Dust Cover Dust-Up: Round Two, Part Six

The Uncertain Places by Lisa Goldstein vs. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

So, two fairy tale books come head to head, and everyone knows how much I love a good fairy tale. Luckily for me, this isn't a heartwrenching choice - I liked Ella Enchanted well enough, but I certainly didn't love it. Lisa Goldstein's book, on the other hand, gives us a dangerous fae who have been learning from their mistakes for millennia and aren't about to help us poor mortals beat them. It's a fantastic melding of the fairy tale world into the real.

Winner: The Uncertain Places

River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay vs. 

A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear

This battle, on the other hand, is a little bit harder. I quite enjoyed both these books, particularly how complex and nuanced they both were. It's a hard choice, given that these are authors I follow. I think, though, that Kay's second venture into a declining fictional Chinese empire, with all the elegiac sadness, is going to win out over a delightfully complex look at bonding with wolves, and where that might conflict with human patterns.They're both good, but River of Stars is a tiny bit better.

Winner: River of Stars

The Known World by Edward P. Jones vs. The Trouble With Poetry by Billy Collins

Interesting choice. Very strong fiction about the brutal and subtle violences of slavery vs. a book by a poet I really love. They're both excellent. I think, though, that The Known World has stuck with me in a way that this slim volume of poetry hasn't quite. It was a difficult read, but a powerful one. 

Winner: The Known World

The Scar by China Mieville vs. The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott

We're back in another mainstream fiction vs. genre fiction battle, and I think my well-documented predilections should make the outcome obvious. I liked The Jewel in the Crown, with its twisty story around the decline of the English in India, but it's so hard to top China Mieville. The Scar was enjoyable to read, and continues to grow on me. Like a fungus? Time will tell. But I keep coming back to my memories of reading this book, and it wants to be read again.

Winner: The Scar

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm vs. Fortune's Pawn by Rachel Bach

Two science fiction books written by women, but unfortunately, neither was among the science fiction that knocked my socks off this year. So do I go with the Hugo-winning look at cloning, or the adventure/romance in space with fearsome beasts and battlesuits?  Certainly Fortune's Pawn is geared to be more pure fun. However, although Wilhelm's book isn't breathtaking, her ideas about human nature and what can be lost in a crumbling world, they're more vivid in my mind. 

Winner: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

And thus we end Round Two. One to Round Three!

Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed

I have tried to start this review three or four times now, and I'm having trouble getting going. I think I may have finally put my finger on what was holding me back. It's that this book is really good, and yet it wasn't quite as breathtaking as I wanted it to be. Which, don't get me wrong, is not a bad review. When I say it's really good, it's really good. I think that in my head, though, I was expecting it to be a masterpiece, and it's not quite that.

So why did I have that expectation? I suppose it's because I follow Saladin Ahmed on Twitter, and really enjoy reading what he has to say there. And because the one short story of his that I've read (and reviewed) was amazingly good. I suppose I knew that this had made a big splash when it came out, was nominated for a ton of awards. I think it was deservedly nominated for those awards.

It's just, unfortunately, how I built it up in my brain. Prolonged expectations are often not your friend, as it creates a mindspace that very damned little could have lived up to. 

So let's try to put that weird expectation aside and look at what this book is - very good fantasy, in a Middle Eastern setting, in as far as that's a good term for a fictional world, which it kind of isn't. But this isn't Nordic questing for a ring or a cup or some other damned thing, and I'm grateful for it.

Instead, we start with an elderly ghul hunter, Adoulla, who is proudly a city dweller, and has protected his home from ghuls for most of his life. He's practically the last of his kind - his best friends in the trade, a married couple, having retired. He is helped in his duties by Raseed, a dervish warrior who is trying to be far more pure than Adoulla would really like. While out in the desert tracking down some particularly nasty ghuls, they run into the last survivor of a nomadic band, a girl who can take lionshape in battle.

Going back to the city, they are attacked by even more deadly creatures, of a kind Adoulla has never seen. Strong necromantic powers are on the move - and internal politics are scarcely less dangerous. The new khalif is really a terrible ruler, and a popular leader and thief who calls himself the Falcon Prince is inciting a rebellion.

The core of this book, and something I really enjoyed, is people trying to figure out what a good life looks like, with varying amounts of strictness, and then trying to reconcile that with the world as it is. Tie into this a more dire threat than has arisen before, more than three experienced ghul hunters and two inexperienced but talented young people, and the question of how a city should be rules - there's lots here, and it's all exactly up my alley.

So I need to let go of whatever book I had floating around in my head, and appreciate this book for what it is - damned good fantasy, with provocative ideas and characters who are trying to be true to themselves in the midst of chaos. I appreciate that it's urban, too - it's enjoyable to see a different kind of city from the modern metropolis or steampunk London, with a main character who is a city dweller and loves it. We have so much pastoral fantasy that I enjoy the shift in emphasis.

Seriously, this book deserves the recognition it got. I'm not convinced it's a masterpiece, but it's really good fantasy, and I look forward to more.

Booklinks:

I read this book as part of an attempt to read all the Hugo Nominees

Dust Cover Dust-Up: Round Two, Part Five

Rule 34 by Charles Stross vs. Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi

These are both authors I like, and books that I really quite enjoyed. It's a toss-up - they're both excellent science fiction. However, there's a little more meat to Rule 34 than there is to Agent to the Stars. The Scalzi is so much fun, and entertaining to read, but Rule 34 was truly unsettling at times, and when you can make me think while entertaining me, that's all to the good.

Winner: Rule 34

Baby of the Family by Tina McElroy Ansa vs. Goliath by Scott Westerfeld

I really did like Baby of the Family, but that's not why it's winning this round. It's because I wasn't that fond of Goliath. This Scott Westerfeld series never really grabbed me, so I have no problem knocking it out of the competition. Besides, Baby of the Family was a very enjoyable read.

Winner: Baby of the Family

Saga Vol. 4 by Brian K. Vaughn vs. The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

I'm really not sure how to pick in this particular case. While I have loved Saga as a whole, this one felt too stretched out, a bit padded with false drama. I'm still looking forward to the next, but it wasn't my favourite. In the other corner we have a children's classic, which I quite enjoyed. I think this round actually goes to the brightly coloured children's book, rather than the brightly coloured book that's definitely for adults.

Winner: The Lorax

S.E.C.R.E.T. by L. Marie Adeline vs. The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

Finally, I get to kick not that sexy erotica off the list. It's not terrible, it just didn't do it for me. In the other corner, we have a really excellent work of popular history, with a strong sense of nuance, and an author that avoids the pitfalls of seeing people in the past as obtuse.

Winner: The Ghost Map

Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson vs. The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein

While I didn't love The Puppet Masters, it had at least one good idea that I wished it had made more of. That, however, can't hold a candle to the fervent passion that Written in the Body still kindles in me months and months later. (We're reading it for my book club in March, and I can't wait.) There is no question that this is some of the most amazing prose I've read all year.

Winner: Written on the Body

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch

I go back, very happily, to the world of Peter Grant. Except that it's the world outside of London this time, as Peter ventures into the countryside. Two girls have disappeared in a small town, and Peter heads out that way to cross an old magic practitioner off the list. When that doesn't appear to yield any fruit, Peter sticks around to help the police, who are surprisingly willing to ask him to consider stranger causes, because they aren't getting anywhere.

What initially appears to be utterly mundane begins to slowly unfold into something that is much more up Peter's alley. Of course, it couldn't possibly be aliens, could it? Or a unicorn? How ludicrous.

We're back into the British police procedural/urban fantasy, except that it's noticeably more rural. Nightingale is barely in the book, as Peter spreads his wings, but we do get a cameo from Dr. Walid, His parents are absent, but that may be because they never leave London. Beverly Brook shows up for quite a lot of the book, which makes me happy. The nature of her relationship with Peter begins to shift, and I'm interested to see where it goes.

On the new side, we have a charming gay rural police officer, Dominic, and his sheep-farming boyfriend, Martin. And his drugged out friend-from-high-school, a girl named Stan. There's a large UFO spotting community in the area, and they have their own theories. Oh, and there's a woman who may be more like the bees she tends than is obvious on first inspection. 

For the first half of the book, we get the frustration of a case that appears to have stalled. It's worse when it involves children, and the police know that the longer it goes, the worse the odds get. 

As an entry into this series, I enjoyed it quite a lot, although there was one point where I wanted to shake Peter because I spotted a clue before he did. By book 5, young man, any time there's a reference to a phone not working...don't you think that should be first on your action list?

More than that I don't want to say, but I quite enjoyed the variety of magical creature that appears in this book, and the particular spin Aaronovitch puts on them. I also liked the answer to what had happened to the girls, and the theory that it's not how you're born that matters, it's how you're brought up. 

I was hoping for more of Lesley, because of course that is the big burning question after the last book. (I am being purposefully vague here.) We do get a couple of interactions, but it's more to reassure us that that storyline is out there slowly building, and this time we get a timeline. Hard to know how that translates in terms of books.

As always, Peter is a charming companion, and when the chips are down, willing to sacrifice himself in order for others, even when that seems like it might be A Very Bad Idea Indeed. I'm interested to know quite what the ending means, though, as there is something odd that Peter wants to ask about as well, but doesn't. That had better be explained in a later volume. 

At any rate, five books in, and I'm still into it. I'm not bored, or lagging, or feeling like the stories are repeating. I fell in love with Midnight Riot, and at Foxglove Summer, the glamour  hasn't worn off yet.

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

This was a really fun book to read that I enjoyed all the way through. Unfortunately, the end did not live up the rest, leaving me sitting there wondering just a little bit what the point had been. It wasn't bad enough to spoil the enjoyment I got out of reading this book, but it was certainly a little jarring.

On the other hand, I didn't feel distant from Gibson's prose, which is a problem I had in particular with Neuromancer. It wasn't unreadable, it just felt like it kept the reader at a deliberate arm's-length. There are no such problems here - it's accessible, it's breezy, it's fairly light.

Cayce (pronounced, in this case, "Case") is a trademark guru. That is to say, she's physically allergic to trademarks that permeate the landscape, but she can use the side effects from that to tell whether or not designs for new logos are going to to work on a mass scale. So she freelances for firms around the world, coming in just to tell them yes or no when she's shown the work of a graphic design firm.

However, she's also an aficionado of these strange little bits of film that have been popping up on the internet at intervals, fascinating a small segment of the population. They're obviously masterfully done, but no one knows really how they connect, or even whether they're part of a completed work being distributed out of order, or if they're being put out as they're finished. There's a community that has formed around theorizing about them.

She gets hired by a Steve Jobs-like figure to find out where the bits of film are coming from, and almost immediately discovers that the apartment where she's been staying has been broken in to. And that her phone might be tapped. She starts on an series of trips around the world to try to uncover what's going on with the bits of film.

This is all a great deal of fun, and her search has resonance with the backstory that her father disappeared in New York on 9/11, presumed dead. The character is engaging, and her descent into justified paranoia interesting. However, there's a however. At the end she finds out who has been making these bits of video, and that answer isn't unsatisfying, what's unsatisfying is that that's then the end. 

There's absolutely no "this is where the films are coming from, and therefore...." There's no third act. It just doesn't amount to much - she discovers the truth and it feels curiously weightless. But more than that, it feels like that discovery should mean something, and it just...doesn't. 

If this is the start of a trilogy, that's vaguely excusable, although there should seriously still be some kind of hint in this book of where it's going to go and what it's going to mean. I don't need it all laid out. I just need it not to suddenly stop, wash its hands, and say "well, that's done!"

The process of reading this book was very enjoyable. The denouement frustrating. How do you rate a book that does that to you? Do I put more emphasis on the process or the outcome? A great book would give you both. This is merely a good book, but it is frustrating that it isn't just that one step better, that Gibson didn't look at that answer and then write what that means or why it matters. Perhaps he does in later books. That doesn't make this one satisfying. 

But it was fun to read. 

Dust Cover Dust-Up: Round Two, Part Four

A Fire in the Sun by George Effinger vs. Hammered by Kevin Hearne

Here we have one book about body and mind modification in a vaguely Middle Eastern city, versus a two-thousand-year-old druid in Arizona. Well, in this book, Atticus the Druid is also in Asgard, trying to kill Thor. Who deserves it. However, George Effinger's book has more depth, about how one might slowly compromise oneself in a world rife with corruption, and I enjoyed it a hell of a lot. 

Winner: A Fire in the Sun

Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway vs. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon

Not a hard choice, and no offense to the hardcore Pynchon fans. This was my first venture into his oeuvre, and I'll definitely be going back for more. However, Mason & Dixon, while amazingly original, was also frustratingly difficult at times, and so in this battle, it falls to Tomson Highway's amazing rhythmic prose on subjects difficult to traverse. It's beautiful and painful and a work of art.

Winner: Kiss of the Fur Queen

Unpossible by Daryl Gregory vs. Black Powder War by Naomi Novik

I wasn't a huge fan of this particular entry into the Temeraire series. It got though to this round because it was up against a book I liked even less. Also, I really love Daryl Gregory's writing, although I think his particular knack is better suited to novel-length endeavours. Still, ti's not a hard choice. Unpossible all the way.

Winner: Unpossible







The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton vs. That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

This is a match-up I was secretly hoping for. Two giants of Christian literature, two very different books. Do I go with the science fiction, or the absurd. I think I'll pick the absurd - That Hideous Strength was enjoyable, but lacked the sheer "what the fuck am I reading?" that permeated my journey through The Man Who Was Thursday. I may not have understood what was going on, but I enjoyed it.

Winner: The Man Who Was Thursday

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny vs. Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear

Weird. This'll be the first year since I started doing the Dust Cover Dust-Up where there wasn't a Louise Penny in the top ten at the end. I did like The Long Way Home. It's just that coming up against Elizabeth Bear's amazingly good collection of short stories, I going a different way this year. If you like Elizabeth Bear, you'll love these stories, which often expand on her previously existing fictional universes.

Winner: Shoggoths in Bloom

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen is really good at creating vivid characters and letting you inside their minds for a while. They're not always pleasant characters, mind  you. But they are vivid. There's a little something in the characterization that reminds me of the secondary characters in Dickens - that slightly larger than life aspect that makes them indelible. 

On the other hand, there's a bit of a bleakness to Franzen's writing that means that while I enjoyed this book, it's hard to say that I loved it, exactly. There was never a moment when I was hesitant to pick it up, bu once I was done, I felt slightly dissatisfied. 

That might be fitting, because this is a story of people who are fundamentally dissatisfied and don't know why. They've done everything right, they think. Or even if they've done things wrong, they've done them the correct, counter-cultural way that shows how little bourgeois morality means. Although, even as I say that, I'm not sure that's applicable to this whole family, and maybe that's a strength of the book, that people's motivations aren't so easily made into a binary. 

Alfred and Enid are the parents in this scenario. They live in the Midwest. Alfred was a railroad engineer who left his job when two companies were merging. He could have held on a little longer and benefited, but did not. His wife has never forgiven him. We are told that he was an angry, loud husband and father, but in the book as we know him, for the most part, he is withdrawn, suffering from Parkinson's and dementia. It isn't so much that he's in denial as that he lacks the ability to express himself to others. 

Enid has tried to do everything right in her life, and measures her own life by the physical surroundings of others. It means that she disapproves of her daughter who is divorced, and a successful chef, for neither giving her the grandchildren nor the stable copy of herself she wanted. She loves but deliberately misunderstands the life of her son Chip, believing he left his professorship voluntarily to work for the Wall Street Journal. (He was fired for sleeping with a student - well, writing a paper for her, but doing so in the course of a weekend of sex - and works for a small independent, probably non-paying, indie paper, while writing a diatribe of a screenplay about the evil manipulating student and his ex-wife. 

The one child who shares Enid's values, Gary, lives in an angry detente with his wife, with their children as pawns in the middle, while he struggles with depression and a looming sense that he should be getting more reward for his choices, and a general sense of anger at the world for not being what he thought it would be. He thinks his parents belong in a nursing home - partly because they are having difficulty, but more because that means, he thinks, that they'll be less of an inconvenience to him.

Everyone's a bit of an asshole in this book. No one has the moral high ground. However, a couple of characters at least find equilibrium, and one is able to see his past as a comedy rather than a tragedy aimed at his own head, which seems a little like growing the fuck up?

This is not a plot heavy book. It's definitely one you read for the characters. And if I found it a little too hopeless to make me love it, it came about as close as you can without some leavening.