The Summer Knight's Notebook Review
Oct. 13th, 2010 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
Polished off a couple more books in quick succession the past coupe of days.
First up is Summer Knight by Jim Butcher. This is the fourth book in the Dresden Files series of books. Harry Dresden, Chicago's only Private Wizard-for-Hire is dealing with the fall-out from his previous adventure. The love of his life has been partially turned into a Vampire and he's spending all of his time searching for a cure -- except that the Red Court of Vampires has declared a war on wizards in general and him in particular so there's the odd assassination attempt he has to deal with now and then. To top it off, his magical debt to his faerie godmother has been sold on to the Mab, queen of the Winter Court and she's hoping he'll help him sort out some mess for her. Seems that a Knight of the Summer Court has turned up very dead and there's going to be a magical rumble in fairyland.
The book is pretty good. It's very clearly sliding into "we're a series of books so stuff happens and you kinda need to know about it" with references to the previous cases. There's also a whiff of "I get to make the rules of magic so my solution to the mystery has to work because I say it does" and just a hint of padding near the end where the solution gets explained in detail twice. Still, it just wants to be an occult mystery novel and that's exactly what it gets to be. The dialog and pacing are brisk and snappy and there's action galore.
It's probably the end of the Dresden books for a bit. I've got some import SF, some incoming library loans, the end of October has some more great Sci-Fi coming up, and in November we get Volume 1 of Twain's autobiography so the to-read stack is getting larger. Plus, I don't have the fifth book to hand so I can't just pick it up and go like I have with the others.
Speaking of library loan, I saw an interesting blurb and used the power of the minuteman library system to pull in a copy of The Notebook by Agosta Kristof (translated by Alan Sheridan). It's...interesting.
There's a war on and Big Town is constantly being bombed. So the Mother takes her twin boys to Little Town to live with their Grandmother (locally derided as a witch). The twins themselves have that "creepy twin" vibe. They're together constantly and seem to share a highly intelligent (and creepy) personality. The book is comprised of very short (2-3 page) "chapters", but really each chapter is a composition written by one of the twins as part of their attempts to improve themselves.
The compositions themselves have rules. You can only write in true, factual statements. You can describe someone's acts of kindness, but you can't say someone is nice, because you don't know if they're nice all the time or if your standard of "nice" isn't nice enough for most people. It's in these short, "true" chapters that the story of the twins and the people around them unfold.
Unfold? Perhaps it might be better to say that they relentlessly pound away. In response to the menace of war surrounding them, the twins strive to better themselves through exercises like the compositions. Like the compositions, these exercises have the effect of stripping away the subjective, of scouring away emotion and complex things to leave only a stark, hard, "true" core. The process is unforgiving but in tune with the horrors of war that they can slowly see creeping in on them. At the same time, their training does leave them with a certain sense of honor and justice. The twins are fairly amoral, but they keep their word and often look out for those less fortunate than themselves.
It's an odd and unnerving little book. People looking for some creepy reading this October, might want to consider giving it a shot.
later
Tom
Polished off a couple more books in quick succession the past coupe of days.
First up is Summer Knight by Jim Butcher. This is the fourth book in the Dresden Files series of books. Harry Dresden, Chicago's only Private Wizard-for-Hire is dealing with the fall-out from his previous adventure. The love of his life has been partially turned into a Vampire and he's spending all of his time searching for a cure -- except that the Red Court of Vampires has declared a war on wizards in general and him in particular so there's the odd assassination attempt he has to deal with now and then. To top it off, his magical debt to his faerie godmother has been sold on to the Mab, queen of the Winter Court and she's hoping he'll help him sort out some mess for her. Seems that a Knight of the Summer Court has turned up very dead and there's going to be a magical rumble in fairyland.
The book is pretty good. It's very clearly sliding into "we're a series of books so stuff happens and you kinda need to know about it" with references to the previous cases. There's also a whiff of "I get to make the rules of magic so my solution to the mystery has to work because I say it does" and just a hint of padding near the end where the solution gets explained in detail twice. Still, it just wants to be an occult mystery novel and that's exactly what it gets to be. The dialog and pacing are brisk and snappy and there's action galore.
It's probably the end of the Dresden books for a bit. I've got some import SF, some incoming library loans, the end of October has some more great Sci-Fi coming up, and in November we get Volume 1 of Twain's autobiography so the to-read stack is getting larger. Plus, I don't have the fifth book to hand so I can't just pick it up and go like I have with the others.
Speaking of library loan, I saw an interesting blurb and used the power of the minuteman library system to pull in a copy of The Notebook by Agosta Kristof (translated by Alan Sheridan). It's...interesting.
There's a war on and Big Town is constantly being bombed. So the Mother takes her twin boys to Little Town to live with their Grandmother (locally derided as a witch). The twins themselves have that "creepy twin" vibe. They're together constantly and seem to share a highly intelligent (and creepy) personality. The book is comprised of very short (2-3 page) "chapters", but really each chapter is a composition written by one of the twins as part of their attempts to improve themselves.
The compositions themselves have rules. You can only write in true, factual statements. You can describe someone's acts of kindness, but you can't say someone is nice, because you don't know if they're nice all the time or if your standard of "nice" isn't nice enough for most people. It's in these short, "true" chapters that the story of the twins and the people around them unfold.
Unfold? Perhaps it might be better to say that they relentlessly pound away. In response to the menace of war surrounding them, the twins strive to better themselves through exercises like the compositions. Like the compositions, these exercises have the effect of stripping away the subjective, of scouring away emotion and complex things to leave only a stark, hard, "true" core. The process is unforgiving but in tune with the horrors of war that they can slowly see creeping in on them. At the same time, their training does leave them with a certain sense of honor and justice. The twins are fairly amoral, but they keep their word and often look out for those less fortunate than themselves.
It's an odd and unnerving little book. People looking for some creepy reading this October, might want to consider giving it a shot.
later
Tom
