Some books of august

[oneiriad]

Bujold, Lois McMaster: Borders of Infinity, Komarr,  A Civil Campaign,  Winterfair Gifts,  Diplomatic Immunity
But, but, where's the rest? Isn't there more? Where's more? Why is it so long until november?! *wails*
Ahem. Right. I am going to have to get a hold of Bujold's other books, aren't I? Anyway, out of this batch my favourite was definitely A Civil Campaign. Don't get me wrong, Miles on adventures all sorts of places are fun, but I am finding that my favourite bits of this series are when we get to see Barrayar and the society there and people interacting and stuff. Awesomeness. (Well, the part where ACC is basically a regency romance IN SPACE probably helped, given my love of age of sail :-)

Butcher, Jim:  Grave Peril,  Summer Knight
Okay, maybe not the most intellectually challenging novels I've ever read, but fun, fastpaced and a nice urban fantasy universe, and sometimes, that's all a girl asks.

Colling Nielsen, Kaspar: Mount København
Well, the idea of building a actual mountain right next to Copenhagen is certainly novel enough. As for the short stories themselves, they are this odd mix of science fiction and magical realism and not quite my thing, but the brief bits between the stories describing the mountain, now that's kind of cool.

Sagara, Michelle:  Cast in Courtlight,  Cast in Secret
I'd like to say that the world of these novels is interesting - a great city inhabited by several different sentient species with distinct cultures, somehow managing to coexist more or less peacefully and respectfully. What I dislike is mostly the main character - mostly because it annoys me, that someone who is the local equivalent of a policewoman investigating crimes is so, so, ignorant about so many things obviously common enough knowledge that her closests friends can explain it to her - besides, I find I prefer "chosen" people in fantasy stories to be chosen because they are special, not be special because they're chosen, if that makes any sense?

Trussoni, Danielle:  Angelology
Right, so, the story is alright, kind of Da Vinci Code as if Anne Rice had written it, and the writing is decent and the descriptions of the Nephilims' wings are simply lovely. The main flaw though, is, that while the author manages to convince me that the Nephilim are some pretty unpleasant characters, then she fails to convince me of them being bad enough to deserve genocide - and when her good guys are a secret organization fighting for exactly that? Actually, in this it reminds me of Anne-Marie Vedsøe Olesen's Seth-trilogy, which also featured an awesome bad guy and a secret organization that left my teeth on edge. I suspect that part of the problem is that her characters see the world very much in terms of good and evil,black and white, of the Bible and a literal view of it as history, though the book itself fails to offer any evidence that this world is a world where this is so (like the throw-away comment in Good Omens about dinosaur bones being a cosmic joke, I mean - something to acknowledge that most sane people don't think the Deluge actually happened and that Europeans aren't all descended from one of Noah's sons (or, apparently, one of Noah's sons and an evil half-angel, thus neatly laying all the blame of colonialism at the Nephilim's feet - actually, could be fun to see a postcolonial analysis of this book), but in this world it actually happened that way. I have a hard time accepting a world where all the characters just assume that sort of thing, when the book is set in the 20th century. Does not compute.) I mean, there's nothing here to prevent me from assuming the Fallen Angels are just aliens or from another dimension - I mean, I've encountered one short story that said exactly that, so why not? Slightly off topic: One interesting idea for a book would be a story like this one, with a secret war between something supernatural and a secret group fighting it, getting revealed to the whole world and people dealing with the fallout - just, spare me simplistic black-and-white conflicts. I like mine in the chromatic spectrum, thank you - and no easy answers to anything. Right, and I'll stop expanding on this big block of text, just leaving with my wondering how, if fallen angels are apparently so radioactive that just getting touched by one is fatal, how the hell did the Nephilim happen in the first place???

Ørnstrup, Sven Damgaard: Vraggods
You know, one of these days I'm going to sit down and read a Danish fantasy novel for adults that doesn't disappoint me. This wasn't that day. It's not even bad, per se, it's just, well, the main character's a wimp, the main plot smell a bit too much of LotR, and the only major female character has so far been distinctly unimpressive in the sense of being pretty good at making strange choices, like, say, apologizing to her not-quite-yet boyfriend for dancing with a guy that pretty much dragged her off without giving her a choice and just barely avoiding getting raped by the guy, and later refusing to tell noble-blue-skinned-Aragorn-clone-guy about the evil invaders, thus giving him invaluable clues about who he is supposed to protect the kingdom against, for, well, no apparent good reason other than being stubborn and not wanting to answer questions...
Anyway, one of these days...

Comments

[soho-iced.livejournal.com]

A Civil Campaign filled me with glee - it wasn't exactly that it has better material in it than her other books, it just has more of the good stuff packed in per page, while they have occasional filler.

Glad to hear you're enjoying Dresden as well - he writes them gratifyingly quickly. If you haven't tried his fantasy series, I'd recommend them as well.

[oneiriad.livejournal.com]

I suspect that A Civil Campaign might actually be one of those books that are only awesome if you've read the rest of the series. I mean, if this had been the first book in the Vorkosigan Saga I had got my hands on, I would probably have liked it just fine, but what makes it awesome, is that you know all these characters, you know them and love them and get to spend all your time squeeing instead of getting introduced, so to speak :-)

[soho-iced.livejournal.com]

Yes - the first Vorkorsigan book I read (courtesy of a library sale) was 'Memory', in retrospect probably the worst one I could have picked to start with. I enjoyed it but found it confusing and hard to connect with, although it thankfully didn't stop me from looking out the others in the series. When I re-read 'Memory' in sequence I had a lot more fun with it as I could actually understand where the characters were coming from.