Another slew of book reviews
Sep. 21st, 2016 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
Again, I've been a bit remiss in keeping up on my book reports. But here's what I've been reading:
First up, Behind the Throne by K. B. Wagers. Hail Bristol was third in line to the throne of the Indranan Empire, but she left it behind to track down her father's killer and in the process sort of became a smuggler, criminal and arms merchant. But you can't hide from one of the larger empires in the galaxy and when all other potential heirs to the throne wind up dead in a few weeks, Hail gets dragged kicking and screaming back home where she has to deal with her mother the queen and the mysterious assailants who took out most of the royal family.
It was a fun read although I'm again struck by how much sci-fi leans on archaic political systems for their star-spanning political entities. Also, Hail slips pretty easily back into court protocol even as her street smarts allow her to wrong-foot her opponents. It's not clear that a rebellious royal is going to make a good smuggler, but it certainly makes for a more gripping story.
So not a deep read, but a fun one.
Next, the much anticipated new installment of the Craft Sequence Series, Four Roads Cross by Max Gladstone. This is the fifth book in the series and the first that's a direct sequel a previous book. In this case, it's the follow-on novel to the first book in the series Three Parts Dead.
The series has a modern-day world that runs on magic and magic is basically an analogue for modern day finance and globalized money systems. People pay bits of "souls stuff" in return for goods and services. In the past, gods formed the engine of this economy but they were overthrown by powerful wizards who now serve as the head of magical multi-national corporations. It's all woven together in a very slick way. I like to think of these books as a fantasy version of John Grisham novels.
Anyway, in this book we return to Alt Coulumb, one of the few places where a god Kos Everburning is still in charge (because he stayed out of the God Wars). His former consort, the moon goddess Seril, has come back from the dead (as seen in Three Parts Dead) and now there are plans afoot by various corporate entities to either break her or take advantage of Kos's love for her to get at him as well. Tara Abernathy is the goddess's legal counsel and she's got a lot of work to do if she wants to save her client. Various other characters from the previous book reappear including Tech-Priest Abelard and Police Inspector Cat and Raz her vampire-pirate friend.
This book is fantastic. The writing is ridiculously good. I was reading passages from it ever few pages to everyone around me. The world-building remains superb with lots of wonderful details and nothing that makes you go "wait a second...". This is easily the best of a series that has been firing on all cylinders from book one. It has plenty of different viewpoint characters and a wide range of genders/races/species. Although it runs off a magical version of modern finance, the books peer into both the good and bad aspects of that and, in the end, deal more with intangible human interaction.
I can't recommend this book/series highly enough and if you're looking for something to read do yourself a favor and pick it up.
Since I was vacationing in the Pacific Northwest earlier this month, I decided to read something relevant and picked up Smokejumper by Jason A. Ramos. Smokejumpers are firefighters who parachute into wilderness areas to stop small wildfires from becoming big ones. Ramos discusses his career as a smokejumper and intercuts it with an overall history of the smokejumper program in the US since its inception in the 1930's. I found the book to be pretty informative, although I sort of wish there had been a bit more technical explanation of how they fight a fire along with some diagrams or illustrations of the process. It's a bit hazy in my mind.
Anyway, as you might expect, smokejumpers are pretty gung-ho people. They jump into a fire zone, collect boxes of dropped gear and then work like beavers to set up a fire break to contain a fire and then they have to pack all of it out again. It's a fascinating story. Also, it's not a terribly lucrative one. Smokejumpers are government employees and the government only covers the basic equipment. A lot of useful gear has to be purchased by the smokejumpers themselves. Ramos himself has gone into business creating gear for smokejumper/firefighters and sometimes it feels a bit like an ad for his company but for the most part the book is pretty informative about a job I didn't know much about.
Finally, I picked up another audiobook in the Amazons and Swallows series. This time it's Secret Water by Arthur Ransome. This time, the Walker children are about to go on an exploration to Hamford Water with their folks when their parents are called away to London. But since this is an Arthur Ransome book, the parents just drop their kids off on an island with a vague map of the area telling them to fill it in themselves and be ready for pick-up in a week.
So Hamford Water is a major tidal flat where roads are exposed during low tide and a solid piece of mainland turns into a chain of islands at high tide. The kids set out to explore the area and are soon joined by thier old friends, the Blackett sisters (the Amazon Pirates). Then, they kids meet up with another group of children -- the Eel tribe.
And here we come to the problematic part of the story. The Walkers (and the Blacketts after some prodding) are playing at being explorers and mapping this area they've been dropped off at. The Eels are playing "native" and...it's not a malicious imitation of native peoples, but it's not great either. It's a bit like how in summer camps of the past, you'd be part of a "tribe". Very...appropriate-y.
The thing is, the kids are so earnest and decent and if anyone actually sat down and talked with them about it, they'd probably be awfully sorry and do something else so I tend to acknowledge the issue and move on with the story. And this book, like most of the series, deals with a lot of issues and conflicts that kids have. In one example, Nancy Blackett shows up all ready to be pirates and run around having adventures but John Walker is really keen to play explorer and map out the area. There's a bit of tension over "what game are we going to play" and Nancy (who usually gets her way in these things) realizes that John's really invested in this idea and graciously withdraws her suggestion (although when the Eel "savages" show up, she sees a chance to get rambunctious again). If Ransome suffers from English Empire Racism, he has a keen eye for how children get on and the books offer some useful lessons in that regard.
Problematic issues aside, I thought this was better than the previous two books I read simply because the children are actively choosing what sorts of adventure to have rather than having it thrust on them as in We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea and Big Six. I'm pretty much in the tank for this series but I do think (despite some problematic bits) that it's great reading.
later
Tom
Again, I've been a bit remiss in keeping up on my book reports. But here's what I've been reading:
First up, Behind the Throne by K. B. Wagers. Hail Bristol was third in line to the throne of the Indranan Empire, but she left it behind to track down her father's killer and in the process sort of became a smuggler, criminal and arms merchant. But you can't hide from one of the larger empires in the galaxy and when all other potential heirs to the throne wind up dead in a few weeks, Hail gets dragged kicking and screaming back home where she has to deal with her mother the queen and the mysterious assailants who took out most of the royal family.
It was a fun read although I'm again struck by how much sci-fi leans on archaic political systems for their star-spanning political entities. Also, Hail slips pretty easily back into court protocol even as her street smarts allow her to wrong-foot her opponents. It's not clear that a rebellious royal is going to make a good smuggler, but it certainly makes for a more gripping story.
So not a deep read, but a fun one.
Next, the much anticipated new installment of the Craft Sequence Series, Four Roads Cross by Max Gladstone. This is the fifth book in the series and the first that's a direct sequel a previous book. In this case, it's the follow-on novel to the first book in the series Three Parts Dead.
The series has a modern-day world that runs on magic and magic is basically an analogue for modern day finance and globalized money systems. People pay bits of "souls stuff" in return for goods and services. In the past, gods formed the engine of this economy but they were overthrown by powerful wizards who now serve as the head of magical multi-national corporations. It's all woven together in a very slick way. I like to think of these books as a fantasy version of John Grisham novels.
Anyway, in this book we return to Alt Coulumb, one of the few places where a god Kos Everburning is still in charge (because he stayed out of the God Wars). His former consort, the moon goddess Seril, has come back from the dead (as seen in Three Parts Dead) and now there are plans afoot by various corporate entities to either break her or take advantage of Kos's love for her to get at him as well. Tara Abernathy is the goddess's legal counsel and she's got a lot of work to do if she wants to save her client. Various other characters from the previous book reappear including Tech-Priest Abelard and Police Inspector Cat and Raz her vampire-pirate friend.
This book is fantastic. The writing is ridiculously good. I was reading passages from it ever few pages to everyone around me. The world-building remains superb with lots of wonderful details and nothing that makes you go "wait a second...". This is easily the best of a series that has been firing on all cylinders from book one. It has plenty of different viewpoint characters and a wide range of genders/races/species. Although it runs off a magical version of modern finance, the books peer into both the good and bad aspects of that and, in the end, deal more with intangible human interaction.
I can't recommend this book/series highly enough and if you're looking for something to read do yourself a favor and pick it up.
Since I was vacationing in the Pacific Northwest earlier this month, I decided to read something relevant and picked up Smokejumper by Jason A. Ramos. Smokejumpers are firefighters who parachute into wilderness areas to stop small wildfires from becoming big ones. Ramos discusses his career as a smokejumper and intercuts it with an overall history of the smokejumper program in the US since its inception in the 1930's. I found the book to be pretty informative, although I sort of wish there had been a bit more technical explanation of how they fight a fire along with some diagrams or illustrations of the process. It's a bit hazy in my mind.
Anyway, as you might expect, smokejumpers are pretty gung-ho people. They jump into a fire zone, collect boxes of dropped gear and then work like beavers to set up a fire break to contain a fire and then they have to pack all of it out again. It's a fascinating story. Also, it's not a terribly lucrative one. Smokejumpers are government employees and the government only covers the basic equipment. A lot of useful gear has to be purchased by the smokejumpers themselves. Ramos himself has gone into business creating gear for smokejumper/firefighters and sometimes it feels a bit like an ad for his company but for the most part the book is pretty informative about a job I didn't know much about.
Finally, I picked up another audiobook in the Amazons and Swallows series. This time it's Secret Water by Arthur Ransome. This time, the Walker children are about to go on an exploration to Hamford Water with their folks when their parents are called away to London. But since this is an Arthur Ransome book, the parents just drop their kids off on an island with a vague map of the area telling them to fill it in themselves and be ready for pick-up in a week.
So Hamford Water is a major tidal flat where roads are exposed during low tide and a solid piece of mainland turns into a chain of islands at high tide. The kids set out to explore the area and are soon joined by thier old friends, the Blackett sisters (the Amazon Pirates). Then, they kids meet up with another group of children -- the Eel tribe.
And here we come to the problematic part of the story. The Walkers (and the Blacketts after some prodding) are playing at being explorers and mapping this area they've been dropped off at. The Eels are playing "native" and...it's not a malicious imitation of native peoples, but it's not great either. It's a bit like how in summer camps of the past, you'd be part of a "tribe". Very...appropriate-y.
The thing is, the kids are so earnest and decent and if anyone actually sat down and talked with them about it, they'd probably be awfully sorry and do something else so I tend to acknowledge the issue and move on with the story. And this book, like most of the series, deals with a lot of issues and conflicts that kids have. In one example, Nancy Blackett shows up all ready to be pirates and run around having adventures but John Walker is really keen to play explorer and map out the area. There's a bit of tension over "what game are we going to play" and Nancy (who usually gets her way in these things) realizes that John's really invested in this idea and graciously withdraws her suggestion (although when the Eel "savages" show up, she sees a chance to get rambunctious again). If Ransome suffers from English Empire Racism, he has a keen eye for how children get on and the books offer some useful lessons in that regard.
Problematic issues aside, I thought this was better than the previous two books I read simply because the children are actively choosing what sorts of adventure to have rather than having it thrust on them as in We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea and Big Six. I'm pretty much in the tank for this series but I do think (despite some problematic bits) that it's great reading.
later
Tom
