A tree of immense girth grows from a tufted shoot; a terrace of nine levels rises from a clump of soil; a journey of a thousand miles begins under the first tread.
--Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 64
[Home | Current | Archive | Index | Exposition | Links]
Kushiel's Chosen, Jacqueline Carey (2002), 700 pp (hb).
This is the sequel to Carey's debut novel Kushiel's Dart, and the middle book of an as yet unfinished trilogy. Written in much the same vein as its predecessor, it might just as well be subtitled The Perils of Phèdre, Part Deux, as our heroine once again goes wafting about the assorted locales of the novel's ersatz, alternate-history Europe, foiling dastardly plots on behalf of queen and country. Last book, it was the forests of Germania and the shores of the British Isles, while here the action shifts to the eastern Mediterranean--La Serenissima (Venice), Kriti (Crete), and Illyria (Albania).
At the close of the first book, Phèdre, raised to a peerage and retired to her newly inherited country estate, learns that her most powerful enemy, Melisande, has not only escaped a traitor's death, but is abroad in the world and plotting nasty things for the young queen of Terre D'Ange (France), land of Phèdre's nativity. As Kushiel's Chosen opens, Phèdre decides that she must return to the capital and rejoin the Service of Namaah--that is, resume her station as a high-class courtesan--in order to gather intelligence and sniff out the dangers to the throne. Following a couple hundred pages of preliminary maneuvering in the capital (these are long novels, remember), Phèdre decides her foe must be hidden somewhere in La Serenissima, so she gathers up a retinue and heads off to carry the fight to the enemy. From there, it's a string of adventures involving betrayal, imprisonment, fierce-but-honorable pirates (really!), sacred oracles, infiltrations, confrontations, so on and so forth.
In this version of history, given that the point of divergence from our own history seemingly revolves around the Christ-analogue, the Jewish and early Christian traditions have been merged in the people of the Yeshuites. The book has a sub-plot involving them and one of their prophecies that I think must be there to prepare for events in the concluding volume, because frankly I don't think it adds anything to this volume, and could have easily been cut if it were not for its set-up value.
Religion is also expanded on more in this book; last time, the theology mostly revolved around Terre D'Ange's angelic progenitors. Although Terre D'Ange's native pantheon is still a part of the landscape, the gods and religious traditions of other lands come much more to the fore here. And although Phèdre is ever more explicitly Kushiel's earthly tool, amusingly enough (or not, if one doesn't care so much for "it's all about me" protagonists), in this book she also gets "loaned out" to other divine powers to become their temporary instruments. I'm not sure how I feel about that device; mixed reaction, I suppose. It adds spice to the narrative, but it also contributes to the "too much" vibe.
Carey still writes nicely, in a tone rich and dramatic (sometimes, perhaps, melodramatic). Phèdre's interior monologue is interesting enough, although she has a tendency to over-indulge in "oh woe is me" asides that get a little bit annoying. Much of the interest of the first book lay in its setting, its world-building, and that is a trick that has necessarily lost much of its force here in the second book. Nevertheless, although I don't feel Kushiel's Chosen quite lives up to its predecessor, it's still worthwhile entertainment. It tells an interesting story, set in interesting lands, about mostly interesting people. I'll certainly be more than willing to read the third volume when it arrives.
Top |
Carry On, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse (1925), 245 pp (tpb).
This is just the sort of book that one comes to the end of and immediately thinks to oneself "why did I put off reading this for so long? I could have been enjoying this years ago." Its tone is so smoothly comedic, its prose so light and delightfully assured, that one skims through it effortlessly, giggling at every page or so. This isn't a novel, and to call it a collection of short stories seems to me to be imputing to it rather more structure than it warrants; rather, it's an agglomeration of ten episodes or anecdotes in the life of one Bertram (Bertie) Wooster and his gentleman's gentleman Jeeves.
I'm perhaps guilty of overusing the appellation "upper-class twit," but I really must beg leave to drop it in once more, for Bertie Wooster is very nearly the Platonic Ideal of the amiable upper-class twit, good-natured and utterly unselfconscious. In the wrong hands, this sort of blockhead could quickly become irritating, but Wodehouse is so skilled that Bertie, far from chafing, is an amusing riot as he narrates the tempest-in-a-teapot contretemps of the idle bachelor rich. Here, for instance, is Bertie's description of an unwelcome early morning visitor:
Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed female, not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six feet from the O.P. to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season. She had bright, bulging eyes and a lot of yellow hair, and when she spoke she showed about fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of those women who kind of numb a fellow's faculties. She made me feel as if I were ten years old and had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday clothes to say how-d'you-do. Altogether by no means the sort of thing a chappie would wish to find in his sitting-room before breakfast.
And then there's Jeeves, Bertie's omni-competent valet, who's indisputably the brains of the outfit. He's the one that smoothly extricates Bertie--and a fair number of Bertie's equally bumbling friends--from the assorted woes in which they find themselves with some regularity. Jeeves is so in command of the details of Bertie's existence that some of the best moments come when Bertie tries to assert his independence and rebel by wearing an article of clothing of which Jeeves does not approve:
As a matter of fact, what was bucking me up more than anything was the fact that the day before I had asserted myself with Jeeves--absolutely asserted myself, don't you know. You see, the way things had been going on I was rapidly becoming a dashed serf. The man had jolly well oppressed me. I didn't so much mind when he made me give up one of my new suits, because Jeeves's judgment about suits is sound and can generally be relied upon.
But I as near as a toucher rebelled when he wouldn't let me wear a pair of cloth-topped boots which I loved like a couple of brothers. And, finally, when he tried to tread on me like a worm in the matter of a hat, I put the Wooster foot down and showed him in no uncertain manner who was who.
Of course, it goes almost without saying that Jeeves can get his own subtle revenge for such bits of rebellion, and that by the end of the episode, Bertie will have caved in on whatever sartorial point was in dispute. This is a world that is utterly alien--I would no more know how to live with a personal servant than I would know how to live as a nomad on the Asian steppes--but, strange as it may seem, as Wodehouse writes it, it's great fun to read about.
Top |
The Foundling, Georgette Heyer (1948), 308 pp (hb).
This book is a complete romp. I had as much fun with it as I can recall having with a Heyer. Here we finally get a Duke as a protagonist; I can remember a Marquis or two, ditto with the Earls, maybe a couple of Viscounts, and any number of Barons, but this is the first Duke. On one level, this just means that the absurd (to a late 20th century American) hierarchy of Regency England is thrown into even sharper relief. On the other hand, it's the cozening, stifling effects of that hierarchy on our hero that kicks the plot off in the first place.
Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware ("Gilly" to his intimates), Duke of Sale (and assorted lesser titles), is a slight, mild-mannered young man of 24. He is, despite his nominal eminence, lorded over by everyone from his uncle to his butler and personal valet--all of them with the best of intentions and an eye towards maintaining his (assumed to be frail) health and (not to be questioned) personal consequence. The young Duke is beginning to chafe under this rather smothering blanket of regard, but is really too good natured to alter the tone of his personal relationships all at a stroke:
"You are the head of the family, Gilly," Lord Lionel said. "You must learn to assert yourself. I have done all that a man may to train and educate you for the position you must occupy, but you are far too diffident." [...]
The Duke thought of the period of his boyhood, spent largely at his house near Bath, so that he might derive the benefit of the waters there; of three trammelled years at Oxford; of two more trammelled years upon the Continent, with a military gentleman added to his entourage, to teach him horse-manage, and manly sports; and suddenly made up his mind to assert himself, even if only in a small matter. He pushed back his chair, and said: "Shall we join my aunt now?"
"Really, Gilly, you must see that I have not yet finished my glass!" said Lord Lionel. "Do not, I beg of you, get into a scrambling way of doing things! You should always make sure that the company is ready to rise before you give the signal."
"I beg your pardon, sir," said the Duke, abandoning the attempt to assert himself.
He doesn't sound very promising, but after a few slow chapters establishing the Duke as a rather amiable milksop, things get into gear when he takes a trip to London. There, he learns that his cousin, as a result of an illicit courtship gone awry, is target of an extortion attempt by an unscrupulous adventurer. The Duke decides that this is the perfect opportunity for him to get out from under the thumb of his oppressive minders and experience a bit of an anonymous adventure. He tells his cousin he'll settle the affair, then slips out of his house under an assumed name and heads for a meeting with the would-be extortionist. Thus begins the Duke's Excellent Adventure, during the course of which he will foil the extortion attempt, end up kidnapped, acquire a couple of teenage dependents--one a boisterous young gentleman set on escaping his own over-protective tutor, the other (the eponymous foundling) a good-natured, bona fide beauty who's also dumb as a post (as all including herself recognize)--and experience scads of personal growth, while coming to the realization that he's a pretty capable, competent chap, dammit.
Like I said, it's quite a romp, and I really did enjoy this one a great deal.
Top |
Scout's Progress, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (2000), 295 pp (tpb).
More Liaden. I really enjoyed this one; of the five Liaden stories I've read so far, this may be the one I've liked the most; it's at least tied with Conflict of Honors. It benefits from the intersection of two plot types that I tend to like, at least when they're well handled, and I think they mostly are here. The first type is the "powerful, important figure in disguise, mingling incognito with 'real people'" plot, and the second type is the "downtrodden youth with enormous potential learns his or her worth" plot. Not surprisingly, Conflict of Honors also partakes heavily of that second plot type.
As in Local Custom, the action in Scout's Progress takes place a generation earlier; here the protagonists are the parents of Val Con, male lead of Agent of Change and Carpe Diem. Daav yos'Phelium is the head of Clan Korval, the founding and preeminent clan on Liaden. Like his brother and best buddy Er Thom in Local Custom, he has yet to provide an heir to the clan. He's contracted a marriage on the basis of social and genetic suitability, but he's not all that thrilled about it. So after communing with the Tree (i.e. Clan Korval's semi-sentient totem), he decides to doff his rank insignia and go play spaceship mechanic down at the local garage, which is populated with all his old Scout buddies.
Meanwhile, Aellianna is an oppressed member of a lower middle-class Clan with an indifferent leader (her mother) and a dangerous jackass of a leader-in-waiting (her older brother). She also happens to be a world-reknowned mathematician, although her family doesn't seem to really realize it. One giddy evening, she happens to win a spaceship while playing cards with an overconfident upper-class twit. Realizing that this may be her best, only chance to escape her abusive brother, she sets out to earn her pilot's license. As it happens, the ship is berthed down at the local garage, and this brings her within the orbit of Daav and his intrepid circle of cool Scout buddies. Events proceed from there.
This was good, solid entertainment. I liked both of the main characters--as it happens, I liked Daav a lot more than I liked his son Val Con--and the secondaries were all engaging or villainous, as required by their roles.
Top |
Local Custom, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (2000), 296 pp (tpb).
Back to the Liaden Universe we go. This time, the story takes us to a generation earlier than that shown in the first three books. Local Custom tells the story of Er Thom and Anne, parents of Shan (the male lead in Conflict of Honors). Here, Shan shows up as roughly a three year old child.
Er Thom has yet to fulfill his duty to his clan (Korval) and line (yos'Galen) by providing it with an heir. His head of line (and mother) is starting to get on his case to contract a marriage (on Liaden, that's more literal than usual--marriage is a contract undertaken with specific terms and for a limited period) and get that heir business taken care of. The only thing is, he can't get a Terran lady with whom he shared a brief dalliance some three years ago out of his mind. He begs a brief dispensation and heads off to said lady's planet to try to bring closure to his feelings for her.
Let me start with what bugged me about this novel. I'm more or less acclimated to the whole life-mates trope, and it isn't too intrusive here anyway, so we'll just take that whole sermon as read. One of my buttons that got pushed early on, though, was when it turned out that Er Thom's lady Anne, a scholar of linguistics at a university, had decided near the end of their former liason to bear a child with which to remember Er Thom--and never tell him about it. He only finds out he has a son when he unexpectedly returns to visit her. That sort of deception really bothers me. A minor point, I suppose, since it mostly gets swept under the carpet, and Shan's existence is kind of the lynch-pin for the remainder of the plot.
In spite of its faults (I could list a couple more--the male lead being a tad lachrymose for my taste, for instance), this really is quite an entertaining novel. It works best, in my view, as a study in cultural conflict, as Anne tries to fit into Liaden society, with its ornate and convoluted code of conduct. To that end, we are provided with more specific insights into that culture, things that were only hinted at or left unrevealed in the earlier books. Little quibbles aside, it's a pleasant, smoothly readable novel.
Top |
When the Devil Dances, John Ringo (2002), 485 pp (hb).
Third in a series, following A Hymn Before Battle and Gust Front. Stupidly, I actually kind of unconsciously assumed that this was a trilogy and that this volume would wind things up. Dumb assumption, nerd-boy. Not only does this book not wind things up, it leaves off in a not-particularly-good spot, in the middle of a potentially catastrophic alien breakthrough.
To backtrack just a little bit: at the end of the last installment, things looked vaguely hopeful for our Defenders of Earth. After a pitched battle on the Mall in Washington, D.C. and a slaughter-fest in the killing zone of downtown Richmond, the initial alien landing looked to be mostly repulsed, on the U.S. front at least. Now we discover that five years have passed and things are looking desparate for humanity. There have been five separate waves of invaders in those years, and the estimate is that there are now over ten billion aliens to around a billion humans. The last really functioning, civilized defense in the world is the central United States, with the forward Wall holding along the Appalachian range. The big event in this book is when the aliens (heretofore strategically and tactically completely inept, their one saving grace) stage an unexpected breakthrough at a point on the Wall down in Georgia. The book concludes with the initial incursion beaten back, and the main protagonist preparing to lead his Armored Combat Suit battalion in to re-plug the hole in the Wall.
More blood, more explosions, yadda, yadda. I think my jonesing for unadulterated military blood 'n guts has been pretty much sated for the nonce. As before, decent enough popcorn reading. Oh, and there's an afterword, written post-9/11, that I found so annoyingly condescending that I was reminded all over again why Ringo made it into my Usenet kill file in the first place. To his credit as an author, he's largely kept the sermonizing out of the narrative proper--at least there's no more than you'd expect as a baseline in this sort of story.
Top |
A Nasty Bit of Rough, David Feherty (2002), 235 pp (hb).
This is another "guy book" (yeah, I know, I'm indulging in an odious stereotype. Shoot me), but it's about as far as you can get from military sci-fi and still be considered a guy book. Let's just say I needed to cleanse my palate a bit, but didn't want to drag out another Heyer (besides, the Heyer is next week's dessert).
Now, before we start, let's just table the whole "golf is/is not a sport" imbroglio, shall we? A few years back, I used to consider golf a pretty silly endeavor. Then, not long before Tiger Woods showed up on the scene, I started watching some of the Majors on T.V., and getting kind of swept up in it. Then I got an old second-hand set of clubs and started going out to the range and bewailing my suckitude, just like all the other amateurs.
Anyway. David Feherty is a nice Irish lad who used to play professional golf, mostly in Europe, a little in the U.S. Now he's an on-course announcer for CBS, and he also has a bi-weekly column for one of the golf magazines. Not only does he write pretty well, but he's just dang funny. So when I heard he was trying his hand at fiction, it wasn't too hard a sell to sample his first novel.
A Nasty Bit of Rough revolves around the grudge match played between two competing clubs every fifty years, with the winning club securing the right to display the mummified middle finger of St. Andrew himself. The good guys belong to Scrought's Wood, located just south of the English-Scottish border and led by the protagonist, Major General (ret.) Sir Richard Gusset, aka "Uncle Dickie." The bad guys belong to the Tay Club, over in Scotland, which is populated by the McGregor Clan and led by big, obnoxious Hamish McGregor. The plot isn't very tightly constructed, but boiled down, it involves Uncle Dickie and his subordinates' heroic efforts to overcome McGregor chicanery and win through to victory.
This is a comic novel, and it's told in a determinedly goofy tone. For one thing, Feherty has a lot of fun picking silly names for a lot of his characters: Willoughby Hurd, Maharajah Poonsavvy ("Poony"), Mister Perry Stalsis and the Colon Muscle Band, Sir Basil Strangely-Smallpiece, Herpy (so named because "he can be an irritating dick head"), and Sergeant James Finkter of the local constabulary ("He'd heard every possible variation, Officer Ectum, Inspector Anus, Constable Colon, The Bumhole Bobby, etc."). In addition, and this is why I don't feel too guilty describing this as a "guy's book," there's an awful lot of bathroom humor and jokes revolving around genitalia. Here's a sampling, an excerpt describing the first match in the long rivalry, taken from the journal of the clergyman who founded the Scrought's Wood Club:
Much had I heard from his kinfolk, of the mighty size of his manhood, and indeed, as he swung his heavy driving wassock from side to side in preparation for the game, the magnitude of his unmentionables was clearly evident beneath the folds of his pagan vestments. Lest I had any doubt, before he took his first cut, he did raise the skirts of his dress, and proclaim loudly, that after the game he did intend to insert the vile organ into my holy personage, a claim so unseemly, that my holy quill does refuse to inscribe it herein. Verily, let it be sufficient to say, that all the holy water in Christendom would not have purified the mouth of such a godless, boorish, ill-bred son of a syphlitic cloven-footed goat buggerer. Forgive me, dear Lord, for I know not what I write.
Surprisingly, for a book that's centered around golf, there's not actually all that much golf action onstage. It's a somewhat uneven, occasionally over-the-top effort, but I was mostly amused by A Nasty Bit of Rough, finding it a goofy, light-hearted romp.
Top |
Gust Front, John Ringo (2001), 710 pp (pb).
This book is the sequel to last post's A Hymn Before Battle, and now that the set-up is well and truly fixed, the operative word here is more. More danger, more bloodthirsty aliens, more military manuevers, ragged retreats, desperate last stands, and more explosions.
The action here is centered on Earth; more specifically, the eastern seaboard of the United States. After last book's climactic action on a planet far, far away, Earth is aware of the nastiness of the approaching invaders and of the need for preparation. The first third of the book is taken up with that preparation. Earth forces are aware that scout forces may well arrive somewhat ahead of schedule, but as it turns out, the main force pops into view well before they were expected, and it's "game on" for our brave men and women. One of the five main landing groups chooses right outside Fredricksburg for its disembarkation spot, and the evil host splits--some to pound Fredricksburg, larger groups to head north towards Washington, D. C. and south toward Richmond.
I don't usually care to use the neologism "carnography," because it strikes me as just a little too cutesy. But I have to admit that as a word describing an overload of gore and bloodshed, it's fairly apt. There's a fair bit of carnography on display here. And that's entirely aside from the steely-eyed, cold-blooded trigger-man that the main protagonist's eight year old daughter turns out to be. Ah well, that is part of the package, after all. As before, this is popcorn reading--tripping compulsively along, but not leaving behind much lasting effect.
Top |
A Hymn Before Battle, John Ringo (2000), 396 pp (hb).
My Gentle Readers, men and women of refinement and taste, are excused if they prefer to politely avert their eyes from the next entry or two. The thing is, I hit a spell where I felt the need to read about lots of stuff gettin' blowed up real good. And not the sort of "blowed up real good" that shares center stage with, or is ancillary to, witty repartee, intricate political plotting, and shmoopy romantic snuggle-bunnies. Don't get me wrong, all that stuff has its place, and in that place, I enjoy it in full measure. This time, though, I needed my poison undiluted. I wanted combat suits, plasma cannons, and evil imperialistic aliens. In short, I needed some military sci-fi.
John Ringo provides an interesting exercise in separating the creator from the work. He had a spell not terribly long ago where he was posting a fair amount on rasfw, and he found himself in my kill file fairly quickly. I'm generally not one, however, to categorically refuse to read something solely because I think the author is an obnoxious git, and when I saw A Hymn Before Battle sitting on the shelf at the library, that niggly little "blow stuff up" itch got a lot more acute, and before I knew it, I was at the self-check out kiosk with book in hand.
A Hymn Before Battle scratches the itch fairly successfully. It's got a number of goofy conceits to get the set-up in place, but if one can't swallow those without flying off the handle, one probably shouldn't be reading military sci-fi in the first place. The set-up: apparently, there's a big Galactic Federation out yonder, filled with several disparate races that all suck at violent conflict. The Federation is static, even ossified, and pacifist to the core. Unfortunately, there's a race (the Posleen) outside the Federation that lives solely for conquest (the requisite evil imperialistic aliens), and they're grinding outlying worlds of the Federation to hamburger, one by one. The Federation has been observing Earth, and has come to the conclusion that humans do know how to fight. They make contact with various governments, offering advanced Galactic technology and pay if they can recruit human armies to fight off-planet. Oh yeah, guys, and by the way, there's a Posleen invasion force headed for Earth, scheduled to show up in orbit in four or five years...better hurry up and get ready.
The book is split among several characters and moves through various stages--preparation and procurement, an advanced scout team on one of the beleaguered Federation planets, working up training and tactics for the full-immersion battle armor combat suits that have been newly designed, and then the big assault on the invading force on said planet to wrap things up. This is pretty straightforward mil-sci-fi, and there's not much more I feel the need to say about it. It has tough-but-fair NCOs, incompetent general officers (and their much scarcer counterparts, smart competent general officers), perfidious politicians, bloodthirsty aliens, and a fair portion of stuff blowing up. Real good. It's entertaining (if one likes this sort of thing), but not very memorable.
Top |
What's the Worst that Could Happen?, Donald E. Westlake (1996), 373 pp (hb).
"Read a Dortmunder novel!" the voices commanded. Being a slavishly obedient conformist, I hastened to comply.
Now, I'm assuming that Westlake's Dortmunder novels are meant to be, essentially, stand-alone efforts. That's all well and good, and this book can certainly be read as a stand-alone, because I just did it, without much problem. And yet, I had the feeling that there were a lot of character nuances that I was missing simply by virtue of not having read earlier material involving the same characters. The resulting effect was that a lot of the interaction--between Dortmunder and his significant other, between various members of the "crew," and so forth--came off as exceedingly low-key; almost flat in places. Actually, unfamiliarity is only part of the reason for the low-key effect. The other part is that Westlake's writing itself establishes a very low-key tone.
John Dortmunder is a thief. Not a thief as in "international jewelry thief who consorts with gorgeous nymphets while effortlessly deploying technomagic devices to score multi-million dollar heists." No. Dortmunder doesn't like telephones and doesn't know what a fax machine is. He's not unfamiliar with the school of hard-knocks, and thinks a few thousand bucks is a pretty good score. The group he consorts with--also professional thieves of one flavor or another--have a similar outlook.
This particular tale starts out when Dortmunder's significant other May receives her departed uncle's lucky ring as her inheritance, and she passes it on to Dortmunder. Soon after, he and a colleague head out to Long Island to toss a corporate-owned mansion. By coincidence, the CEO of said corporation happens to be tip-toeing through the extra-marital tulips at the mansion that evening, manages to hold Dortmunder at gun-point, and calls the cops. Also by coincidence, the lucky ring has as its signet one of the trigrams from the Yi Jing, which the CEO considers to be his guiding influence in life. On the spur of the moment, he decides to count coup on this hapless burglar by claiming that it's his ring, and having the cops force Dortmunder to give it up to him. Dortmunder is of course righteously enraged at this shameless assertion of executive privilege, and after escaping, sets out to recover his ring, a motive that drives the remainder of the action.
I found this a pleasant, if not tremendously memorable, read. This type of comedy strikes me as mildly humorous, with an occasional really good stroke, rather than side-splittingly funny. It might even make a pretty good movie, if anyone ever decided to film it.
Top |
Regency Buck, Georgette Heyer (1935), 332 pp (hb).
First, a comment about the title. Unless I'm really missing something, it seems to me that the contemporary equivalent of this title would be to name a book that happened to have a cool guy somewhere in it The Cool Guy. It's so generic as to be almost meaningless. I know, big deal, but I had to get that off my chest.
I actually liked Regency Buck quite a bit. It gets bonus points for turning in the direction I hoped it would, rather than the direction I feared certain conventional markers initially indicated it would. It also gets bonus points for including a prize fight, a cock fight, and an aborted duel. I wasn't sure Heyer had it in her, but she does a decent job with all three. We also get a lot more appearances by famous period individuals, including the actual Regent himself, than is usual in the other Heyers I've read.
The book opens with Judith Taverner, some months shy of attaining her majority, and her younger brother Peregrine (no, really) travelling to London from their provincial home. Their recently deceased father has, entirely without consulting them or anyone else, designated a casual friend to be their guardian. Although their guardian, whom they have never met, has written instructions that they stay put, they are keen to sample London society, so off they go.
Regency Buck has a whiff of Pride and Prejudice in the dynamic between the central romantic partners, although Miss Taverner isn't within a very long toss of being in Elizabeth Bennett's league as a sharp, witty, mostly clear-eyed heroine. There's also a couple of places where the usual suspension of my social criticism faculty, an important component of the ability to enjoy Heyer, got tripped up, and I was jarred into recalling just how stratified and sexist that society really was. Brief moments, though, before slipping the rose-tinted glasses cosily back on and getting back to enjoying the story, containing as it does light little exchanges like this:
"Why so diffident?" he asked. "You had plenty to say when I met you yesterday?"
Miss Taverner turned to look at him. Her cheeks had reddened, but she replied without the least sign of shyness: "Be pleased to drive on, sir. I have nothing to say to you, and my affairs are not your concern."
"That--or something very like it--is what you said to me before," he remarked. "Tell me, are you even prettier when you smile? I've no complaint to make, none at all: the whole effect is charming [...] but I should like to see you without the scowl."
Miss Taverner's eyes flashed.
"Magnificent!" said the gentleman. "Of course, blondes are not precisely the fashion, but you are something quite out of the way, you know."
"You are insolent, sir!" said Miss Taverner.
He laughed. "On the contrary, I am being excessively polite."
Yeah, he sounds a bit, well, insolent, but then Mr. Darcy had some less-than-shining moments, too, and he turned out pretty well in the end. So too our hero here. Regency Buck is, all things considered, lively and enjoyable.
Top |
Mirabile, Janet Kagan (1991), 276 pp (hb).
Mirabile is the story of a human colony on a planet far distant from Earth. The colonizers travelled from Earth in generation ships, and at the time of the story itself, have been on the planet for three or four generations. The geneticists that sent along Earth-derived flora and fauna samples with the colonists for eventual establishment in their new home adopted the strategy of encoding genes from entirely different species, families, even kingdoms, in the DNA of the various samples. Whether those genes express is dependent on peculiarities of the environmental conditions to which the samples are introduced. Sometimes beneficial things happen, sometimes it's a short step from disaster.
The focus of the story is on a senior field biologist/ecologist, Annie Jason Masmajean, whose job it is to stabilize beneficial species, investigate possible new/unexpected gene expressions, and head off bad species before they become entrenched and do too much damage. I say story, but it's really stories, since in form this is really as much a collection of short stories--one per chapter--as it is a novel (and in fact, if I'm not mistaken, each of the chapters was independently published as a short story). The entire book is told in first person, narrated by Annie.
Mirabile is not a book that delights in gee-whiz techno-wankery, a la David Weber or Tom Clancy. It constantly refers to doing gene-scans, for instance, but spares us (or deprives us, I suppose, depending on one's taste for a good techno-wank) the pages of info-dump describing in loving detail the mechanics of said gene-scan. Instead, its focus is really on the characters, and their wild and woolly adventures in the field as they try to mesh their Earth-authentic transplants with the native biosphere.
So I'm guessing that those who love this book love it at least in part because of its characters. Unfortunately, the characters are part, probably the largest part, of why I can't love it. There's just something about the narrator Annie that rubs me the wrong way. She's got some of the same breezy "I know best and that's the way it is, bub" attitude that bugs me about some of Heinlein's characters. I know, I'm probably the only one that sees that connection. And the necking! It seems like she had to mention every few pages how she and her main squeeze were indulging in a little slap 'n tickle so's to perk up their spirits. Let me be clear that I have nothing against necking in the abstract--I'm all for it, in fact--but I sure was getting annoyed at being told about it so frequently.
Ahem. The stories themselves, well they're generally fairly entertaining, but I don't think they're world-beaters. The fact that they're generally entertaining, though, is enough to drown out my mild dyspepsia over the characterization and make Mirabile, on balance, a positive reading experience. But only just....
[Top |
Home |
Current |
Archive |
Index |
Exposition |
Links |
e-mail]
Comments functionality provided courtesy of YACCS.