Children of Central Review
May. 26th, 2016 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
Finished up a few more books. As a reminder, we're reaching the end of May so if you're still reading Sex and Shakespeare you should finish up soon so we can chat about it.
First up was Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gaveriel Kay. Mr. Kay writes a series of fantasy novels which are basically historical novels with the serial numbers filed off and a touch of magic. I've enjoyed other books of his I read although it's been a while since I last checked in with him. I had to pick this one up since it covered the tense period of the 1500's when Venice, the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire fought it out over the Balkans and the seas surrounding them. It's a period of history I find interesting so I was keen to pick it up.
The book follows several characters who are loosely united by Seressa's (Venice's) attempt to gain intelligence about Dubrava (Dubrovnik or Ragusa) and the Asharite (Ottoman) Empire. They send Jacopo and Leonora to spy on Dubrava and Pero is off to Asharias (Istanbul) to paint the Khalif's portrait. Crossing over on Marin's boat, they are attacked by Senjen raiders (including Dancia, a reluctantly accepted woman) and things go rather askew.
Although Mr. Kay takes a few liberties with the history, his aim is to convey a sense and a feeling of what life was like in those times for the people (both high and low) who inhabited it. The short version is that life on the frontier region between the Empires was dangerous and likely to be short. Between the incursions by armies of both sides, groups of people made their living preying on their neighbors. Despite all this, life still moves on as best it can. There are a number of exciting battle sequences, but skirmishes not great wars and they aren't central to the main thrust of the plot. That shows up in how each of the main characters works to adapt to their situation and tries to make the best of it. The book has a rather upbeat tone so most people find some measure of success.
I rather enjoyed the book (but it does hit my biases). There's a lot of great imagery in the book, both descriptive and in the dialog and also the literary bits of world-building (poems, aphorisms, and so on). The elements of fantasy exist but are very muted which was fine since it kept the focus on the people.
Next, I switched gears to the far future and picked up Central Station by Lavie Tidhar. Central Station is a space elevator set in Tel Aviv in a sort of neutral zone between Jewish and Arab sections of Israel. The book focuses on neither of those groups in exchange for following two families, the Chongs and the Joneses, whose families migrated to Central Station to help build it.
The future presented here is a sort of pre-Singularity. There are humans and others (digital consciousnesses). Most people have a built-in internet connection and there are robots and cyborgs but they're sort of an evolutionary dead end. The world-building on display is superb. The info dumps are very subtle and neatly woven into the stories, but the world of Central Station has a real feel, a real texture and it makes for some wonderful reading.
Like I say, the book is really more of a family drama about the Chongs and the Joneses and less about world-shaking events they participate in. I keep wanting to say it's a bit like Chekov -- a smaller, more human scale slice of life in the future. Miriam Jones is protecting Kranki, a boy joined closely to the other. Her ex-boyfriend Boris is back on Earth because his father is drowning in memories. There's forbidden love between a woman and a long-discarded cyborg soldier. A robot priest performs a bris. It's a great example of science fiction not being about the typical science fiction things. Well worth looking into.
later
Tom
Finished up a few more books. As a reminder, we're reaching the end of May so if you're still reading Sex and Shakespeare you should finish up soon so we can chat about it.
First up was Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gaveriel Kay. Mr. Kay writes a series of fantasy novels which are basically historical novels with the serial numbers filed off and a touch of magic. I've enjoyed other books of his I read although it's been a while since I last checked in with him. I had to pick this one up since it covered the tense period of the 1500's when Venice, the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire fought it out over the Balkans and the seas surrounding them. It's a period of history I find interesting so I was keen to pick it up.
The book follows several characters who are loosely united by Seressa's (Venice's) attempt to gain intelligence about Dubrava (Dubrovnik or Ragusa) and the Asharite (Ottoman) Empire. They send Jacopo and Leonora to spy on Dubrava and Pero is off to Asharias (Istanbul) to paint the Khalif's portrait. Crossing over on Marin's boat, they are attacked by Senjen raiders (including Dancia, a reluctantly accepted woman) and things go rather askew.
Although Mr. Kay takes a few liberties with the history, his aim is to convey a sense and a feeling of what life was like in those times for the people (both high and low) who inhabited it. The short version is that life on the frontier region between the Empires was dangerous and likely to be short. Between the incursions by armies of both sides, groups of people made their living preying on their neighbors. Despite all this, life still moves on as best it can. There are a number of exciting battle sequences, but skirmishes not great wars and they aren't central to the main thrust of the plot. That shows up in how each of the main characters works to adapt to their situation and tries to make the best of it. The book has a rather upbeat tone so most people find some measure of success.
I rather enjoyed the book (but it does hit my biases). There's a lot of great imagery in the book, both descriptive and in the dialog and also the literary bits of world-building (poems, aphorisms, and so on). The elements of fantasy exist but are very muted which was fine since it kept the focus on the people.
Next, I switched gears to the far future and picked up Central Station by Lavie Tidhar. Central Station is a space elevator set in Tel Aviv in a sort of neutral zone between Jewish and Arab sections of Israel. The book focuses on neither of those groups in exchange for following two families, the Chongs and the Joneses, whose families migrated to Central Station to help build it.
The future presented here is a sort of pre-Singularity. There are humans and others (digital consciousnesses). Most people have a built-in internet connection and there are robots and cyborgs but they're sort of an evolutionary dead end. The world-building on display is superb. The info dumps are very subtle and neatly woven into the stories, but the world of Central Station has a real feel, a real texture and it makes for some wonderful reading.
Like I say, the book is really more of a family drama about the Chongs and the Joneses and less about world-shaking events they participate in. I keep wanting to say it's a bit like Chekov -- a smaller, more human scale slice of life in the future. Miriam Jones is protecting Kranki, a boy joined closely to the other. Her ex-boyfriend Boris is back on Earth because his father is drowning in memories. There's forbidden love between a woman and a long-discarded cyborg soldier. A robot priest performs a bris. It's a great example of science fiction not being about the typical science fiction things. Well worth looking into.
later
Tom
