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Aug. 29th, 2008 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseThis is a rather weird cold, I'll give it that. The only minor symptom is a little bit of a stuffy nose, enough to warrant bringing kleenex, since this workplace seems weirdly tissue-box free, but not requiring it often. The only major symptom, however, is serious chest congestion. I'd say it felt like wearing a corset, but my old canvas elizabethan corset, at least, let me breathe better than this.
Anyhow. This weekend is on to Gimli for the event, hurrah. Meanwhile:
Martha Wells: City of Bones
I'd expect any book by Wells to be good by now. This one is earlier work, and shows in a handful of spots; mostly in places where very similar actions took place in close succession (two theft attempts in one night, for instance, or discussions with slightly different people on the same topic that didn't shed enough extra light on the issue). However, her world-building, in this case post-apocalyptic secondary world, is as strong as anywhere, and her character, irritible and practical, are still well-sketched.
The main character, Khat, is a new subspecies of human - or a new species of subhuman, in some peoples' eyes - who were created to survive in a world where all but one ocean have been eradicated by a scarcely-understood magical disaster. He's trying to make his way as a non-citizen in a city (one of only a few left) which is highly stratified both geographically and socially. He's a relic hunter -- the post apocalyptic version of an antiques dealer, with the same weird combination of esoteric and specialized book knowledge, and utter love and admiration for the beautiful things he seeks and sells.
Of course, when a relic is found that might lead to answers about the nature of the apocalypse, and the magic the ancients could use, Khat and his human partner, Sagai, are drafted by people much farther up the social sphere to help them understand the relics, and to survive in the desert alike. Elen, a Warder (wizard), soon gains Khat's respect for her clear-headedness and her determination, though it's only very late that they begin to see past the social gulf between them. The rest of the story complicates itself with murders, factionalism, desert survival tactics, family life, sorcerors gone insane, trust issues, ancient ruins that may not entirely exist on this world, ghosts, and eventually, the near-return of the same apocalypse, understood at last.
I particularly like that the class and racial barriers are neither ignored nor over-simplified; they're essential to both the story and the themes of trust and betrayal, and played with honestly throughout. I also like that Sagai's family play so strong a part in the book and in their lives, in the face of the plotting and impending doom.
Elizabeth Bear - New Amsterdam
First off, totally a gorgeous cover.
This lands somewhere between a collection of short stories about the same people (per the Bone Key) and a mosaic novel. We begin in the late 1890s, on a zeppelin flight from the old world to the new, with Sebastian, a vampire currently in the guise of a Spaniard, his protege Jack Priest (who is not remotely as English or Christian as his name implies, and passionate for revolution), and a murder mystery. This gives plenty of opportunity to introduce this alternate universe at a friendly remove, before readers and characters alike land on and inhabit the streets of the British colony cities of New Amsterdam and Boston. The next story itnroduces the sorceress and Crown Investigaor, Abigail Irene Garrett, in her fifties, a vaunted beauty still involved in notorious affairs, heavily loyal to her crown. For the next several stories, they fight crime.
Of course, being Elizabeth Bear, it gets more complex than that. The crimes have terrible political ramifications, or lead to painful personal choices. The characters occasionally get torn - well, shredded - between duty and conscience, between the personal and the necessary, or the classic what they want and what they need, and Bear does her best, as ever, to make sure that the worst things that can happen to these particular people do just that. In addition, she creates beautiful atmosphere (this alternate world feels far less foggy here than, say, Blood and Iron, where the locale is ostensibly and mostly our own), fills her prose with particular, telling images, and leaves more implied than said in the affairs of the heart, so that the real breaking only hits the reader belatedly.
I think this is my favourite of the solo books of hers I've read so far; but then, I am three behind on the Promethean age and never yet did finish the Jenny Casey trilogy.
Currently reading - Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers; King's Shield, Sherwood Smith (I meant to wait...)
To read - Jo Walton, Ha'Penny; anything off my piles of owned-but-unread, or, in the case of most short story collections therein, only partly read.
Fantasia/Fantasia 2000
We only watched pieces of each, but I was reminded, again, how much stronger the first is than the second. The 2000 version has two good pieces - Rhapsody in Blue and Firebird - and the second of those seems to reference elements from at least three of the original Fantasia pieces (The Nutcracker Suite's seasonal aspects, the image of Night sweeping across the sky from the Pastoral, and something of the contrasting moods of Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria), and a bit from Princess Mononoke, in look and action. I'll concede, the Steadfast Tin Soldier (Shostakovich?) is better than I recalled, but not as strong, and almost all the others are attempts to redo something directly in the style of a piece from the first. That means, really, that there's one truly original truly high quality piece in the second (Although I loff Firebird even in all its derivativeness). And half the introductions have to go. (Atching _Aura_ cringe at Steve Martin's mere presence was entertaining, but not enough to actually leave him on for any length of time.)
OTOH, I still want there to be a Fantasia 2016 or so.
Anyhow. This weekend is on to Gimli for the event, hurrah. Meanwhile:
Martha Wells: City of Bones
I'd expect any book by Wells to be good by now. This one is earlier work, and shows in a handful of spots; mostly in places where very similar actions took place in close succession (two theft attempts in one night, for instance, or discussions with slightly different people on the same topic that didn't shed enough extra light on the issue). However, her world-building, in this case post-apocalyptic secondary world, is as strong as anywhere, and her character, irritible and practical, are still well-sketched.
The main character, Khat, is a new subspecies of human - or a new species of subhuman, in some peoples' eyes - who were created to survive in a world where all but one ocean have been eradicated by a scarcely-understood magical disaster. He's trying to make his way as a non-citizen in a city (one of only a few left) which is highly stratified both geographically and socially. He's a relic hunter -- the post apocalyptic version of an antiques dealer, with the same weird combination of esoteric and specialized book knowledge, and utter love and admiration for the beautiful things he seeks and sells.
Of course, when a relic is found that might lead to answers about the nature of the apocalypse, and the magic the ancients could use, Khat and his human partner, Sagai, are drafted by people much farther up the social sphere to help them understand the relics, and to survive in the desert alike. Elen, a Warder (wizard), soon gains Khat's respect for her clear-headedness and her determination, though it's only very late that they begin to see past the social gulf between them. The rest of the story complicates itself with murders, factionalism, desert survival tactics, family life, sorcerors gone insane, trust issues, ancient ruins that may not entirely exist on this world, ghosts, and eventually, the near-return of the same apocalypse, understood at last.
I particularly like that the class and racial barriers are neither ignored nor over-simplified; they're essential to both the story and the themes of trust and betrayal, and played with honestly throughout. I also like that Sagai's family play so strong a part in the book and in their lives, in the face of the plotting and impending doom.
Elizabeth Bear - New Amsterdam
First off, totally a gorgeous cover.
This lands somewhere between a collection of short stories about the same people (per the Bone Key) and a mosaic novel. We begin in the late 1890s, on a zeppelin flight from the old world to the new, with Sebastian, a vampire currently in the guise of a Spaniard, his protege Jack Priest (who is not remotely as English or Christian as his name implies, and passionate for revolution), and a murder mystery. This gives plenty of opportunity to introduce this alternate universe at a friendly remove, before readers and characters alike land on and inhabit the streets of the British colony cities of New Amsterdam and Boston. The next story itnroduces the sorceress and Crown Investigaor, Abigail Irene Garrett, in her fifties, a vaunted beauty still involved in notorious affairs, heavily loyal to her crown. For the next several stories, they fight crime.
Of course, being Elizabeth Bear, it gets more complex than that. The crimes have terrible political ramifications, or lead to painful personal choices. The characters occasionally get torn - well, shredded - between duty and conscience, between the personal and the necessary, or the classic what they want and what they need, and Bear does her best, as ever, to make sure that the worst things that can happen to these particular people do just that. In addition, she creates beautiful atmosphere (this alternate world feels far less foggy here than, say, Blood and Iron, where the locale is ostensibly and mostly our own), fills her prose with particular, telling images, and leaves more implied than said in the affairs of the heart, so that the real breaking only hits the reader belatedly.
I think this is my favourite of the solo books of hers I've read so far; but then, I am three behind on the Promethean age and never yet did finish the Jenny Casey trilogy.
Currently reading - Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers; King's Shield, Sherwood Smith (I meant to wait...)
To read - Jo Walton, Ha'Penny; anything off my piles of owned-but-unread, or, in the case of most short story collections therein, only partly read.
Fantasia/Fantasia 2000
We only watched pieces of each, but I was reminded, again, how much stronger the first is than the second. The 2000 version has two good pieces - Rhapsody in Blue and Firebird - and the second of those seems to reference elements from at least three of the original Fantasia pieces (The Nutcracker Suite's seasonal aspects, the image of Night sweeping across the sky from the Pastoral, and something of the contrasting moods of Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria), and a bit from Princess Mononoke, in look and action. I'll concede, the Steadfast Tin Soldier (Shostakovich?) is better than I recalled, but not as strong, and almost all the others are attempts to redo something directly in the style of a piece from the first. That means, really, that there's one truly original truly high quality piece in the second (Although I loff Firebird even in all its derivativeness). And half the introductions have to go. (Atching _Aura_ cringe at Steve Martin's mere presence was entertaining, but not enough to actually leave him on for any length of time.)
OTOH, I still want there to be a Fantasia 2016 or so.
