Category Archives: Books

Any Given Doomsday, A Respectable Trade, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, The Thirteenth Tale, Drowning Ruth
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Dead Water Creek & Cold Dark Matter are mainstream mysteries about a woman who investigates scientific fraud for the Canadian government.

Dead Water Creek was not bad, but the depictions of life in a science department did not mesh with my experience, and there were a fair number of unnecessary bits, like the protagonist’s mother being an alcoholic, and her resulting bad memories of the city. They had no bearing on the story whatsoever.

The actual scientific mystery, involving salmon, was interesting, too, and believable.

Minor nit: All but one of the named female scientists in this book are bi or lesbian, and that one is debatable. Considering that that’s a stereotype of female scientists, and it had no effect on the plot (everyone could have been sleeping with everyone else if they were straight couples, or if the men were also bi or gay), it seemed like a weird choice. Though a nice change from all the other millions of books on the planet where everyone is straight.

Cold Dark Matter was *much* better than the first one, at least once I got to chapter 7 or 8, and once I accepted that it was about astronomers, but not astronomy. In some ways the plot was preposterous (too many hidden motivations seemed like coincidences), but if I focused on the mystery and ignored the investigator’s reasons for investigating, it was just fine.

(I skipped Farmer Boy and stopped after These Happy Golden Years.)

I hadn’t reread these since I was a kid, when Little House on the Prairie was one of my favorite books for ages. They’re as good as I remember them, though the racist attitude towards non-whites no longer sails over my head.

It’s interesting to watch how the books turn from the “what life was like then” of Little House in the Big Woods (which Laura wasn’t actually old enough to remember — I think the family left when she was 3, not 6) into actual stories in the later books.

I like the later books in the series better now than I did when I was 7 or so. I always liked running-around-the-frontier Laura much better than sewing-a-new-dress Laura. That said, why did Almanzo put up with Laura long enough to marry her? She wasn’t very nice to him at all. One wonders if there were no other eligible girls in town.

This is a fabulous book — best one I’ve read all year, and that seems unlikely to change. My only complaint is that it ended.

Picked up Michael A. Stackpole’s A Secret Atlas because I like the author’s podcast on writing (The Secrets), and I have a policy against taking writing advice from someone I’ve never read.

It’s a solid epic fantasy with some nice politics and interesting magic. The first in a trilogy, it’s far from self-contained, but it sets up a very interesting premise for the second book (far more interesting than the premise for the first).

My biggest complaint is that there are no women in A Secret Atlas. Well, there are a few — maybe three who appear often — and one (Nirati) is even a POV character, but they all exist to support the men. And Nirati has a…problematic character arc. I think the author’s purposes could have been served in a less misogynistic way.

The book I read after this one was similar in the number and roles of women, but in that case it didn’t bother me. That book was set in our world’s history. A Secret Atlas bothered me more, I think, because the lack of and use of the female characters seems to come from the author’s unexamined assumptions rather than because it’s based in a patriarchal era of history. Basically, I feel that if you’re going to make up a society, you’d better have good reasons for lack of equality between the sexes, or at least a lack of important and interesting women in your stories.

The second book in the series looks like it’ll add another woman who may be more independent. We’ll see.

Some months ago I asked what Cormac McCarthy’s The Road did differently from other post-apocalyptic novels.

The answer is “Nothing.”

The Road follows a man and his son as they travel towards the coast, years after a disaster caused fires that burned nearly everything to ash. There’s hardly any food, water, or quote marks anywhere. The man and the boy walk and walk and sometimes something almost happens.

Despite that, I read the whole thing in only two or three sittings; I kept reading to see if the characters would survive.

The quote on the front cover of my edition says it’s a tale of the “miracle of goodness.” I’m not sure how the San Francisco Chronicle defines goodness; it seemed more a tale of the self-centeredness needed to survive against impossible odds. I suppose they mean the goodness of the child, who wants to help other survivors, rather than that of the father, who knows they can’t spare the food or supplies to help others. Even so, it comes across more as a miracle of naivety.

I didn’t dislike the book, but it’s not even close to being one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Still, I want to read McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, though I see that one also suffers from a dearth of punctuation. (Anyone want to explain to me the reasoning behind that? Some sort of metaphor for the emptiness of life, or the landscape?)

I really enjoyed this blogger’s take on the book: In a world where punctuation barely survives, though he’s harsher on the book than I am, and I very much disagree with him about the writing. The Road is a very well-written novel, and the style (aside from the punctuation) is perfect for the setting. I suppose I’m missing some thematic resonance provided by the lack of punctuation, but mostly it felt like the author showing off how cool he is.

Devlin’s Honor is the sequel to Devlin’s Luck, which I liked.

Unfortunately, Honor has all of Luck‘s problems [1] and none of its charms.

[1] Chiefly this one: The prose is at times a little lengthy for the content, reemphasizing what was already clear, but without the “at times a little”.

What I enjoy most about Jones’ books isn’t the mystery plot — though they are interesting — so much as the characters. That was a good thing for this book, because the plot didn’t work for me and left me unsatisfied (and more annoyed the more I thought about it) at the end.

Valley of the Soul, the third about Dubric Byerly and his employees/friends, was a lot less gory than the second book, Threads of Malice, which made me happy. This one involves the hunt for a possible blood mage who’s been killing sheep, maybe for practice before starting on people.

The characters are great — they’re likeable, but not overly so, and they face real problems with realistic reactions (or overreactions). There was a little bit of the “if the characters actually talked about x, the plot would disappear” problem, but it didn’t seem too unlikely that they would avoid talking about x.

The plot problems:

First — I almost put it down very early, when a character did something a) stupid and b) out of character. Jones is usually very careful about motivations and actions, and this stuck out as something that the character only did because it was required by the plot. I made a conscious decision to pretend it hadn’t happened or that it was a clumsy way of introducing a red herring.

Second — Spoilers behind the cut! Continue reading →

Cast in Shadow was even better than Cast in Courtlight.

The beginning felt a bit slow to me — probably because it stopped to explain things I’d already figured out while reading the second book in the series — but once the story got going, I was hooked.

Kaylin annoyed me a lot less in this book, and Severn enchanted me just as much, so that worked out well. (The scene where Kaylin explains why she’s mad at Severn was fairly chilling even already knowing the reason.)

And now I have to wait for the third one. Drat.