What I read this September
Non-Fiction
Diane Purkiss, At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Nymphs, and Other Troublesome Things. Purportedly a history of fairy tales, this book serves neither as a history nor a particularly good resource about legends. I had to give up on this after this passage,
"In later stories, Peter [Pan] is joined by boys who have fallen out of their perambulators, their suspiciously womblike perambulators (is this a mere bowlderization of miscarriage--miscarriage--or stillbirth?)."
What. WHAT? I started skimming after that. It's not a very well organized book, and Purkiss's logic is all over the place. Her conclusions are alternately disappointingly obvious and amusingly crazy-eyed. Near the end, I discovered an entire sub-chapter about X-Files fanfic. Oh dear.
Anne Mendelson, Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages. An enjoyable history of dairy products from the beginnings of human civilization to now. Meldelson has a three-pronged approach: she examines what humans do with milk, how that's changed over time (and it has changed *drastically*), and the science behind it all. Fascinating, thought it made me more than a little leery of consuming dairy.
Fiction Set in 1800s England
Frances Hodgson Burnett, Surly Tim, and Seth. Soppy short stories about the pure love laborers feel for their masters. Creepily classist. Told in dialect. Not worth reading.
Margaret Oliphant, Miss Marjoribanks. This is a novel about small-town Victorian society told in the driest, most sarcastic style. Oliphant has few illusions about the strictures and privileges of genteel life, and no illusions at all about her sturdy heroine. Miss Lucille Marjoribanks is a strong-willed, large-bodied young woman with little sense of humor or wit but an incredible talent for social interaction. Within a matter of months, she is the center of her little town of Carlingford 's society. Told with a light, yet hilarious narrative style, this is a funny yet insightful look at mid-Victorian society.
Carola Dunn, Two Corinthians. Plain Claire Sutton never expected to marry (and now that she's in her twenties, she almost certainly won't), but she intends to give her younger, prettier sister Lizzie every opportunity to. She arranges to give her a Season in London . While there, the girls are pursued by Bertram (from Miss Hartwell's Dilemma and George, both eligible bachelors with considerable fortunes and charm. But each man is courting the wrong sister--when will they all realize who they truly love?
By the end of this story, I was pretty tired of the misunderstandings and repression that comprise much of the plot. Nevertheless, it was a sweet little regency romance. Even better (and unlike many romances, particularly ones written by Heyer), there was no weird sexist, racist, etc. undertone.
Scifi/Fantasy
Nancy Kress, Steal Across the Sky. In the not-very-distant future, aliens calling themselves The Atoners contact humanity. Millenia ago, they wronged humanity--and now they want humanity to know about it. They choose a few dozen people to travel to colonies of humans the Atoners established around the universe, and "Witness." What the "Witnesses" are supposed to see or do is left up to them--they are told that they'll know it when they see it.
By the end of the first third, both the reader and the characters have discovered what the Atoners have to atone for. The remainder of the book is about how the Witnesses--and the rest of humanity--deal with this revelation.
The characters are distinct, and complex, although they lack depth. I liked Cam a great deal, and grew to appreciate Soledad . By the end of the story, I hated Lucca , not least because the narration is so non-committal about him. As it was, I couldn't tell whether or not Kress knew one of her main characters was a privileged, patronizing prick.
I liked this story, but I was frustrated because Kress can do so much better. In her Sleeper trilogy, the consequences of a simple genetic manipulation on a tiny percentage of people are far-reaching, dramatic, and eminently believable. In this, a huge revelation has no impact on day-to-day life on Earth. Nor does that revelation have any affect on the other human planets. I really wanted to see the difference between societies! Kress is excellent at bio-ethics, but I wish she'd taken this story a little further.
Jay Lake, Green. As a peasant girl, Green is sold by her father to become a courtesan in a far-off land. The opening is fantastic--lots of sensory details and thoughful world-building--and Green's courtesan training is earthy and believable. But once she leaves the walls of her training courtyard behind, the story breaks down. The plot meanders and circles, and Green's motivations are confused and often contradictory. (Mere pages after declaring that her mission in life is to prevent child-slavery, she angrily declares she doesn't care about saving anyone. One moment she can't wait to free her city--the next she's asking what's in it for her. She's young, but no person changes their mind so drastically, so often.) The ending is anticlimactic and awful. I'm giving this 3 stars because the first half was so enjoyable and the writing style pretty good. But Lake should learn how to write a *novel* before he attempts another one.
James M Ward, Midshipwizard Halcyon Blithe. Astonishingly awful fantasy. It's so badly written that I thought the first chapter was a parody or a play within the book--here's a sample line from the first page. "'Hook, me old friend, you've been complaining about storms for as long as I've known you. Here, take this to warm your salty bones,' said the friend while handing Hook a tankard of hot rum." The friend's name is Pegleg. Pegleg and Hook, I kid you not. They exchange a few lines of dialog about how they're hearty sea dogs, and then they meet (and are incredibly impressed by) Halycon Blithe, the newest midshipwizard in the Arcanian fleet. Here's what his dialog sounds like: "'I know I'll have to serve a few years to earn the respect of such men,' Halycon said to himself. 'But earn it I will, because I'm an officer with prospects, no doubt about it.'"
Ye gods! Published by Tor, horribly enough.
Karel Čapek, War with the Newts. Between the two World Wars, Čapek wrote a biting satire about modern government and society. Told in a series of vignettes, Čapek takes on racism, colonialism, nationalism, capitalism…Unfortunately, there’s no real plot, every one of the characters are loathsome, and the scenario is so disgusting and dumb as to be ridiculous rather than horrifying.
Carol Emshwiller, The Mount: A Novel. Humans-as-companion animals. Charley, a "Mount," is uncomfortably complicit in his own slavery. Interesting idea--the resolution and much of the plot left me wanting, but I did like that Emshwiller refused to talk about freedom and power in easy or traditional ways.
L E Modesitt Jr., Imager: The First Book of the Imager Portfolio. Modesitt's writing is like clockwork: predictable, dependable, unexciting. He creates boring, detailed fantasy worlds and peoples them with walking shadows. The “characters” aren’t even caricatures-that would require Modesitt to give them some sort of personality. The main character, Rhen, exists in this book only to lecture and be lectured about government, and to eat very detailed meals. I do not need to know what fictional wine each and every character has each and every meal, and yet Modesitt seems to think that sort of detail is far more important than, say, a plot.
Speaking of plots, there really isn’t one. I forced my way through this book, but at some point put it down and just couldn’t bear to pick it up again, even though I was only ~50 pages from the end. Because I just didn’t care about the thin veneer of intrigue that Modesitt periodically remembered to include, and I found the main character so incredibly despicable (not in an authorially intended way, alas) that I hoped the “mysterious assassin” killed him. This is a terrible book. I recommend it to no one.