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Book reviews
Sep. 21st, 2016 08:47 pmI've very much fallen behind this year. I suspect I'm not making it to 100.
#58 Deadline by Mira Grant. 4. When it became clear at the end of the first novel of this trilogy that the second book was going to be in the voice of a different character, I wasn't really sure I wanted to continue. I liked Georgia; I was not a huge fan of Shaun. Fortunately, the inside of Shaun's head turned out to be much more interesting than anticipated. Meanwhile, zombies continue to run amuck, but the real danger is from the people who are supposed to protect us. -1 for villain monologuing, which is supposed to be overblown but still didn't quite make sense to me in context.
#59 Blackout by Mira Grant. 4. Very nice conclusion to the series. A couple seeds sown earlier on are taken to their full logical fruit, in a very satisfying way. Also, a lot of people get eaten by zombies.
#60 Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay. 4. Kay's usual well-researched alternate world lushness, applied to the Byzantine Empire. Kay does a marvelous job of immersing us in a fabulous world, and hinting that equally fabulous people and places lurk just off the map. The repetition of the book's title gets old, though. And while I enjoy how he sometimes leaves things for the reader to figure out, I wasn't sure which woman comes in at the very end, which I think he intended and I found frustrating. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the politicking.
#61 Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay. 3.5. Overall, very satisfying conclusion to many of the plot arcs begun in Sailing to Sarantium. Lots of intrigue and skullduggery, and a welcome new point of view from the a doctor from a rival empire. However. This book repeatedly points out how important women are to this particular Empire. Their schemes to some extent drive this entire book. But the fact that we have almost nothing from any of their points of view is...disappointing. Worse, the ending basically implies that two of them are interchangeable. (A character thinks he's ending up with a woman he actually has had a long standing friendship with and instead gets one who, while being very cool, he doesn't actually know as a person at all. And he has no problem with this. Also, I'm kind of horrified that the first one may come along one day and find out that he totally just accepted this other lady and didn't even tell her.) What.
#62 Across the Wall by Garth Nix. 3. Short story collection wrapping up what happened to Nicolas after the Abhorsen trilogy, plus several other stories. Enjoyable, but already fading.
#63 The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jeminson. 5. Not quite as dazzling and heartwrenching as the first book, The Fifth Season, but I'm not sure it could be. Now the pieces are on the board, and it's more about moving them around to set up the end game. But this story about a stone-kinetic bereft mother searching for her daughter at the end of the world is still fascinating and deeply moving.
#64 Evil for Evil by K.J. Parker. 4. I have such mixed feelings about this series. The utter bleakness of its philosophy is abhorrent to me--only willingness to do evil is effective, and love is the driving force of evil. Everything that someone tries to do for good reasons comes to naught. And yet, the character portraits are so deeply compassionate and the plotting so intricate that I couldn't put it down. After the death of one city for the sake of the plans of a few men, another one is the next into the meat grinder. It's not spoiling much to say that things do not go well, but do go very much according to plan.
#65 The Escapement by K.J. Parker. 3.5. Finally getting the answers is such a relief, and the answers do make sense in the end. This trilogy is a masterwork of plotting--every aspect was carefully worked to join into one smoothly operating mechanism, from Vaatzes' plan in the books to the actual structure of the trilogy itself. And damn, is the "happy ending" bleak. Gone Girl levels of pyrrhic victory. It's impressive that he could build something so awful that was still somehow satisfying. However, I have to say, the levels of misogyny are also deeply troubling. The men in this series do terrible, terrible things, but are treated with tenderness and given respect and a deep psychological richness. They do pretty much all their terrible things on behalf of basically two women. (Each of whom is apparently a siren whom multiple men are in love with.) These two are the only women who are given points of view at any point, and both only briefly. One is passive and useless. The other is a scheming, cunning but stupid, selfish bitch. Even the minor female characters are generally opaque, maddening Others who act in ways that are mostly incomprehensible to the men and are treated as horrors to be avoided. I felt for the men, even as they made terrible decisions. I felt like the author considers women to be some alien being who can be described but have little to no interior lives worth exploring. (Yes, yes, we get a little of Veatriz's point of view. She is utterly passive and regards her own emotions mostly as something alien and beyond her ken.) So yeah, mixed feelings.
#58 Deadline by Mira Grant. 4. When it became clear at the end of the first novel of this trilogy that the second book was going to be in the voice of a different character, I wasn't really sure I wanted to continue. I liked Georgia; I was not a huge fan of Shaun. Fortunately, the inside of Shaun's head turned out to be much more interesting than anticipated. Meanwhile, zombies continue to run amuck, but the real danger is from the people who are supposed to protect us. -1 for villain monologuing, which is supposed to be overblown but still didn't quite make sense to me in context.
#59 Blackout by Mira Grant. 4. Very nice conclusion to the series. A couple seeds sown earlier on are taken to their full logical fruit, in a very satisfying way. Also, a lot of people get eaten by zombies.
#60 Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay. 4. Kay's usual well-researched alternate world lushness, applied to the Byzantine Empire. Kay does a marvelous job of immersing us in a fabulous world, and hinting that equally fabulous people and places lurk just off the map. The repetition of the book's title gets old, though. And while I enjoy how he sometimes leaves things for the reader to figure out, I wasn't sure which woman comes in at the very end, which I think he intended and I found frustrating. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the politicking.
#61 Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay. 3.5. Overall, very satisfying conclusion to many of the plot arcs begun in Sailing to Sarantium. Lots of intrigue and skullduggery, and a welcome new point of view from the a doctor from a rival empire. However. This book repeatedly points out how important women are to this particular Empire. Their schemes to some extent drive this entire book. But the fact that we have almost nothing from any of their points of view is...disappointing. Worse, the ending basically implies that two of them are interchangeable. (A character thinks he's ending up with a woman he actually has had a long standing friendship with and instead gets one who, while being very cool, he doesn't actually know as a person at all. And he has no problem with this. Also, I'm kind of horrified that the first one may come along one day and find out that he totally just accepted this other lady and didn't even tell her.) What.
#62 Across the Wall by Garth Nix. 3. Short story collection wrapping up what happened to Nicolas after the Abhorsen trilogy, plus several other stories. Enjoyable, but already fading.
#63 The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jeminson. 5. Not quite as dazzling and heartwrenching as the first book, The Fifth Season, but I'm not sure it could be. Now the pieces are on the board, and it's more about moving them around to set up the end game. But this story about a stone-kinetic bereft mother searching for her daughter at the end of the world is still fascinating and deeply moving.
#64 Evil for Evil by K.J. Parker. 4. I have such mixed feelings about this series. The utter bleakness of its philosophy is abhorrent to me--only willingness to do evil is effective, and love is the driving force of evil. Everything that someone tries to do for good reasons comes to naught. And yet, the character portraits are so deeply compassionate and the plotting so intricate that I couldn't put it down. After the death of one city for the sake of the plans of a few men, another one is the next into the meat grinder. It's not spoiling much to say that things do not go well, but do go very much according to plan.
#65 The Escapement by K.J. Parker. 3.5. Finally getting the answers is such a relief, and the answers do make sense in the end. This trilogy is a masterwork of plotting--every aspect was carefully worked to join into one smoothly operating mechanism, from Vaatzes' plan in the books to the actual structure of the trilogy itself. And damn, is the "happy ending" bleak. Gone Girl levels of pyrrhic victory. It's impressive that he could build something so awful that was still somehow satisfying. However, I have to say, the levels of misogyny are also deeply troubling. The men in this series do terrible, terrible things, but are treated with tenderness and given respect and a deep psychological richness. They do pretty much all their terrible things on behalf of basically two women. (Each of whom is apparently a siren whom multiple men are in love with.) These two are the only women who are given points of view at any point, and both only briefly. One is passive and useless. The other is a scheming, cunning but stupid, selfish bitch. Even the minor female characters are generally opaque, maddening Others who act in ways that are mostly incomprehensible to the men and are treated as horrors to be avoided. I felt for the men, even as they made terrible decisions. I felt like the author considers women to be some alien being who can be described but have little to no interior lives worth exploring. (Yes, yes, we get a little of Veatriz's point of view. She is utterly passive and regards her own emotions mostly as something alien and beyond her ken.) So yeah, mixed feelings.
