Erik Reads

The Stars are Legion

2017-03-13T00:00:00-05:00

The Stars are Legion is the most mind-blowing space opera I’ve read in a long time. It’s a stand alone novel, so you get the full story all at once.

The book is set so far in the future that assigning a numerical date wouldn’t really say much. The characters have forgotten about earth anyway. This is science fiction entirely unmoored from our world, much like Star Wars is set long ago in a galaxy far far away.

All we see of the universe is a bunch of giant ships orbiting a sun. They’re huge spheres, covered in giant tentacles they use to gather resources. Inside there are concentric levels, so many that the residents of the innermost don’t know about the people on the outermost levels. Everything feels very organic and biological. Hurley never passes up a chance to remind us of this - characters notice the slightly soft floors, moist walls, and fluid-filled veins of their ships.

All the ships’ residents are female, and there’s a really solid worldbuilding reason for it. Like so much of the worldbuilding, that reason would be a spoiler, though. You’ll just have to read the book to find out.

To occupy this huge world, Hurley gives us two different protagonists. Jayd and Zan, and we see them first person and present tense.

Zan wakes up with amnesia at the start of the book, so Hurley can use her eyes to help show you the universe. This is good, because there is so very much to absorb. Zan is a badass soldier, who has been leading the army of her world-ship. As soon as she wakes up, she realizes she’s neck deep in some kind of plot, but she has no idea what it is.

Jayd, on the other hand, knows exactly what’s going on. Hurley does a great job of not letting the reader know, without making them feel cheated by a character that’s teasing them.

Along with the world-building, the pacing of this book really stands out. Part of the present tense mode is that it makes everything seem extra immediate, and Hurley really put her foot down on the gas pedal. This book was really hard to put down from start to finish. I didn’t notice any slow downs along the way.

The net result of a book with amazing world building and a thriller’s pacing is that it takes you for a crazy ride and dumps you out at the end with a head full of amazing ideas swirling around. I want more about this place, and I want critical discussion of it. I highly recommend The Stars are Legion. It will almost certainly show up on my Hugo nominating ballot in 2018.

Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley

2014-09-02T00:00:00-05:00

NB: I went to go write the first review in ages and found this one, unpublished from 3 years ago.

Mirror Empire is the first book of Kameron Hurley’s big new epic fantasy series.

Let’s unpack that a bit.

It’s by Kameron Hurley. By this you will know that the worldbuilding will be super inventive and intelligent. It will be gritty. It will address gender issues.

It’s big. Dumping the epub into text file, I find about 160k words. Opening it up in calibre, it says I’m on page 1 of 900 something. By comparison, Scalzi’s Lock In was more like 400-500.

It’s the first book in an epic fantasy series. So you’ll be introduced to both a bunch of POV characters and the world they live in.

Oh, what a world they live in. Or worlds. While this book takes place in one world, I’m pretty sure I got glimpses of 2 others. It’s explicitly stated that there are a whole bunch. As a certain heavenly body approaches, two worlds draw together and the residents of one world start to invade the next.

Not Standard Epic Fantasy

It’s hard to get more epic than a astrological conjunction threatening to destroy a world, magic is a fact of life, and this is multiple third person point of view, so this is definitely epic fantasy.

However, I don’t think we got a single POV character who was from a farm. There are swords, but not horses. Maybe the bears ate them? We got one character reflecting on whether it’s better to ride dogs or bears. Nothing pseudo-medieval here, either. I don’t think we got the traditional description of being cold and miserable camping in the rain.

With epic fantasy, we usually expect flowery luxurious prose. Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky trilogy took that to an extreme, but it’s pretty much a staple of the genre that you’re going to get beautiful descriptions of things and you shouldn’t be in a hurry while you read it. Mirror Empire’s prose breaks that mold. Hurley writes ad copy as a day job and she brings that same tight, punchy approach to her epic fantasy. This world is completely alien and she could easily have made the book three times as long by lovingly describing every meal and outfit as the book went along. Instead she’s editted it down, distilling it into a compact, powerful book that gradually fills in the setting so the story can keep moving quickly without long pauses for exposition.

All in all, it’s a really refreshing change. I don’t want to give up my big poetic epics, but I really enjoyed this tighter, more energetic book.

Not Grimdark

Mirror Empire is dark. There’s genocide and children accidentally killing children. People huddling behind walls to shelter from wandering trees. It seems like everyone is scarred, injured, or maimed in some way. That said, when I think of grimdark I expect there to be a lot more fascination with those grim aspects. Hurley just has them as part of the world. You notice them and get on with the story. Something that’s a completely horrible killing might just be mentioned in a single sentence - and one without a lot of adjectives. I find it strikes a nice balance. On reflection, I think this is one of the things that helps keeps this from feeling like one of the sanitized epic fantasies of the 90s.

Genders

One of the societies in the book divides itself into 5 genders, each with their own pronouns. A POV character has a moment of horror when he realizes a friend might have had their gender assigned to them by society, rather than choosing it for themselves. One especially militant society views men as chattel who are expected to spend all their time making themselves pretty for their spouses.

Hurley’s worldbuilding didn’t stop at magic and plants. In a way she reserved her greatest creativity in trying to imagine completely different societies from the ground up, and a big part of that is making damn sure she didn’t assume traditional (or fantasy trope) gender roles. The closest she comes is a gender flipped super macho society where men end up being completely subjugated.

What Didn’t Work

I’ve got two chief complaints.

The first is that POV shifts with each chapter, and I frequently felt like I didn’t have enough time to get to know a character before it would shift to another character in another place. When it would finally come back to that character I’d sometimes have to pause and try to remind myself who I was dealing with.

Next up is the geography of the world. Or my confusion about it. I felt like Hurley didn’t describe where things were in relation to each other. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d had a map handy. There’s a beautiful map, but it’s really hard to flip back and forth to look at the map in an ebook. I debated making a printout of it to refer to, but wound up basically just reading the book with no freaking idea where anything was in relation to anything else. I think this is a challenge that ebooks will have to overcome. Maybe they can stick copies of the map with “you are here” marks between chapters or something.

I wouldn’t say these are nits, but neither one kept me from enjoying the book.

Summary

Really, just go buy Mirror Empire. It’s one of my favorite books of the year. It came out at a point when 6 different books I was anxiously waiting for all dropped in the span of 2 weeks. So far they’ve all been great, but this one is probably going to be on my Hugo ballot.

Hot Lead, Cold Iron

2014-05-22T00:00:00-05:00

Hot Lead, Cold Iron is the first book in a new series, the “Mick Oberon Jobs” by Ari Marmell. They’re noir fantasy set in an alternate 1930s era Chicago. It’s still got prohibition and gangsters, but there are magic users and fate (think fae) secretly running around meddling with things.

This is the story of how Mick Oberon, PI and self-exiled fate prince reunites some mobster parents with their biological child after they realize their daughter was actually a changeling.

It’s not just the story of Mick Oberon doing it. Mick tells you the story directly, complete with little asides and spoilery bits.

And if you’re thinking that I’d come to regret that someday, congratulations. You’ve been paying attention.

Mick’s really really old, doesn’t eat anything, and only drinks milk products. I could absolutely see this keeping me from identifying with him, but Marmell has Oberon talking directly to me as the reader in such a conversational way that I can’t help but like the guy. While it uses the tools of noir storytelling, this doesn’t feel like an especially dark book.

I should probably mention that Marmell went all in on the 1930s slang. People ride in flivvers, pack roscoes, and dope things out. I had lots of chances to figure out the meanings of new words from context. It made for a wonderfully immersive world and helped keep me in an appropriate frame of mind.

Tell ya square, I probably didn’t need to haul the damn vacuum clear across the Windy City, but… Mrs. Ottati was wise to me and at least some of the real Chicago skinny. Wasn’t too likely, but she mighta taken a few extra precautions with her security; figured a prop might help me push past any resistance

This all worked out really well. I never once got thrown out of the narrative by word choice. Instead I’d find myself thinking “that turn of phrase was delicious”.

The plot and pacing owe more to thrillers than whodunits, taking you for a wild ride with only a couple noticeable pauses for exposition.

I really liked Hot Lead, Cold Iron. Hopefully we’ll get many more Mick Oberon books. It seems like there’s a lot more to explore in this world.

Are Audiobooks Separate Works?

2013-10-27T00:00:00-05:00

The Question

The controversy around the Hugo committee’s handling of whether Mary Robinette Kowal’s story counted as a story or a dramatic work has brought up the question of just how much audiobooks are separate works from the stories they present.

I wasn’t sure. I thought I’d do an experiment to clarify my views.

Hypotheses

I’ve actually got two different hypotheses. I started with one and added another when I realized there might be another explanation for the initial results. I suppose that technically makes it two separate experiments.

Reconsumption

First off, if an audiobook is the same as a novel, I’d think that once I’d consumed one I’d be no more inclined to consume the other than I would normally be to re-read that same story. This is the way it is with things like hard covers and mass market paperbacks. Just because a book comes out in a second format I have no sudden urge to buy and read it again. For that, I usually want to wait a year or two so that I forget some of what happens and the story isn’t too familiar.

However, when a movie based on a book comes out, I’ll be inclined to see the movie. Having already read the book doesn’t preclude that - I have a good idea what it will be about but the dramatic presentation is so different that the experiences don’t have a lot of overlap. Often-times I’ll even re-read the book right before or after the movie so that I can better appreciate the differences. They’re so different that having just read the book doesn’t detract from seeing the movie.

So, if an audiobook is more like a written book I’ll not especially enjoy listening to it right after reading the written book. I’ll need to wait longer before I really enjoy it again. If it’s more like a movie then doing one right after the other should be fine.

Performance

Another attribute of a separate work is that different people are involved. We concentrate on the author of books, but editors and people who prepare the book for publication also have a hand. The roles of typesetter and cover artist are minimal compared to the author and editor, though. The cover art and typesetting doesn’t determine whether I’ll enjoy a novel. I’ve slogged through poorly OCRed text on a Wheel of Time re-read (Thorn Merrilin? Really?) and cursed mass market paperbacks with missing pages or chapters all because the story was worth it. Likewise I’ve pitched perfectly well put together trade paperbacks because the story didn’t suit me.

In the case of audiobooks, there’s huge differences between narrator performances. They’re far more noticeable than changes to font and page layout. Barring truly incompetent performances (akin to illegible printing), if narrator preference is the determining factor in whether or not I enjoy an audiobook, then it must be a separate work from the written book.

The Experiment

To put this to the test I bought 4 different audiobooks.

Rosemary and Rue: by Seanan McGuire, narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal. I read this when it first came out and have not re-read it. I’ve avidly consumed the rest of the books in the series, so this seems like a good test for a book that has rested a while but is ripe for re-reading.
Throne of the Crescent Moon: by Saladin Ahmed, narrated by Phil Gigante. I read this about a year ago, some months after it was first released. I really liked it (it got my vote for the Best Novel Hugo), but it’s certainly marginal for a re-read so soon.
The Human Division: by John Scalzi, narrated by William Dufris. I read this as it came out week by week. I loved it, but it’s even more recent than Throne, so definitely not normally eligible for a re-read.
Old Man’s War: by John Scalzi, narrated by William Dufris. I read this several years ago, but not when it first came out. It’s definitely eligible for a re-read based on timing. As an added bonus, it’s read by the same narrator as The Human Division so it can help rule out narrator preference effects.

So, I have 4 different books that I liked. By all accounts they’re all good audiobooks. I set about listening to them while commuting, exercising and doing work around the house.

The Results

Rosemary and Rue

I loved this book when I first read it and going back to it again was wonderful. Mary Robinette Kowal’s narration was a joy (even if I had to adjust to the correct pronunciation of Luidaeg) and I thought her voicing of the different characters really added to the experience. I’ve already bought the second book as an audiobook since I think re-consuming them this way is going to be great.

Throne of the Crescent Moon

This was straight-up awesome. Phil Gigante does an incredible job narrating a very diverse cast of characters. As with Kowal, he’s very much voicing a full cast. I read this much more recently, but I still found myself having forgotten various plot points. While the dialog seemed familiar I wasn’t mentally quoting it.

The Human Division

This originally came out as a serial and I read or listened to each episode as it came out last spring. This time around I got through the first episode and called it quits. I kept thinking “and this is going to happen next” because it was too fresh in my mind. Also, I didn’t like the narration as much. William Dufris doesn’t do as much of a range of voices as the other narrators and I found it less entertaining.

This difference in narrative style made me doubt my initial hypothesis. What if I wasn’t enjoying this audiobook because of the narration, rather than how recently I’d read the book? Thus was born my second hypothesis about audiobooks being separate works. To test for this, I added a fourth book to the experiment.

Old Man’s War

This is narrated by William Dufris in very similar fashion to The Human Division. It’s an older book I hadn’t read for several years. This is a good control for whether I disliked The Human Division because of over-familiarity or because of the narration style.

I was enthralled. I looked for excuses to listen more. I quickly adjusted to the narration and it became transparent in a way that the narration on Rosemary and Rue and Throne of the Crescent Moon didn’t.

Conclusions

I find that the quality of narration can add or subtract from the joy of listening to an audiobook, in much the same way that font, typesetting and binding can all add or subtract from the joy of reading a novel. However, the primary determinant seems to be the qualities of the underlying story, in much the same manner that the quality of the story determines how much you enjoy reading a novel. Obviously you want a good performance because that makes it more pleasant, just like having a good ereader does. However, they’re still conveying the same story and to me are still the same work as the print version.

I think that audiobooks should be treated the same as printed works and grouped by length for purposes of Hugo nominations. I’d like to suggest that audiobook narrators deserve their own awards category, though. There’s real art going on there that deserves recognition, just as the artists who do cover art deserve it.

The Blue Blazes

2013-06-06T00:00:00-05:00

Introduction

Chuck Wendig took Neverwhere, Simon R Green’s Nightside, some neo-Cthulhu tropes, The Godfather, and The Hulk, threw them in a blender, seasoned with profanity and charcuterie and created The Blue Blazes. The title refers to what you experience when you’re high on ‘blue’ and not only feeling like you’re on top of the world but quite literally seeing through to the true reality.

Setting

The setting is a spin on New York City and nearby parts of New Jersey. A few decades ago, construction workers digging under New York broke into a system of caverns inhabited by all sorts of weird creatures that have been quietly invading ever since. They use magic to hide themselves from normal people and the only way you can see them is to use blue, a magical pigmented mined from those underground caverns by mole men.

Protagonist

His choice of protagonist is where Wendig really shines. Mookie Pearl is an aging thug who’s lived long enough to have plenty of regrets. Hollywood would probably cast Tom Cruise in the role, but what they really need is a retired football player with a New Jersey accent. I love Mookie Pearl. I wouldn’t want to hang out with him, but he’s great fun to read about. He’s broken in the most interesting ways.

Skelly McClure is the leader of a roller derby themed girl gang who suddenly finds herself in the middle of a struggle for control of New York’s criminal underground. Definitely not a damsel in distress. She doesn’t get as much screen time or characterization as Mookie, but she can definitely carry a scene. I wish we’d gotten to see more of her.

Point of View

Wendig does really awful things to his characters, so it’s probably a good thing that he sticks to a multiple third person POV. This DOES mean that it doesn’t quite fit in with the standard urban fantasy set up of a first person tour guide who practices wise-cracks in the mirror every morning. Mookie knows his way around and is incredibly capable, but he’s not big on word play.

Overall Plot and Pacing

Every time you think you know where you’re going, Wendig throws in a plot twist. I can’t get more specific without getting into spoiler territory, but suffice it to say that he does a great job of making sure his protagonist has plenty of twists and turns to navigate.

He switches viewpoints regularly, which helps mix up the pacing - you can go from an underground brawl to political intrigue and back so you don’t get worn out by the fighting or bored by the talking.

The story barrels along at a very fast pace right up until the end, where you get just enough resolution to feel satisfying, but not enough to wrap up every single loose end. It also avoids a lot of trite happily ever afters. Wendig leaves a lot unsaid and I’d love to come back and revisit these characters again.

Summary

I read The Blue Blazes and Mur Lafferty’s Shambling Guide to New York City back to back in about 4 days after they came out. There was no watching TV. I snagged the audiobook because I just didn’t want to put it down while I made chorizo and eggs.

Hammered, Scardown and Worldwired by Elizabeth Bear

2012-06-22T00:00:00-05:00

Introduction

The sidebar only knows how to show one book, but this is really a review of the whole Jenny Casey trilogy, starting with Hammered and continuing on through Scardown and Worldwired.

Setting

These novels are science fiction, set in the 2060s. The US has become a crime-ridden backwater, driven there by mixing religion and politics. Canada and China are the two remaining superpowers, fighting their own cold war as global warming heats up the planet. There’s a colony on Mars and asteroid mining. Space elevators carry things to and from orbit.

This world felt real.

Protagonist

Jenny Casey is a retired vet in her 50s who’s had half her limbs replaced with prosthetics after severe combat injuries. She’s in pretty bad shape - hurting, bitter and world weary.

Jenny’s the primary point of view character, but we do get to see things through several other people’s eyes as the series goes on. My favorite of these is an AI based on the personality of Dr Richard Feynman. I think Bear did a great job of making me feel like the character was something a bit other than human. The notion of personality threads forking, going their separate ways and then joining again later seems very natural to someone who’s spent almost 20 years working with UNIX.

All in all, Bear does a really good job of writing everything from young teenagers to world-weary veterans. Every time I thought she was going to leave a character as set dressing she pointed her lens at them, zoomed in and showed me their depth. Everybody has their own internal conflicts and motivation. You definitely get the feeling that they’re all the hero in their own stories.

Point of View

Bear did something interesting that I don’t remember seeing before. Passages seen from Jenny Casey’s POV are written in first person, while everyone else is written as third person. It got me attached to Jenny the way you’d expect from a first person narrative without restricting the whole story to just what happened when she was there.

I say I hadn’t seen this before, but Charlies Stross just did the same thing in Apocalypse Codex (another really good book I should write something about). It’s very effective and I’d like to see it done more often.

Overall Plot

There’s a political conflict bringing China and Canada to the brink of war. There’s an evil corporation angling for profit at the expense of anyone who gets in their way. There’s a global cataclysm and an alien threat. Did I mention the love triangle?

There are an insane number of very different plot-lines running through these books, though the overall theme seems to be that everything comes down to individuals making tough choices and the importance of communication.

Summary

I absolutely devoured these books, doing the kindle equivalent of chain smoking. The plot didn’t fly along or anything, I just really really wanted to know what happened. I cared about the characters. I was sad when they died and happy when they got their head out of their asses and talked to each other.

These were Elizabeth Bear’s first published novels (all published during 2005) and she got her novel writing career going with a bang.

Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

2012-05-03T00:00:00-05:00

Introduction

Blackbirds is a gritty, profane novel by Chuck Wendig. Miriam Black sees how people are going to die. One touch and she’ll know when and how it happens. She makes a living by making sure she’s there to loot the corpse.

Wendig has distilled this book down into a very potent brew. If most of the books I read are various kinds of beer, this was a glass of bourbon. Wonderful and nuanced, but not something to drink down quickly.

Protagonist

Miriam is not a very nice person. Strike that. She’s a pretty horrible, broken person. Her magical ability has warped her terribly - knowing when someone is going to die kind of casts a shadow over a relationship.

If she was just a horrible person, she wouldn’t be so fascinating. Instead she’s conflicted. Torn. She wants to be a better person, but she’s failed and failed and given up. She’s a marvelously well rounded character with just enough likeable traits to raise some empathy.

Point of View

Given how messed up Miriam is, it’s probably a good thing Blackbirds is written in third person. I wouldn’t want to be that much in her head.

You jump around to another couple people, most notably the bad guys. This let’s you see what she’s up against and ratchets up the tension.

Writing Style

You can really tell that Wendig is heavily influenced by script writing. A lot of times he’ll give you a few short, sharp sentences that briefly but vividly sketch out a setting before the action gets going. You can see him switching modes between staging notes and more verbose descriptions of actions and feelings. This jars in a couple spots, but not enough to throw me out of the narrative.

In general, Wendig’s prose is stripped down to the bare bones. He obviously spent a lot of time wordsmithing this book and it turned out awesome.

Summary

I was a little worried about Blackbirds, going in. I read another of his novels, Double Dead and while I enjoyed it thoroughly, I thought he fumbled the dismount. The ending just didn’t live up to the rest of the book. Blackbirds, on the other hand, fucking nailed it.

I also read Dinocalypse Now, which came out of a Kickstarter just recently. You wouldn’t know they were written by the same author. Dinocalypse Now is a fun, pulp style romp that I devoured as quickly as I could read it. The writing style and overall tone were completely different. I loved both of them in different ways. Like Blackbirds, Wendig nailed the ending - somehow managing a satisfying climax while simultaneously going out with a pulp-serial style cliffhanger.

Tricked by Kevin Hearne

2012-04-28T00:00:00-05:00

Introduction

Tricked is book four of the Iron Druid Chronicles. The series starts with Hounded, which I highly recommend. The story starts off with a bit of a wrap-up from the previous book, but is otherwise pretty well encapsulated. You won’t feel too lost if you start with this one, but you might as well start at the beginning - the earlier books are every bit as good.

These are not dark gritty urban fantasies. They’re light, quick reads with plenty of humor to balance the darker elements.

Atticus O’Sullivan is the last surviving druid from ancient Ireland. He’s been around for a couple thousand years, carefully using his herb lore to stay young. He likes living in Arizona with his dog Oberon and his apprentice Granuaile.

In this book, Atticus runs into a lot more trouble than he expects while working off a debt he owes to Coyote (the Native American trickster god).

Atticus’s Celtic mythos interacting with other cultures is a recurring theme in these novels. This time out there’s a bit of the Norse mythology, but also quite a bit more from the Native American side of the fence. Apparently skinwalkers are really evil.

Setting

This book is set on an Indian reservation in north-eastern Arizona. This pretty much gives it a blank slate to work with. There’s no worrying about getting seen carrying a sword down a city street, or attracting attention with weird lights at night. Time-wise it’s set roughly in the current day. I don’t think there are any dates mentioned, but they’re driving SUVs and working on a renewable energy project to provide for future growth.

The protagonist even reaches for programming references when trying to explain things. We get to hear how aspects of druidic magic are like boolean operations and writing macros.

Granuaile turned to consider the hogan, which was lined in the red glow of the setting sun.

“So how do you create a ward, anyway?”

“You can think of it like a Boolean search on the Internet. You begin by defining your boundary—‘all life is okay in here’—and then you layer on the exclusions. ‘And not frakkin’ Cylons and not douche bags and not Imperial Stormtroopers.’”

Protagonist

Atticus comes across as a very likeable guy. He’s smart and tends to do the right thing in any given situation. I have no complaints about the protagonist being an idiot.

He doesn’t so much have flaws as he has weaknesses. You don’t see him agonizing over things or being tempted to do bad things a lot. I suppose that makes sense - if you’re not pretty firmly settled into yourself after 2000 years you probably have some kind of psychological problem.

Point of View

This is the traditional urban fantasy first person point of view. It flows naturally and you don’t notice any obvious tricks being used. That’s because Hearne is really good at telling stories and he just makes it all seem like that’s the only way it could be.

Pacing

The story moves beautifully. Atticus and his friends go from one obstacle to another all on their own. You never feel Hearne’s hand pushing them along or manipulating things. I was home sick the day the novel came out and it sucked me in and I read the whole thing pretty much in one sitting. No cringe moments, no slow spots, no urge to take a break anywhere.

Summary

As I said, I plowed through Tricked over the course of two days. The story sucked me in and devoured it. I then went back and re-read the first book of the series. It wasn’t that long ago that I read it for the first time, and it stood up to re-reading again. I attribute that to the way Hearne rests these books on strong characters, instead of plot twists. The twists are there, but even if you know they’re coming it doesn’t spoil the book for you.

The Iron Druid Chronicles is one of my favorite current series and I hope Hearne can give us many more stories of Atticus, Oberon and Granuaile.

Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi

2012-04-15T00:00:00-05:00

Introduction

Fuzzy Nation is a science fiction novel set in the far future on another planet.

Jack Holloway is a prospector on Zarathustra, searching the jungle planet for valuable jewels and other minerals. Shortly after a find that will make him rich, some curious cat-like animals wander into his home. He dubs them ‘fuzzys’ and they soon make friends with him and his dog. Eventually he realizes they’re intelligent and has to choose between getting rich and protecting them from the company that’s mining the jewels he just discovered.

Setting

All we ever see of Zarathustra is a giant forest. Think Endor, but with velociraptors instead of stormtroopers. The setting is necessary, but this book is actually about the people.

Protagonist

We pretty rapidly realize that Jack Holloway is an irresponsible asshole. He trains his dog to hit the detonate button on his mining explosives. He lied about it and got his girlfriend in trouble when the authorities found out. He’s manipulative and unscrupulous.

If he wasn’t such an asshole, this wouldn’t be such a good book. Him being an asshole means you don’t know for sure what he’s going to do about the fuzzys. He might take the money and run. He might lose his temper and completely blow it.

Scalzi gives us a real person with real temptations and weaknesses.

Point of View

Fuzzy Nation is told in third person limited. You’re pretty much locked down to Holloway’s point of view, but you don’t get his thoughts or ideas. Occasionally you get to see something that he didn’t witness, but that’s not all that common.

Overall Plot

Ever read something about a group of scrappy underdogs who come together with all their unique talents to save the day? Yeah. This is that plot. It’s masterfully done with excellent twists and turns. Scalzi does a great job of keeping it from being predictable. I was pretty sure the good guys were going to win, but there was always some doubt and I really didn’t expect them to win the way they did.

Pacing

I tore through this book in a couple days. I didn’t notice any slow spots, and I kept getting pulled back in to see what would happen next. Perfect.

Summary

Fuzzy Nation is a beautifully crafted gem of a book. The language is tight, the plot moves well, and the ending ties everything up with a nice bow and leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling. That kind of happy ending is not something you can do when you’re writing series and it made for a really nice change. I’m sure I’ll be going back and re-reading Fuzzy Nation again some day.

Fuzzy Nation is a re-telling of Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. I haven’t read the original, but it is available for free on Amazon.

Crossed by J. F. Lewis

2012-04-05T00:00:00-05:00

Plot Summary

Crossed is book 3 in the Void City series. I’ll probably spoiler some things from the first two books in the series. There’s a fourth book out, too. I’ll be reading it soon.

In this book, main protagonist and super vampire Eric marries his vampire girlfriend Tabitha and they go to Paris for their honeymoon. Eric figures he can hunt for his sire while he’s there. Lots of folks work together to screw up their honeymoon. There’s sex, graphic violence, profanity and a whole lot of attitude.

Meanwhile, back in Void City, Eric’s sire comes hunting for him. Greta and Talbot have to team up to stop her. There’s sex, graphic violence, profanity and a whole lot of attitude.

Setting

Crossed starts out in Void City and then moves to Europe. We learn a lot more about how the vampires keep normal people from realizing how screwed up things are in Void City and we get to see the different technique used by the magical folks in Europe.

All in all, the setting is mainly just giving a location for crazy action to take place. Given some of the things that happen, all the hand waving about how there’s a conspiracy to suppress knowledge of the magical world seems like just that. The main point of this series is to have over the top action and concerns about how to explain wrecked cars, skid marks on the sides of buildings and an astronomical mortality rate are beside the point. Don’t think about it too much. It’ll impair your enjoyment of the action.

Point of View

The Void City series uses multiple first person point of view. Hopping from one head to another like that is hard, but Lewis pulls it off really well. Each character has a different voice and if you’re not sure right away who’s head your in each chapter has a heading that tells you.

Protagonist

Jumping between characters means that you don’t have to like the characters as much as you would if you were stuck in only one of them. Eric is an incredible asshole. I still sort of like him, but I’d never want to be anywhere near anyone like him in real life. Tabitha is much nicer, though a bit on the ignorant side. Rachel is the strong female lead that’s otherwise missing from the series.

There’s an urban fantasy trope of the kick-ass female lead. In this book, it kind of feels like Eric is the main character, but of the different viewpoint characters he’s by far the most passive. He spends the whole book reacting to things while the women around him take the initiative.

Normally it wouldn’t work to let your main character be all reactive, all the time, but somehow Lewis pulls it off. Eric stays reactive until there’s an appropriate, character-driven moment for him to Hulk-out and spring into action near the end.

At several points during the book we get major character reveals - by the end of the book we know a lot more about all the protagonists and several of the ongoing bad guys.

Overall Plot

The book opens just before Eric and Tabitha’s wedding. From that point on, a whole series of people try to screw up first their wedding and then their honeymoon. That’s what Eric’s reacting to - werewolves, vampires and immortals all trying to ruin his day. In a way this is like a man vs nature plot - the primary antagonist is so far removed from the action that it’s almost debatable whether he’s responsible.

There’s a second major plot line. While Eric is in Paris, the vampire who created him comes to Void City looking to remove Eric as a possible rival. When she can’t get in touch with Eric, Greta and Talbot have to stop her. Jumping back and forth between the two plots gives Lewis a nice way to break things up and cut away when the action would otherwise start to lag.

Structure-wise, it feels like a straightforward quest plot. “Your quest is to get married, then go to Paris and hunt down your sire before she comes to get you in Void City.” This might be boring if Lewis hadn’t mixed things up a bit with multiple viewpoints, plot lines, flashbacks and action scenes so over the top they would go over well in anime.

Summary

Crossed is a mid-series book that does a good job of telling a story while also moving the over-arching plot forward. We get a great reveal on who’s been stirring up all of this trouble for the last few books! The final confrontation left me a little unsatisfied due to a combination of protagonists thinking of solutions that are a trifle too easy (but plausible and in character) and a bit of a deus ex machina at one point. I still really enjoyed the book. It was a quick step on the dismount, not tripping and falling.

The best part is that the ending set up some major changes in the world and I can’t wait to see how they turn out in Burned.

Range of Ghosts

2012-03-31T00:00:00-05:00

Plot Summary

Range of Ghosts is the start of a fantasy epic set in another world modeled after the central asian steppes. You follow Temur, member of the ruling family of a nation very much like the Mongols, as he tries to pull his life back together after nearly dying in a giant battle between warring factions of his own extended family.

Along the way he is joined by a newly minted wizard, a warrior monk, a magical horse and an anthropomorphic tiger. There are big things happening in the local political landscape, driven by an evil magician and they’re going to put things right.

Favorite Line

“You’re the Great Khagan’s grandson?”

“One of.” Temur snorted. “There were hundreds. Qori Buqa has been killing his way through every one of us that he can find. But I am the one he should not have hammered on the anvil until I was forged into an enemy.”

Setting

While it’s based loosely on central Asia, this really isn’t Earth. The world is a series of steppes and mountains, and each kingdom has quite literally its own sky. The world-building is lush and very thorough. It’s rare that an author gets this creative with a setting, and I like it.

You get varied geography, all sorts of megafauna, quick introductions to different cultures and multiple magic systems. This makes the world of the Wheel of Time or the Belgariad look over-simplified. Where other series will frequently reveal one culture or region per book, Bear takes us to one fascinating place after another before she finishes the first one. While I could enjoy an entire book learning about the rock herding miners, she helped keep the pace up by not spending too long on any one area.

I do have one nit, and that’s that Bear falls into the trap of tweaking names. I can understand that she didn’t want to say ‘Russian’ or ‘Kievan’, but the rukh might better have been a roc. There were some other fantastical beasts that I just never could figure out. I don’t know what they were supposed to be and I didn’t get a solid enough description to picture them and figure it out that way.

Point of View

Range of Ghosts is in multiple third person limited point of view (traditional for epic fantasy). This means that you follow along and see events from the viewpoint of multiple characters, but you never end up truly inside their heads. You do get some of their thoughts, but it isn’t as personal as first person. Given that it looks like we’re going to have quite the cast of characters, first person would have probably been too confusing.

Protagonist

No naive farmboys. Bear promised this, and she delivered. I love that no one is doing the traditional “dammit, why me?” whining. That’s probably because they’re all adults. Every viewpoint character is experienced and capable in their own way. They’re also all drawn along by different motivations. This isn’t a group of religious zealots all trying to save the world. Temur’s out for revenge, Edene wants to escape, Samarkar-la wants to save her people from both her brother and outside threats, and Hrahima is just plain inscrutible.

You get the sense that Temur might have done some of the whining, if he’d been a different sort of man. Instead we meet him as the world has just knocked him down. He takes a moment to shake it off, gets up and starts walking again.

Overall Plot

Most epic fantasies start out with a great big quest plot. Throw the ring into the pit of Dhoom. Fulfill your magical destiny to become king. You find out about it pretty early in the first book.

I think Temur committed to a particular quest in the latter half of the book, but that might just be a temporary thing. It’s a big world, people have complicated motivations, and no wise old man is handing out maps and explaining things. This is grown up fantasy, and I love it.

Pacing

This is an epic fantasy. It lets you know fairly early on that it’s not going to be sprinting towards an ending. Rather, this is more like a brisk walk down the greenbelt. Every few minutes you have to pause or slow down a little to look at something cool.

Summary

I really liked this book. It called out to be slowly savored, but I’m afraid I couldn’t resist plowing through it more quickly than it deserved. I never managed the whole slow food thing, either. While it’s definitely part of a longer series, this first book was enjoyable all by itself. Hopefully, there will be sequels soon.

Hard Magic

2012-03-28T00:00:00-05:00

Plot Summary

Bonnie Torres, a young magic user fresh out of school and thoroughly unemployed finds a job with a newly formed company that uses magic to investigate crimes. No one’s ever done that before and naturally, some folks would prefer they not investigate crimes. Between the subjects of their first investigation and some folks who object on principle they’re up against a lot of opposition.

Hard Magic is the first book in the Paranormal Scene Investigations series, a spinoff from Gilman’s Retriever series. Collectively, the world is called the Cosa Nostradomus, after the loose community of magic users and magical creatures that live in it.

Setting

The Cosa Nostradomus setting is pretty much the modern world, only some people can do magic and there are magical creatures living among us more or less openly. There’s some hand waving about some special mojo that keeps most non-magical folks from seeing them, but it seems that while it’s not 100% out in the open it’s also not as hidden as it is in a lot of other books.

In the Cosa Nostradomus, there are two groups of wizards. The Council, who are all about hierarchy and following rules, and the Lonejacks, who are all loners. It reminds me a bit of the split between corporate programmers and freelancers.

We don’t see much of the non-human members of the Cosa. It’s actually a bit of character building for one the main characters that he’s never seen a fatae. There are a couple brief incidents, but they’re not really part of the story.

Protagonist

Bonnie Torres is our protagonist. She’s a 20-something who starts out the book floundering around, trying to get a job. Never mind what to do with her life, the first step is to get some income so she can stand on her own two feet. She’s got a bad case of hormones and scopes out pretty much everyone she comes across.

I like her because she very convincingly starts out with no clue what to do with her life and realizes she’s found it by the end of the book. That’s a nice character arc and I really believed it.

Point of View

Point of view is first person. Gilman taunts the reader by having Bonnie realize things are being kept back from her and not revealing them until later. An occasional burst of third person let Gilman convey some extra information quickly.

Good use of viewpoint.

Overall Plot

As you’d expect from a series named Paranormal Scene Investigations, this is a mystery plot. I wasn’t super impressed with the mystery. I don’t think there were enough suspects, so it ended up being pretty unsurprising at the end.

If the plot is a mystery, then the story is really about Bonnie finding her calling and the way the two founders built their team of paranormal investigators. This book was about characterization and world building, and I think it did a pretty good job of it. This focus on worldbuilding means that sometimes the book moves a little slowly, but it never turns into a slog.

Summary

I liked Hard Magic and will definitely be reading other books in the series. The plot was a little weak and the ending unsatisfying (even the characters were unsatisfied), but overall it was still a pretty good book. Don’t read it for the plot. Read it for the characters.

I look forward to seeing how things progress in the other books in the series. There’s even a kickstarter for a pair of Cosa Nostradomus spinoff stories going right now. I’m a backer.

Small Favor

2012-03-24T00:00:00-05:00

Note: Small Favor is the 10th book in the Dresden Files, which started with Storm Front. I’ve read all of them several times. I’ll try to avoid spoilers, but it’s possible something will slip by me.

Plot Summary

Gentleman Johnny Marcone, Chicago mob boss, is kidnapped by a group of bad guys possessed by demons. Harry Dresden is a wizard who, with the help of his friends, has to save Marcone while fending off attacks by a group of fae hit men.

Setting

The Dresden Files is set in modern day Chicago, with the addition of magic, wizards and just about every magical creature you can think of. Most of the residents don’t know there’s any such thing as magic. Butcher makes a big deal about how people can ignore just about anything. In this case, that’s helped along by setting most of the book in the middle of a blizzard. People stamping around, sipping coffee, trying to keep warm adds a nice atmospheric touch.

Protagonist

Harry Dresden is a wizard crossed with a gumshoe and owes a lot to Robert B Parker’s Spenser (both books and the Spenser for Hire TV show). Unfortunately, he didn’t inherit Spenser’s way with the ladies. Instead he’s a lovable dork who doesn’t go on a lot of dates.

This is not a big character growth novel. This is a ‘Harry Dresden needs to figure out this problem and save the world’ novel. There are several big character moments towards the end, but most of the novel is driven by the twists and turns of the case at hand. You almost see more growth in secondary characters than you do in Harry. This is fine, since you can’t have massive character growth for 10 or 20 novels in a row. That will just twist your character into unrecognizability (expected if the protagonist starts out at age 12, less so if he’s mid-20’s).

Point of View

The Dresden Files are written in first person. You’re riding along in Harry’s head for all the action and you don’t see anything that Harry wouldn’t have. In the tradition of all the great gumshoes past, Harry has a well developed internal monologue so you’re treated to his thoughts and insights about any number of things.

Butcher uses this to good effect, delaying reveals and keeping the reader in the dark about things until Harry can find out for himself.

Doing a ride-along in a character’s head doesn’t work very well if you don’t like the character. All those sentences starting with “I” pretty much force you to put yourself into the character’s shoes and envision yourself doing things. Thankfully, Harry is a lovable character, easily identified with.

Overall Plot

There are two ongoing sub-plots in Small Favor. The first starts with the disappearance of Marcone. The second with an attack on Harry.

The Marcone plot plays out like a game of chess, with two sides each trying to out-think and anticipate each other’s moves. The moves are frequently violent, and in fact my favorite fight scene in the entire series happens in this book, when Harry manifests a magical hand and smacks someone around.

The assassination plot is secondary. Harry’s just trying to survive while he takes care of the Marcone plot. This sub plot doesn’t feel so much like a chess match as it does a series of high jumps with the bar moving ever higher. The final victory in this plot is my favorite victory in the entire Dresden Files series. After countering all the previous challenges physically, Harry uses his brain to get out of the last one in a way that only Harry Dresden could do. It’s perfectly in character and I loved it.

Pacing

You never know when things will go from “under control” to “oh shit”. As the series progresses, Butcher gets better and better at writing action scenes. In this book, he does an excellent job of taking us from action sequence to action sequence with just the right amount of framing material in between to heighten the tension. Not a fast paced thriller that accelerates to the end, but a quickly moving tale nonetheless. No tedious slowdowns that I noticed.

Summary

You may have noticed that this book features not one but TWO favorites from the entire series (now at 13 novels). That’s not to say the rest of the series is bad, just that I happen to particularly like this book. It’s great, and I have to recommend the whole series. Jumping in on book 10 wouldn’t work so well.

For the most part, I’ve quit buying paper books. This series is one of the very few that I’m still buying on dead trees. Further, they’re good enough to merit a hard cover and an ebook, both on release day.

The Lies of Locke Lamora

2012-03-18T00:00:00-05:00

Plot Summary

The Lies of Locke Lamora centers around the Gentlemen Bastards, a group of confidence men masquerading as sneak thieves in a fantasy version of Venice. There’s a huge, organized criminal underworld and they’re very profitably breaking all the rules. As they say about themselves (but not to anyone else) they’re smarter and richer than everybody else. This all gets turned on its head when someone new comes to town bent on revenge.

Setting

The Lies of Locke Lamora is set in and around Camorr, a sort of city-state amongst the fading ruins of a deceased empire that was itself built upon the bones of an ancient civilization. It’s a city of canals and waterways, where wagons are useful but oftentimes a boat is more useful.

There are a couple flashback sequences that leave town, but this isn’t a travalogue book. Thankfully, Camorr is such a very rich location that you don’t really feel a lack of variety. Lynch definitely didn’t fall into the trap of making things homogenous. You see everything from vile slums to the palaces of the rich and famous.

Protagonist

Locke Lamora is the leader of the Gentlemen Bastards and the primary viewpoint character. We get to see his origin story interwoven as flashbacks along with the story in the current timeline. He’s had a really rough life, and while absolutely loyal to his friends, he can be an absolute bastard to anyone else.

In a refreshing change of pace, Locke has no supernatural powers or exceptional fighting prowess. This is so incredibly rare in fantasy literature that it’s almost worth reading just to see it. If he doesn’t win by outsmarting the other guy, he gets his ass kicked. Repeatedly. This really helps keep the tension up. He’s walking a tightrope; there’s no safety net; and the water in the bay is full of sharks.

Point of View

The book is told in third person limited. You don’t get a lot of Locke’s thoughts most of the time, but occasionally Lynch tells us what someone is thinking. There’s very much a story telling feel to it.

Overall Plot

There are three main plots. The first is is about how Locke became the leader of the Gentlemen Bastards. You see him growing up, starting around age 6.

The second and third center around an epic level con that the Gentlemen Bastards are pulling on a noble and Locke’s attempts to keep them from getting entangled in a power struggle at the top of Camorr’s criminal society.

There are some nice twists and turns along the way. This was a re-read for me, but I’d forgotten several of them. The early life story line is the most straightforward, but even there Locke managed to surprise me a couple times.

Pacing

In a lot of ways, this feels like a caper novel. Locke has to out-think and out-plan everyone, so it naturally falls into a rhythm of planning, execution and recovery. That’s not to say that it lurches along, but rather that you get pauses from the tension at regular intervals. Sometimes Lynch will cut away from present time to something that happened as Locke was growing up and make you wait for resolution. This doesn’t get annoying, because he always cuts to something else that’s interesting.

Summary

This doesn’t feel like a first novel. This feels like Lynch was well up the learning curve by the time he wrote it. The followup novel (Red Seas Under Red Skies) is also excellent. I’m sad that there hasn’t been a third yet.

On that note, it sounds like a third novel is coming soon. You can sign up for a mailing list to be notified here. While you’re at it, Scott’s been posting bonus material to his livejournal. So far he’s up to three bonus info posts. Well worth reading if you’re a fan of the books.

Discount Armageddon

2012-03-17T00:00:00-05:00

Plot Summary

The world of Discount Armageddon is much like our own, only there are lots of seemingly magical creatures living among us. Talking mice hold elaborate religious ceremonies, gorgons patronize wig shops and harpies stir cauldrons on rooftops. Collectively, these odd creatures are called cryptids. Verity Price is from a family of renegade cryptozoologists that believe in studying cryptids and defending them as a necessary part of healthy ecological balance. When someone starts killing cryptids in Verity’s town, she steps up to protect them.

Protagonist

Discount Armageddon is written in first person. I don’t remember there being any viewpoint characters other than Verity Price. This made for a rather intimate feel, because you’re in Verity’s head the whole time. It worked quite well. She’s a bit of a super hero, though. She’s frequently leaping from rooftop to rooftop and performing feats that would make an Olympic gymnast blush. She doesn’t have any otherwise magical abilities, and this gymnastic ability doesn’t make her over powered. She’s thoroughly challenged by what she runs up against.

Setting

The setting is an alternate version of present day New York. People don’t seem to have magic, but there are lots of magical creatures around, hiding below the surface.

The Incryptid world is obviously pretty thoroughly thought out. Thankfully, McGuire restrains herself from infodumping all of her worldbuilding. Instead, every few pages you’re treated to a couple sentences sketching out a new cryptid, often as not drawing a smile or a laugh. This is really well done. There’s an online field guide with a lot more depth. I’d already seen it before I read the book and it did not detract at all. McGuire has obviously done a lot more world building than showed up in the final book.

Pacing

This is not a contemplative book. It starts out at a jog and breaks into a full on run very quickly. The pacing is really great, with enough pauses to keep the pace from feeling relentless, but enough speed to keep me from wanting to put it down. A virtuoso performance.

Overall Plot

The basic plot centers around a mystery with several complicating factors. There’s a little light romantic element, but it’s not too heavy. This is definitely Urban Fantasy rather than Paranormal Romance.

That said, the tone is pretty light. McGuire is having fun with this and the book steers clear of making things gritty or noir. This has more in common with My Life as a White Trash Zombie than it does the Dresden Files.

Summary

As Discount Armageddon placed on the New York Times bestseller list, I’m sure there will be more Incryptid novels. I’m looking forward to them. This one gives a complete story without any major dangling plotlines. Don’t wait for a sequel to read it.