Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb

The next book in the saga of Fitz, bastard son of the former heir to the throne. I don't know what I want to say about it, other than that I enjoyed it. It's hard when you hit the second book in a series, and like it, but don't find that it's substantially different from the first, or that you have new and exciting things to relate, new ideas to mull. This is very much like the first one. Since I enjoyed the first one, this was not a problem.

But it does leave me at a bit of a loss. It also points to one major point - as fun as this book is, and it is, it doesn't really advance the overall storyline that far. It does progress a bit - the kingdom is still under threat from the raiders, the king grows increasingly frail, and a group sets out on a quest, and there is a grab made for power. None of this is surprising - it's the person you would pretty much expect. There is a pleasure in the obvious. But is it enough?

Fitz is coming into his own, old enough to operate independently, even if he's incredibly weak as the book begins. Well, so is the King. King-in-Waiting Verity spends all his time holding off the raiders, but to do so, has absented himself from the kingdom, who don't realize what he does to keep them sick. Regal, the youngest son, is still a power-hungry pain in the ass who is probably behind the not-too-subtle assassination attempts on Fitz.

Fitz continues to use the Wit, the power to speak to animals, and have trouble with the...is it Speech? The same thing, but with humans, more or less. He tries to protect the new queen-in-waiting, who seems to have different plans for what royalty means than the present leadership thinks. She rallies the kingdom, while others seem bent on disassembling it to the highest bidder.

Hobb is excellent in showing us a kingdom on the verge of flying apart, torn by people who want what's best of themselves, or want revenge, or are just unable to see behind their own noses. Others see the larger picture, but have trouble asserting themselves when it might be most necessary.

One thing that bothered me, though, was that there were several times when Fitz tried to have an honest conversation about what was going on behind the scenes with people who could be in place to do something about it, and kept getting shut down for talking disloyalty. Could we not have the fucking conversation, and then have the reaction be disloyalty? Because at least twice, we were getting perilously close to the lazy "if they just talked about it, things would get resolved, and we can't have that, so we need bullshit reasons to keep the conversation from happening" tactic.

That aside, I enjoyed this book very much. I hope the next one moves the storyline along a bit more, but this world is fascinating, and the characters strong. I enjoy spending time with them very much. Now, if we could just shake them until they talk, everything would be good.

Dust Cover Dust-Up 2014: Round Two, Part Three

Raising Stony Mayhall vs. A Civil Campaign

Winner: A Civil Campaign

Oh, dear. This does not seem like a fair choice. An incredibly thoughtful look at the zombies and their implications, told over the "life"span of a zombie found as a baby and raised by a living family, somehow managing to grow up. Against my favourite Miles Vorkosigan book of a year that had a lot of thoroughly enjoyable Bujold books. Oh no. I do not want to make this choice. I really don't.

Aargh! It's breaking my heart! I pick...A Civil Campaign. But just by a hair. I liked Raising Stony Mayhall a lot, and expected it to make it into the top 10 just like Daryl Gregory's other book Pandemonium did last year. I can't pass up Miles in love, though. It's just too delicious.

The Clearing vs. Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

Winner: Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

I did not expect Stars in My Pocket to get this far into the competition. Despite its flaws, it has stuck around in my  memory, and Delany's experiments with gender and foreignness linger. In contrast, The Clearing was good, and I remember enjoying it, but it hasn't loomed large in my memory. They were both books without a ton of action, but I found the ideas in the science fiction so much more challenging.

Long Walk To Freedom vs. Whispers Underground 

Winner: Long Walk To Freedom

Not a very hard choice. On the one hand, we have a Peter Grant book that was probably my least favourite so far. On the other, Nelson Mandela's fascinating look at his own life and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Mandela's book is powerful, and it definitely delivers a knockout punch to Ben Aaronovitch here.

Range of Ghosts vs. How The Light Gets In 

Winner: How The Light Gets In

Ow. It hurts to knock this Elizabeth Bear book out of the competition, because I really loved Range of Ghosts. However, it'd be a rare book that could knock the culmination of books and books worth of slow build-up in one completely satisfying outing, heartwarming and heartwrenching both. Books that make me cry have an easy advantage, and I was bawling by the end of this book. Everything paid off beautifully, and it all came from places of vulnerability and pain and love. You got me, Louise Penny. You always do.

Packing for Mars vs. Republic of Thieves

Winner: Republic of Thieves

A fairly easy choice to end the round. I like Mary Roach's books, but they don't stay with me. They're enjoyable to read, great to grab a few tidbits from to amuse and horrify your friends. But that's really it. On the other hand, Republic of Thieves might be my least favourite Scott Lynch so far, but that's not actually saying very much. I have loved all three Locke Lamora books. Locke steals this round, so smoothly I didn't even notice.

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

*Some Spoilers Below*

It has taken me a while to figure out what I think of this book, and I'm still not entirely sure. I finished it with a bit of bafflement - what was what I'd just read actually about? It was entertaining, sure, and the world rich and inventive, the characters interesting, but if I were to tell you what the book were about...I wasn't sure. I think I have a better idea now, but I might just be projecting.

The world Stephenson creates here is a fascinating one, post-global warming, with different parts of the world in ascendancy, and everything governed by groupings, whether corporate or ethnic or voluntary. The two given most prominence in the book, which takes place in what it today China, are the Neo-Victorians and the Confucians.

Nanotechnology/3-D printing has advanced to the point that every home in every slum has a Feed, a pipeline to the basics, at very least. The Feed is heavily regulated, as far as amount, and more advanced stuff takes more money, but it's a basic resource, like running water. Because it all comes from a central location, what it can be used for can be regulated. But what if, instead of Feeds, there were Seeds? You can't control a Seed. It could be used for anything, great good, great evil, consumer goods or, well, whatever you can imagine. The Neo-Victorians back the Feed. The Confucians might back the Seed.

Some of the cultural "oh, the Chinese are conditioned to be more obedient and wouldn't abuse the Seed like you Westerners and your individualism" was more than a little overblown, and seems to believe in way more homogeneity in populations than I think has ever existed ever.

But that's not really what this book is about.  I think this book is about childrearing, and how to do it well. Particularly if you're trying to teach subversion. The grandfather of the heir apparent to the Neo-Victorians doesn't want his granddaughter to be brought up to be a little conformist, so he hires a bespoke engineer to create an interactive children's book that will bootleg a little trickster into her life. The engineer wants a copy for his own daughter. And through happenstance, a copy ends up in the hands of a very poor child from the slums, with an irresponsible mother who tends toward abusive boyfriends.

The story is about Nell, the poorest of the children, but the other two girls stand as background comparison, making the point that it's not the book itself that makes the difference in why Nell emerges whole the way she does. The privileged heir gets the subversion without the practicality, and joins a revolutionary group. The engineer's daughter falls into a world of fantasy and has trouble peeling her way out. Nell has to cope with the real world, but more importantly, she has mentors to help temper the book. One actress gets involved in reading the book to Nell exclusively - becomes, in essence, her mother. Nell also gets good advice from her brother, and later, the craftsmen she lives with while attending a Neo-Victorian school, including practical strategical advice from the military man who guards them, and the teachers at her school. The book does a lot, but so do the people in her life who she manages to connect with.

It's that human interaction that lets Nell transcend the book, while still needing the book to find her way through the world, and to what she feels she's lost. And also to survive a second Boxer Rebellion. It's an interesting note about the limitations of technology in childrearing. There are possibilities, sure. But it can't be a substitute for parenting. That's subtle, but it's there.

Of course, this is not a didactic text. It's a rich, verbose, ornate, almost Neo-Victorian in itself, romp through a world descended from our own but utterly different. I can't say I loved it, but it was quite enjoyable. All right, Stephenson, we're at two books I really enjoyed, and two I either didn't like or was a bit bored by. Let's see what I find next.

Booklinks:

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

Dust Cover Dust-Up 2014: Round Two, Part Two

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? vs. First Among Sequels

Winner: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

I like Jasper Fforde, but First Among Sequels was not as strong as some of his other outings. It was fun, but not spectacular. Whereas fun is definitely not the way to describe Jeanette Winterson's memoir, but it was powerful. In the second half, this little book shifts gears to become something quite extraordinary.

Redshirts vs. The Computer Connection

Winner: Redshirts

These are both books by science fiction writers I like quite a lot, without themselves being books that set my world on fire. When Bester is good, he's spectacular. The Computer Connection,  on the other hand, is a weird little book that is interesting, but doesn't have the impact of his best stuff. On the other hand, Scalzi is always entertaining, and this is no exception, although all the codas feels a little hand-holdy. Still, for pure enjoyment, it wins this particular battle.

Tooth and Claw vs. Let's Pretend This Never Happened

Winner: Tooth and Claw

This is an almost impossible choice! I liked both of these books so much, for vastly different reasons. Tooth and Claw is a remarkably good Victorian novel, whose protagonists happen to be dragons. This allows strange and delightful commentary on Victorian society. And then there's Jenny Lawson's book, which made me laugh out loud more than any other this past year. Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I think the dragons take this one, but it's close.

Changeless vs. Hexed

Winner: Hexed

Easy. Changeless was a Victorian-set supernatural romance that tickled me not nearly as much as the dragons of the previous match-up did. While Hexed didn't really do much more than the first in that particular series, I still like Atticus, his snark, and particularly, his dog.  Druids over the soulless, no contest.

Red Seas Under Red Skies vs. Doctor Faustus

Winner: Red Seas Under Red Skies

Sorry, Thomas Mann. You're all literary and worthy and a very good book, but you didn't make me weep. Scott Lynch did, with this follow up to Locke Lamora's adventures that perhaps even surpassed the first book, and I loved that book a lot. Classic literature doesn't stand a chance against conmen, a ship, pirates, and tragedy.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

*Some Spoilers Below *

This is a difficult book to read, but despite its size, it would be a mistake to call it sprawling. Instead of taking in a vast cavalcade of characters, it shows the impact of The Emergency in India on not many, but on a few. Four, in particular. Although they know other people, it is through these four that we see how the state intruded brutally into the lives of its citizens, and how the vulnerable were, of course, the most vulnerable, while the powerful refused to believe that abuses were going on, preferring to blame the poor for their own fates.

This focus, sustained over such a long book, makes for an emotional read. The title of the book refers to a line one character speaks about a fine balance between hope and despair. Given what the characters undergo, it is apparent how easy it is to tip the scales towards despair.

We see The Emergency in India through four characters. One, Dina, is a widow trying to eke out an independent life so she doesn't have to be, more or less, a servant in her brother's house. To do so, she tries to set herself up as a middle woman for sewing piecework. Of course, her landlord wants to get rid of her so he can raise the rent, and having a workplace in the apartment is illegal. But she is desperate enough to try it anyway.

To do the actual sewing, since her eyes are failing, she hires two tailors. Ishvar and Omprakash, uncle and nephew, were born into an even lower caste, but Ishvar's father was one of the first to dare to have his son apprentice to a higher-status position. This does not go over well in the village. Ishvar and Omprakash moved to the big city after their work with a tailor and friend had dried up due to ready-to-wear fashion. They have trouble finding a place to stay, and once they have work with Dina, Omprakash, in particular, resents Dina's cut of the money for the work they do.

Dina's other money-making plan is to take in a boarder, a student studying air conditioning repair. From a slightly higher-status background, Maneck runs into The Emergency initially through the hostel where he lives, where he befriends a budding revolutionary who disappears after staging numerous demonstrations.

Ishvar and Omprakash take the most direct brunt of the increasing crackdowns, first in a shantytown, then sleeping on the streets. Some of the sections involving these two are truly harrowing. So far, this all sounds like despair. The hope comes in in the small flashes of family the four characters manage to create, sharing space and work and stories. That sounds lighter than it is - the stories are difficult, the work difficult, the life hard. But hope persists.

For some, anyway. Others find it slipping away. Still others manage to maintain it, even through truly horrific circumstances. The ending reminds me of Anna Karenina, and I'm hoping that's not too much of a spoiler, as one character succumbs to despair. The others forge on.

I feel like I haven't gotten the heft of this book across. Through the focus on a few, with a world that seems set against them, sometimes it was hard to take a breath, in sympathy with the constraints that continued to tighten around them. It's easy to feel the despair. It's harder to feel the hope. The balance tips. But not for everyone.

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

If I remember my review of Red Mars correctly, I spent much of my time wondering why we weren't spending time with what seemed the most interesting parts of the story - Hiroko's hidden colony and the rebels. Apparently I just need to be a little more patient, but that's never been my strong point. Green Mars is almost entirely from outside the official corporate structures of power, and spends most of its time with Hiroko's colony and the rebels, as they try to reconcile vastly different goals and methods and not have a complete catastrophe on their hands when it finally comes to open revolution.

I'm glad to finally get this side of the story. And this time, we're entirely on that side - we don't get how the corporations perceive the mounting resistance, except for a few glimpses into the one corporation that is backing the resistance.  It's an intriguing choice, although sometimes I wished I knew what the other side was thinking. As the reader, though, you're in the same position as the rebellion, without full information on what your opponents are planning.

Robinson does a good job of illustrating the complexity of orchestrating a successful revolution, with all the schisms and factions that involves, those who are willing to wait and bide their time, to those who want to start breaking things now, without any particular plan. And, of course, the biggest division in these books are between the many, who want a Mars under Mars jurisdiction, and the few who want to see Mars touched as little as possible, even turning back the clock on the areoforming that has already been done.

A lot of the time is spent with the part of the revolution more intent on planning before striking, although some time is spent with Ann and her anger that Mars has been touched by humans at all. Two books in, I get that some people might take this stance. I don't understand it. I guess I'm just human-centric. But mostly, we're with the third generation of Hiroko's colony, and with Sax, as he takes on a new face and infiltrates a corporation, only to come face to face with Phyllis again, and with Maya, as she battles her own sense of herself and what she's lost while still trying to hold the revolution together. And with Coyote. And with Art, sent by that one sympathetic corporation to help negotiate a framework that most if not all the rebel groups can agree on.

Robinson is long-winded on two fronts. On the nitty-gritty of forming a revolution that won't end in flood-level amounts of bloodshed. And on the nitty-gritty of the areoforming of the planet. I find the first fascinating, but politics are something I'm interested in, and in particular, how people do or don't work together. I study a social movement that went through its own share of fractures, and Robinson understands the complexities of this stuff extremely well.

I am less enthralled by the areoforming bits. It's interesting, but when you get that much detail with that few humans, I tend to glaze over a bit. It's well-written, it's just not my things. Give me people any day. Still, I'm sure the hard SF fans love those bits. They didn't bother me, I just found my attention wandering during those pages.

All in all, this book delivered the part I was missing from the first one. I'm interested to see where it will go from here. On to Blue Mars, at some point!

Booklinks:

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

Dust Cover Dust-Up 2014: Round Two, Part One

Happy New Year, everybody! This year I resolve to keep reading, without stressing out about how much I'm not reading.

I took the week after Christmas off, a chance to rest and recharge and just read. Well, I wrote a few reviews, but put them on hold for posting until the New Year. And now we start to get into the harder battles of the Dust Cover Dust-Up. Let's see what Round Two holds!

Railsea vs. Ship-Breaker

Winner: Railsea

Ship-Breaker was fine, and certainly good solid YA science fiction, set in the post-climate change worlds that Bacigalupi excels at. I'd recommend it, although it is a little harsh. Railsea, though. Railsea. I can't even express my deep love for this book. It may be my favourite Mieville so far, and that's saying quite a lot. It's the layers in this one, backwards into literature and an homage to Moby Dick, in a world that is all Mieville's own, and roots that are exposed every once in a while to reveal depths unheard of. There isn't a step wrong in this one. Loved it. Loved it so much.

A Wanted Man vs. Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do 

Winner: Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do

This is a tough one. Not because I loved the books - indeed, the exact opposite. Neither of these were books that really stuck with me, so choosing one to move on to the third round? Difficult.  Lee Child's Jack Reacher book was much like all the others in the series have been. A pleasant, violent confection, and not a lot more. Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do was similarly not a book that stayed with me. But I think it has a bit more to it than A Wanted Man. Okay, this round goes to Ain't Nobody's Business.

In The Night Garden vs. Titus Alone

Winner: In The Night Garden

Easy-peasy. One of those contests where I get to weed out a book that I didn't really want to go further in the competition anyway. Titus Alone is a perplexing book, and I'm glad to leave it behind in favour of the nested storytelling of Catherynne Valente, who combines a beautiful writing style, with a dozen or more amazing stories. I may have felt like I almost lost the thread at one point, but the tapestry they weave was well worth the weft. 

The Fall of Hyperion vs. Feed

Winner: The Fall of Hyperion

The first truly hard choice of the round! I loved both these books. Feed kept me up at night, reading a genre I normally steer far clear of. Zombies, not generally my thing. Mira Grant made it my thing, at least as far as her writing goes. But I loved The Fall of Hyperion. Almost as much as I loved Hyperion, and that book won last year's Dust Cover Dust-Up. It answers all the questions the first book left hanging, and while it does it in a more traditional science fiction novel, I was engrossed from first page to last.

Wolf Hall vs. Palimpsest 

Winner: Wolf Hall

Oh, ugh. Another hard one. I liked both of these books a whole lot. Mantel made historical fiction truly something unique, and Valente looked at all the ways people have to having sex and wrapped them into an amazing adult fantasy novel. It may only be the fact that one Valente book has already made it through in this very post that means I'm bumping Wolf Hall ahead by a smidge. Although of the two Valente books, I liked Palimpsest more. Still, Cromwell gets it. By a wolf's hair.