Category Archives: Books

Life is Too Grim Already — a group “working for a brighter genre” — now has a website. Currently it lists one book.

Cast in Courtlight was *really good*.

I missed a lot, I know, because I have not read the previous book, Cast in Shadow. I bought Courtlight without realizing it was the second in the series, and it took me a while to pick it up because of that, but it wasn't a problem. I had no idea what was going on with either Lord Nightshade or Severn, but that just added to the fun. (Though I'll probably reread it after I read the first one. Reading the summary of the first on Amazon just now already cleared up a few things.)

Sagara did a wonderful job with the setting and world in this book. Every few pages, I'd stop to mutter, “That's so cool!” There's a very realistic sense of history, and the descriptions are clear without bogging down. I wish I had more of an idea of the size of the fiefs compared to the size of the city; maybe the first book will help. The Barrani are a very strange, alien but understandable, species.

The only thing that bugged me in the book was Kaylin, the main character. I liked her, but she's one of those characters whom all the other characters love. She's always late, she's rude, she's willfully ignorant of anything that doesn't suit her interests — which seems like a poor survival skill — and yet everyone loves her.

The secondary characters are great, however, and the plot was adequately twisty, and there's a lot of humor — nice sarcastic humor — and did I mention all the random cool bits?

And lucky me, when I went to the bookstore to order Cast in Shadow yesterday, it was sitting on the shelf. After I get a bit farther in I'll post something about my personal taste in beginnings of novels.

I don't know how I managed to miss Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen when I was a kid, because I would have loved it then even more than I did yesterday, which was a lot: gripping plot, and the girl character isn't a whiny wimp.

She was certainly a lot braver than I'd have been in those sixty pages of mines and tunnels; they'd have had to cut my throat and leave me there because I'd have refused to squeeze through that final section, assuming I'd made it that far. That part of the book might have been more frightening than the fighting at the end.

The one problem I had was that I kept distracting myself by drawing parallels to The Fellowship of the Ring (the Mines of Moria and Lothlorien, in particular), but that wasn't a huge issue.

I bought my copy in Boston, along with a bunch of other used books that have been living in boxes for years, unread. I always wondered why it has Darth Vader on the cover. (My version is shown in the bottom row on this page.) Reading the book only partially helped explain that (that's not how I pictured the character at all); I wonder if the edition's being printed in 1978 might be part of the answer.

SF unless otherwise noted:

13: Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees
12: His Excellency, Joseph J. Ellis [history]
11: Devlin's Luck, Patricia Bray
10: Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn
9: Vellum, Hal Duncan
8: Tall, Dark, & Dead by Tate Hallaway
7: The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
6: Tim Pratt's The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl
5: American Gods, Neil Gaiman
4: Threads of Malice, Tamara Siler Jones
3: Crystal Rain, Tobias Buckell
2: Make Lemonade, Virginia Euwer Wolff [mainstream YA]
1: A Feast for Crows, George R.R. Martin

And various other books that I didn't finish for one reason or another (mostly because I didn't like them) and many (but not the whole year's worth) issues of F&SF.

I need more variety in my genres. 2007 will definitely see more history, beginning with Ellis' Founding Brothers, and it'd be nice to throw in some other non-fiction, but *peeks at to-read shelf* I'm unlikely to read any more science fiction. With luck I'll have less urban fantasy.

While I was home last week, I sorted through the books in my closet at my parents' house, and brought back my entire set of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I haven't reread those in years.

Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist, published in 1926, was well worth reading: unusual, thought-provoking, and beautifully written, including a wonderful literal description of a sunrise (at the end of chapter 20).

The book concerns the people of Dorimare (the title is the capital city) and their struggle with the effects of fruit smuggled from Fairyland, just to the west of Dorimare, which banned everything to do with Fairy centuries before. In particular, Nathaniel Chanticleer struggles to help his son, who has eaten Fairy Fruit, and to solve a very cold murder case.

I had a few problems with the book (including a major complaint towards the end) but on the whole it was delightful.

David Louis Edelman surveyed people about why they bought the books they bought.

Top three reasons: They read other books by the author, a friend recommended it, and they judged the book by its cover. Those are generally my reasons as well, and the reasons I try to write up posts on books that I like.

Biography of George Washington. Part of my plan to learn American History and steal it for fiction.

This was a very enjoyable book. Washington comes across as an ambitious, but not self-serving, man. Not a particularly good general, and sometimes too slow to realize he could no longer trust former friends.

I know very little American history, having forgotten most of what I was supposed to learn in my weird intro course in college and my really bad AP course in high school. So I’m slowly reading books. A while back I listened to a tape of Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin, which made me want to read a biography of John Adams (in particular, the McCullough one). Next up, however, is Ellis’s Founding Brothers, which I listened to the beginning of in June, and bought (in paper form) a few weeks ago. Also on the list is Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton. From what I’ve read so far, Hamilton makes a great villain.