They say you can't go home again, and while they probably meant it metaphorically, a dragon whose home first exiled her and then proceeded to get destroyed by a witch can pretty much take them at face value. Since then, Shimmer has been a destitute wanderer, but her fortune starts looking a little shinier when she happens to cross paths with the witch who drained away her beloved Inland Sea. One thing follows another, and before long, she's joined forces with two similarly uprooted humans, the Monkey King, an undead witch, and the enslaved and ruined remnants of her former clan in a mad gamble to rebuild her home. It's a pretty kickin' yarn, in other words.

It's also got an unusually fabulous setting, splitting time between medieval Chinese villages and undersea coral-and-volcano castles, plus plenty of really cool shit -- the theft of an entire sea was one of the freakiest things I've seen in a kids' book. The character writing is good and solid, and the plotting is remarkably deft, and the series has an impressively dark and unflinching take on morality and the unfairness of life. I still have two books left to go, and I can't remember whether Yep stuck the dismount or not, but I'm going to highly recommend this anyhow.

Carl Hiaasen — Hoot

(audiobook at work, listened to the outside 2/3 of it.) More YA audiobook tomfoolery at work, courtesy of Katie. This one was pretty decent, if not really earthshaking, but it DID include what may be my favorite new piece of non-sequitur dialogue:

"I've never seen cottonmouth moccasins with blue and sliver sparkles on their tails before."

"They're goin' to a party."

Tamora Pierce — Wild Magic, Wolf Speaker (Sep. 23?), Emperor Mage (9/27), The Realms of the Gods (9/30) (The Immortals series)

Everyone here read Pierce's Alanna series as a sprout, right? Well, this is a kinda-sequel in the same world, in which the main characters have all moved on to supporting roles. And I think these books hold up better than their predecessors when read at a point in life where one doesn't need the wish-fulfillment of the Alanna books quite so desperately.

Anyway, I read these about 12 years ago, when they were still in the process of being released, but I had moved on to something else by the time the final book came out in hardback, so I never finished the series. I'd forgotten them entirely when Katie brought home the first one from the library, and decided to have a go at 'em again.

Worth it. They are solid.

C.S. Lewis — Prince Caspian

(audiobook at work.) You know, I'm sure that I remember enjoying the Narnia books as a kid, but this basically sucked. At no point is there any real doubt about the outcome; it's just kind of a stroll through the garden, at the end of which Aslan wanders in and makes everything all right. Kind of useless. Also, the training-wheels-for-Christ bits are much more visible now that I'm older, and that sort of thing bugs me.

Anyway, at least the audio performance was top notch. It's the same woman who did that reading of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, and she's fabulous. It's just too bad I can't seem to suspend dislike for the books I've heard her on.

Sarah Monette — The Mirador (9/25)

God DAMN, I love this series. Compulsively readable stuff. Anyway, this book is a third-of-four, so don't even touch it without getting through Mélusine and The Virtu first, but yeah, it rocks.

You know, back when I read the first two volumes, around the end of '06, I'd started writing up a whole big review about why they were brilliant. Here, I'll condense it for you: Characters, worldbuilding, narrative voice, characters, sympathetic characters who are actually kind of awful people, and horrifying, horrifying shit that just won't stop happening.

Avi — The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (9/28)

(audiobook at work.) Katie chose this one; I knew nothing about it, other than that Avi was hot shit among school librarians when I was in elementary school. Anyway: I loved it! It was just... there was this unexpected richness to it. The premise would have made it easy to do the job cheaply, but it was very well-crafted. Partly, I credit this to the choice of narrator; having the story told by Charlotte as an old woman really adds depth.

Also, I like to think that narrator_Charlotte is somewhat unreliable, and that she did, in fact, give the captain a good hard shove. Sorry, did I let that ol' bloodlust get loose again?

Diana Wynne Jones — Fire and Hemlock (9/28)

This is one of the most fiendishly and frustratingly complicated fairy tales I've ever read. And I don't think I really liked it. I found the flashback structure to be really awkward, and I don't think the payoff made it worth it.

There were some things I enjoyed here, but most of them can be found just as easily in other Jones books.

_____
1: (Though there's a sequel out now, so I guess they don't count as one-offs anymore.)