Fiction Book Reviews

As I may have mentioned, I’m on something of a campaign to find and publicize vampire books that don’t suck (and yes, you can expect to see almost everything on that list coming up for review here–eventually), largely because the Twilight fad is driving me crazy and the few people who actually can write good vampire lit aren’t getting nearly as much attention as they deserve. (And yes, I will have an actual review of Twilight itself up at some point. I did, actually, had something all ready to post, and then it got eaten.) I haven’t actually read all that many yet, as the above-linked list might indicate: most of the books either have vampires as part of the worldbuilding without focusing the story on them, or they’re part of a much longer series, or both…or they don’t get my wholehearted recommendation, for one reason or another. In fact I think there are only four books on that list that I could offer to a Twilight fan and say, without any qualifiers, “You want good vampire lit? Try this.” (Those books, for anyone interested, are Sunshine, Those Who Hunt the Night, Traveling with the Dead, and Backup, and the last one is only partly a standalone.)

That’s just a very long way of saying that I’ve been hunting for more good vampire books, and in fact my list of books to read is considerably longer than that of books I have read; and that in my search, some months ago, I came across Gail Carriger’s yet-to-be-published Soulless. I like steampunk anyway, but the combination of the awesome cover and the plot description made me practically salivate. An alternate-history Victorian-steampunk London where werewolves and vampires are an integrated part of history and society? YES PLEASE. Glancing around Gail Carriger’s website and blog made me even more eager to read her book, just because she seemed like such an awesome person.

Well, Soulless was good and I’m looking forward to Changeless, the next book in the series, in large part because Gail Carriger’s worldbuilding is fantastic, but…well, I’ll just say it didn’t quite live up to my hopes. The worldbuilding definitely goes into the plus column, working supernatural beings into society in a way I’ve never seen an urban fantasy do before, and I’m eager to see a number of the characters again, especially Conall Maccon and Prof. Lyall (both werewolves, incidentally). There’s also a good deal of bickering between Alexia and Maccon that’s fun to read.

I did find the romance-novel content a bit of a surprise–I wouldn’t call it adult content per se, because it never gets quite explicit, but there’s still a lot more of the making out and the removing of clothes and such than I had any indication there would be, to the point that I’d almost be inclined to shelve it under paranormal romance rather than general urban fantasy, so that was a little odd. To a certain extent, the romantic elements almost pushed aside more important things like plot and, you know, imminent peril to life and limb (this actually happened more than once).

Bigger issues, though: Alexia is, I think, a strong enough character to carry this series, but she’s somehow both presented as such and also not allowed to be. We’re told far more than shown what she’s like and how strong-minded, contrary, willful, etc. she is, something that isn’t done anywhere near as much with the other characters–and they manage to stand on their own much better. (It might help, too, if the point-of-view were more consistent and if Alexia were always referred to as such within her own POV; switching between that and “Miss Tarabotti” for no apparent reason was a little weird too.) Much of the dialogue is the same way, in that we’re told that a character was confused or whatever when it’s already obvious from what the character said, or a speech tag is used in something of a self-conscious way that jars you just a bit, reminding you that there’s An Author writing here (”‘Manners!’ Alexia instructed”, said while she’s fending off an attack from a rogue vampire, I might add). Her characterization is a little patchy anyway, given that she’s willing to go against society and its conventions in certain respects (being a spinster, hooking up with another character, going out unchaperoned) but completely tied to said society in others (she’s mortified when her hair or clothes get messed up, despite extenuating circumstances like, I don’t know, fighting for her life, and she doesn’t consider that maybe she’d get on better with less restricting and therefore less fashionable clothes).

Other elements feel a little affected in the same way, trying for biting wit or Victorian sensibilities and not quite getting there (again, is the heroine truly going to be embarrassed by the state of her hair when she’s just narrowly escaped death?), sometimes even interrupted by patches of what really sounds like anachronisms to me. For instance: “Great, Alexia thought, I have gone from soul-sucker to electrical ground. The epithets just get sweeter and sweeter.” She’s been sarcastic before, but not quite like this, and I don’t know that this use of “great” was really in vogue at the time. Sounds a little more like something you’d see in The Dresden Files, actually. Being jerked out of the story by odd things like that was always a disappointment, because I really wanted to like it–I just couldn’t quite get lost in the story, because the writing style wouldn’t let me.

And that’s too bad, because like I said, I love the concept and think Gail Carriger seems like an awesome person. The good thing is, I think these are probably marks of a first novel, because they’re all things that can be improved with a little more security in one’s ability to write well. The characters and story here are quite good, plenty good enough to stand on their own. They just need to be allowed to do so.

(I mean, it’s still better than Twilight, because the female lead isn’t a whiny, self-absorbed brat and the vampires don’t sparkle, but still…)

Barbara Hambly’s Those Who Hunt the Night is an immediate lesson in not judging books by their covers–or flyleaf blurbs, for that matter. The cover is the ultimate in cheesetastic Victorian vampire camp, and the blurb is kind of sensationalistic and stupid–it’s in past tense, first of all, which doesn’t work with blurbs, and it ends with “Whether he succeeded or failed, it seemed that Professor James Asher was doomed!” If not for the fact that I checked it out on a friend’s recommendation, I’d never have picked it up based on the cover and blurb. I mean…really? They had to say it like that? With the exclamation point and everything?

It’s a good thing I ignored those two major points against it, because two pages in and I was thoroughly hooked. I was also afraid it would start slow, but instead it plunges directly into the action at the first point where things start happening: within the first two sentences Asher is aware his house is completely empty, within the first two paragraphs we find out he’s more dangerous and interesting than he might appear, and within one more page we’re getting to know his wife without actually having met her yet (and I mean actually getting to know her, not just finding out that he has a wife and she’s pretty).

That’s good writing. It doesn’t stop there, either; Asher and Lydia are wonderful protagonists, both smart and compelling in their own ways and very good together. Her medical expertise, hard-won in an era where women doctors were a rarity, colors everything she does, while he sees everything through a filter of his studies in language. I mean, would you really expect that an author could ramp up the tension in a scene and yank the character way out of his normal world just through identifying the odd patterns in an accent? Well, she does. Ysidro, the vampire who coerces Asher into helping him discover who is murdering other members of London’s undead population, is thoroughly–and properly–alien and fascinating in his own right, and yet, despite the inescapable fact that he must kill humans to survive, he retains enough humanity of his own to earn the reader’s sympathy.

Hambly’s vampires don’t sparkle. They aren’t necessarily even sexy, although some of them are. These are genuine creatures of the night, and if they’re stalking you, it’s not romantic. This is what vampire lit should be like. And I can’t help finding it terribly sad that this book is 20 years old, out of print (well, Amazon’s not selling it except used, at any rate), and mostly forgotten, while the current vampire fad is filling the shelves with dreck.

I suppose it’s always possible someone will decide to take advantage on the craze and reprint Those Who Hunt the Night. One can always hope. Maybe it would even get a good cover.

Now that I’ve actually read it, I’m doubly pleased that The Graveyard Book won the Newbery, because it’s a wonderful book with an amazingly creative premise—a boy whose family is murdered is taken in and raised by a graveyard full of ghosts, along with a few other guardians who aren’t ghosts but aren’t exactly human either (one is basically a werewolf, and the other is a vampire, which I totally did not figure out until Neil actually said so on the Colbert Report. I r smrt.). I was thoroughly taken in by the first couple pages, with the man Jack’s terrifying, methodical murder, but to be honest, I was a little concerned—that the murder would just sort of happen and we wouldn’t find out why or what would happen to the man Jack, that the book would just be a coming-of-age story for Nobody Owens without much of an overarching plot.

And then I reminded myself, don’t be silly, this is Neil Gaiman and you can trust him. I did, and he didn’t disappoint: it’s a coming-of-age story, certainly, tracing Bod’s life from toddlerhood up to about age 14, but it definitely has a plot, and it’s rich with the kind of worldbuilding and mythological elements you can play with when your character spends his life among the dead. There’s a twist near the end that I did see coming, but that didn’t bother me much; it just put me in an agony of suspense for characters who didn’t know their own danger, so of course I wanted to reach through the pages and yell at them to watch out, which at least shows that they were real enough to make me invested in them.

But I can’t give my full opinion on this without spoiling the ending, so read on at your own risk. (more…)

I’ve mentioned before that I like Neil Gaiman, which is true. I still haven’t really read Sandman, though, the series of graphic novels for which he really first became famous. The biggest problem there is that there are so many volumes collected so many different ways, and my library site…is really messed up and confusing about what’s what. The only volume I’ve read so far turned out to be number 6 of 10 collected volumes, and it’s basically a series of one-shots that insert members of the Endless into real-world history. I’d really thought it was the first volume when I checked it out.

So that’s my disclaimer: these are, essentially, my first impressions on Sandman from having read one volume out of order. Go me.

Anyway, while I did quite like it–I adore Death, Dream is kind of fascinating, and the way it weaves itself into the stories of all these historical figures is really pretty awesome–it’s reconfirming for me the fact that I just don’t like American-style comics, or possibly comics in general, and why. I do seem to remember the Firefly comics (Those Left Behind and Better Days) being drawn in a style I liked and that actually looked like the actors in question, while I don’t particularly care for the style in the Buffy Season 8 comics (I’ve only looked at a couple of each–I don’t want to buy them because they’ll take me about 20 minutes to read, but Barnes & Noble doesn’t have all of them, either), but Sandman’s just reminding me–well, it’s not like I even have that much experience with comics, but something in every style used in Sandman (and there are several different ones, but all at one level or another of photorealism) is very familiar, maybe because of my dad’s old comics (all of which are adaptations of classic novels. What, you thought I was the first geek in my family?), and it’s not a good kind of familiar. Maybe it’s the uncanny valley effect–it’s comic photorealism in the wrong way and that’s why I find most of the characters off-putting (but less so people like Dream, who aren’t entirely realistic to begin with).

And the thing is, I’m not an anti-comics person by any means. (more…)

I’ve been told that Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart actually isn’t the best translation from the original German, because the English version doesn’t retain what made the other German, or something like that. When I read Inkheart after having recently read The Thief Lord, I got basically the exact opposite impression: at least compared to The Thief Lord, which had a different translator, Inkheart struck me as not only more accurate but more elegant. The former was awkward in places; I guessed that it was a translation before I knew it was. But Inkheart was wonderful. It took me a while to read because I kept pausing to savor it; the best word I could find to describe it was “delicious.” (It doesn’t help that 1) Dustfinger is awesome and 2) I already have a thing for the “power of words” trope.) It’s definitely on my list of top favorite books (and comfort reads, really); the only major thing wrong with it is that the book description gives away something the book itself doesn’t reveal until at least a third of the way through, which of course is Mo’s ability to read people outof books.

The sequels–Inkspell and Inkdeath–more or less followed the mold of sequels, in that they didn’t quite live up to the first one. I think, in part, it might be a matter of setting–Inkheart involves characters plucked from a fantasy world and transplanted in ours, while the other two spend the bulk of their time in the Inkworld itself; maybe it was the juxtaposition of fantastical and mundane that made the first book work. I’m not sure. Inkspell’s missing something that its predecessor had, anyway, and Inkdeath…

Well, I’ve got a pretty good idea what’s wrong with the final volume of the trilogy. I went looking for reviews before I read it and the general consensus seemed to be that Cornelia Funke had forgotten she was writing for children and young adults. And…that’s it in a nutshell. It wasn’t so much that she upped the adult content, because she didn’t (well, there might have been a bit more in the way of death and violence, but I don’t think it was a major difference). Thing is, these are YA novels, which means they need to focus on a young protagonist (something I discussed earlier). Inkheart did–Meggie was always the main character, even when other important characters came in and even though Mo, at least in the beginning, was the one with the reading gift. It was always Meggie’s story. Inkspell was the same way, as far as I remember; there may have been more chapters from others’ POVs than in Inkheart, but it was still her story, told through her words, seen through her eyes, affected by her actions.

*Spoilers for Inkdeath past this point, although not a lot that you couldn’t guess from reading Inkspell.* (more…)

Still busy with school, natch; not doing quite as much pleasure-reading (for instance, I read the first couple chapters of Catch-22 the other day because I’ll be presenting on it for a class, and so far I haven’t been able to force myself to read more because I hate Yossarian so much). I’m still working on some reviews. I’m also coming across far too many giveaways that I’m sure I won’t win, but you never know so why not, which is why I’m sharing them: because anybody can win and others might be interested, and…okay, it means more entries for me, whatever. (At least I’m honest.)

• Steam Powered Rings - I’m not sure how much I’ve mentioned this here, but I really like steampunk. I think the only book I’ve read that I could definitively say was steampunk would be Perdido Street Station, which is unfortunate because I’d love to hunt down some more (and could do with a bit less of the “punk” elements, more of the steam-driven, Victorian-inspired, clocks-and-gears bits). But steampunk isn’t just a genre; it’s a style, too, which means you can find things like steampunk computers, clothes, and music all over the internet, assuming you can pay for them. You can also find steampunk jewelry, and Steam Powered Rings is full of truly gorgeous pieces like this and this and this, which all adds up to a big WANT for me and then I cry because I don’t have a lot of money. But: if you’re long on EntreCard credits and short on real money, you can get a ring for 6,000 EC in the EC Market (I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of working toward this and adding up how long it would take if I made lots and lots of drops), and there’s also a giveaway during February, March, and April for a ring.
• Lil Wayne John, a web-developer and blogger, is giving away 10,000 EC credits . To enter, you have to submit your blog to the directory Link Listings, which could be useful in pulling a bit of traffic anyway.
• Christian Carders - You might have noticed that a few of the books I’ve reviewed–Soon and Firebird, for instance–are Christian fiction, so it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that I’m a Christian too. Admittedly, I find a lot of Christian fiction to be poorly written, which is kind of sad, and I don’t read as much of it anymore; but I’m pretty likely to talk about it when I find one, and my worldview will still probably leak in through my reviews a bit. Anyway, there’s a community for Christian bloggers with EntreCard, and if that definition fits you and you’d like to join, visit Christian Carders.
• Bloggers Give - Momstart is hosting an EC credit giveaway to benefit Bloggers Give, a site where bloggers make a difference by giving their time and resources to help those in need.

Right. Now to start that paper that’s due tomorrow. And this was supposed to be quick…

I’ve tried to explain, more than once, why I’m drawn to science fiction and fantasy. It’s a little easier when I’m talking about why I write it–I say things about how it means less research (this is not entirely true. Worldbuilding done well generally requires enormous amounts of research. But it does mean that I don’t have to drive myself completely bats trying to make sure I’m accurate to this historical detail or this aspect of such-and-such a real place–creating histories and settings of my own gives me an awful lot of freedom that way), how it allows me to explore ideas that might be rejected out of hand by readers in familiar, real-world situations but can be slipped in and actually considered if they’re dressed in new guises, and I have a virtually unlimited number of ways to look at those ideas. I love finding the universal and human among the unfamiliar and the alien. Besides, it’s just fun.

It comes down to all the same reasons, I suppose, if I’m asked why I prefer reading fantasy and sci-fi, but somehow that’s always harder to answer; usually I can’t come up with anything better than “…I don’t know, I just like it better, I guess…” It’s especially unfortunate that I often feel the need to defend my favorite genres, but I suppose most kinds of genre fiction will inspire similar reactions among people that aren’t into those genres.

Well. Not terribly long ago, I came across a link in Sherwood Smith’s blog to a review of George Eliot’s Middlemarch–and yeah, Middlemarch has nothing to do with speculative fiction, and yeah, I haven’t read it. But in explaining why Eliot would’ve made a wonderful science fiction writer, Jo Walton also manages to describe perfectly both the special freedoms and special dangers of fantasy and sci-fi:

In science fiction you can have any kind of story—a romance or a mystery or a reflection of human nature, or anything at all. But as well as that, you have infinite possibility. You can tell different stories about human nature when you can compare it to android nature, or alien nature. You can examine it in different ways when you can write about people living for two hundred years, or being relativistically separated, or under a curse. You have more colours for your palette, more lights to illuminate your scene.

Now the problem with genre fiction is often that writers take those extra lights and colours and splash them around as if the fact that the result is shiny is sufficient, which it unfortunately isn’t. So the most common failing of genre fiction is that you get shallow stories with feeble characters redeemed only by the machinations of evil wizards or the fascinating spaceship economy or whatever. What I want is stories as well written and characterised as Middlemarch, but with more options for what can happen. That’s what I always hope for, and that’s what I get from the best of SF.

If Eliot could have taken her SFnal sensibility and used it to write SF, she could have swung the whole course of literature into a different channel. She could have changed the world. All the great writers who followed her would have had all the options of SF, instead of the circumscribed limitations of the mimetic world.

Now go back and read it again, especially the first paragraph and the bolded bits. Because this…this is why I write SF. Because it’s bigger than the everyday world, deeper, wider, more fascinating. Because I dwell in possibility.

Also, I really want to read some good steampunk now, after reading about how much the advent of the railroad shows up in Middlemarch.

I haven’t actually read this, which is not my fault, because it was published when I was in England for the semester and UEA’s lame uni library wasn’t at all like my uni library–connected to the municipal library system and able to get new books, in other words. I even tried getting Small Favor, the newest Dresden Files book, and Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox off interlibrary loan, and then I found out that ILL, at least at that library, is only for stuff you really need for school and you have to have your professor sign off on it. So much for that idea. I made do by periodically raiding the YA section instead and mostly read lots and lots of Diana Wyne Jones.

Now that I’m back, though, I’ve already read Small Favor and Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox, and I’ve got Inkdeath (another book released while I was gone) and The Graveyard Book checked out and sitting on my nightstand. (Hm, I also need to read The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I could’ve actually bought that in the UK and decided I’d wait until I could get it cheap. Even though it was, like, three pounds. Whatever. I am not, however, planning to read Brisingr. I don’t even know how to pronounce that.)

Anyway, I’m looking forward to it; I understand it’s sort of like The Jungle Book except the kid is raised by ghosts, not animals, which is a highly intriguing premise in and of itself–and anyway, it’s Neil Gaiman, so it’s bound to be good. But that’s not the point of this particular post. The point is, I found out this morning from Neil’s blog that The Graveyard Book just won the Newbery. That’s also not the main point, although it’s really cool and I’m thrilled about it. The main point is that his blog and Twitter entries about this are really, really cute. I mean his blog is pretty awesome in general, in large part because of his journal labels and also because of entries like these (also, he likes Doctor Who) and Twitter posts like “Mr Gaiman briefly ponders putting marmalade in tea, then realises he has lost his mind,” but…I don’t even know. He’s very normal and just kind of adorable, y’all.

Pretentious as it might sound, the word that kept coming to my mind as I read Perdido Street Station was “virtuosity,” and I can’t think of any other way to sum it up. Mieville has more skill in painting with words than possibly any other author I’ve ever read; the way he uses words is nothing short of astounding. The steampunk and fantastical elements are somehow believable because it’s not presented as strange; dark and bizarre as it is, New Crobuzon seems real, a place where real people truly live and die. The city is beautiful in its ugliness; the characters love it because it’s home, for all its horror. The plot is more than a little slow to start, but once it does, things pick up and move along fairly swiftly, and you realize that you’ve slowly begun to care about these odd characters.

…and those strong points are exactly the novel’s weak points. Mieville evokes a wonderfully gritty atmosphere, but in doing so he tends to take time out from the plot to describe a certain section of the city–all of which is important for setting the stage, and it all left me rather in awe of his worldbuilding, but when the plot gets going, all that description throws off the pacing. Things start moving quickly, and then the next chapter starts with two pages of description, and I found myself wanting to skip it to get to some more action. The action scenes in particular can be more than a little hard to picture or understand, too.

And as for the ending…I’ll try not to spoil it. But here’s the thing: when I started reading this book, I got the feeling that it was more than a little cynical and dystopian, and as such it was almost certainly not going to end happily (putting the “punk” in “steampunk,” I suppose, since steampunk doesn’t always seem to require the dystopian elements cyberpunk does). In fact I thought it was the sort of book where one or more of the main characters would die in the end. So I kept myself distant from the characters, and in some ways it wasn’t too hard. Lin, Isaac, Yagharek, and Derkhan are all very interesting, but in their own different ways, they all manage to be just a little bit unsympathetic, even alien. But then we get the slake-moths, and things heat up, and they’re all forced out of normality and into situations that make them choose to fight back. In a way they were growing up because of all this horror. I started really rooting for them, wanting them to succeed. And…well, I admit it: I like happy endings. In fact I’d just rather not read a book that doesn’t end happily, somehow or other. I like seeing characters go through hell, but I want them to come out okay, somehow or other, with hints that there’s still hope. For these characters, they all get what they wanted, sort of…and at the same time, none of them does. It’s just too bad that by the time they came to that point, I really liked all of them.

I don’t really know what to think about this book.

As a rule, I love Diana Wynne Jones’ work. Dark Lord of Derkholm was my first introduction to her novels; I think I first picked it up at the library because its cover looked so very, very cliched, I wanted to see what it was about and have a laugh at it.  Joke was on me, of course, because parodying fantasy cliches is one of the whole points of that book, along with a plot that’s fantastic in its own right, a lot of humor, and a family of wizards and griffins that bicker like crazy and still love each other to death. It’s one of those books where you’ve got a huge grin on your face when you finish because it’s just that much fun. Not all of her books are quite as good–the older ones like A Tale of Time City a bit less so, seems like, and I found Fire and Hemlock and Hexwood good but confusing (the former gets bonus points just for being a Tam Lin retelling, though)–but generally speaking you can’t go wrong with them, especially the Chrestomanci books.

The Homeward Bounders, though…I dunno, really. It’s…very different from her others. Oh, it shares a lot in common with others–even in books that aren’t actually related, she uses the idea of parallel worlds and dimensions all the time (I can think of at least five different books or series of hers that have nothing to do with each other but use alternate worlds in one way or another, and generally in different ways), and most of hers have young protagonists who end up having to save the world, often finding themselves faced with very difficult choices in the process.

But most of her books have an enemy that can, in some way, be known–the villains here are only referred to as They–and I’m pretty sure all her other characters get happy endings in one way or another. In this, you can kind of see the ending coming by the way the book begins and by hints the narrator drops along the way, and it’s not like it’s a bad ending exactly, but…it’s different. I found it depressing, to be honest, though I can’t say much more without entirely giving it away.

(It’s probably not too surprising, though, that I immediately thought of the perfect fix-it fic: the Doctor shows up, puts things properly to rights, and takes Jamie home in the TARDIS. This would of course allow the Doctor to angst about how he can never go home, but whatever.)