Stewartry

Part of a series of longish short stories which center on marvelous books, which is a great idea. (Thank you to the publisher, from whom, via Netgalley, I received this for an honest review.) This was nicely done: a twisty story of suspense – especially if you’re of the target audience, a capital-B Booklover whose heart hurts at the idea of the destruction of a rare and wonderful book. It felt like it should have Alfred Hitchcock coming out to say "Good evening" and do a clever intro. Very nice indeed.

So, as it turns out, Booklikes will let a dummy like me post a book review that is not attached to a book; it will not let a dummy like me quickly or easily edit said dumb bookless post. I know there's a way. I can't find it. So, with apologies for a repost, here it is again, and I'll delete the other post... if I can figure out how...

The (Phantasmagorical) Astrarium Compendium by Mark Roland Lansdale
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I believe that I gave this book (provided by the publisher via Netgalley for an honest review) more chances than I’ve ever given any other book. It’s been a long time since I’ve committed to Netgalley, and I didn’t want one of my first books back with them to have one star and a scathing review.

Oh well.

Try as I might, I couldn’t – could not – get past 4%. I usually take advantage of Kindle’s highlight option to note things I might want to mention in a review. I kept opening the book up to try again, and found that I was highlighting most of what I read, until there was just no point: if I kept going I would end up with three quarters of the book in “My Clippings”. It’s such a pretty cover; it’s such a quirky title; it’s … well, actually, interesting and fun as the concept may be, it’s also somewhat similar to two other books I listened to this year, both of which I considered failures, so maybe I shouldn’t offer the concept as a possible plus.

In any case, I never got to that concept – of wandering through a magical landscape meeting historical personages. I was stopped cold by what is, I suppose, viewed by the author as eccentric and idiosyncratic writing. I see it as irritatingly eccentric and idiosyncratic writing. You know those rules of grammar and syntax, punctuation and sentence structure that we’re supposed to learn in school? There’s a reason we’re supposed to learn them. They make writing readable. A writer who knows the rules and ignores them now and then for effect can create something terrific. A writer who – whether he knows them or not – ignores their existence entirely generally creates something that cannot be read.

All things in moderation, said someone wise at least once. That dictum, like nearly all those rules of writing, has no place in this book. One exclamation point is fun – let’s have hundreds. (For some reason my Kindle refused to count them for me. I think it was afraid.) Oh, and if exclamation points are fun, then interrobangs (?!) must be at least twice the fun, and let’s throw a bunch of those in too. It was like reading a Victorian advertising poster which just wouldn’t end.

Like a breathless Victorian ad, at that. I don’t know who might have thought that comma splices were fun or quirky. They’re not. They’re bad writing: “Gulliver imagined if a seashell fell from the heavens and you put it up to your ear you would be able to hear the cosmological oceans, he knew this wasn’t logical but he just liked the imagery of such a fantastical happening.” Take a breath. Put in a period. Let the reader take a breath. One comma splice isn’t fun; it’s a mistake. Hundreds (a safe projection based on the dozens in just the sampling I read) are unconscionable.

Even the sentences which are not, technically, run-on sentences read like run-on sentences: “In the emporium sat several large, oak ships’ wheels which were best steered clear of, as the price tag on them would have told you had you the misfortune to come across them.”

The Netgalley description includes the following line: “Mark Roland Langdale’s new novel will appeal to fans of science fiction and fantasy stories like Doctor Who and Alice in Wonderland.” Let me make a small correction to that. Mark Roland Langdale’s new novel will irritate and puzzle fans of Doctor Who and Alice in Wonderland. Even in the small portion I struggled through, both are referenced, but the references are bizarrely shoehorned in and … make no sense.

“One may well wonder like Alice in Wonderland, how Gulliver could afford this expensive chronometer, well wonder no more because it was as fake as a fake Rolex!” When did Alice wonder how Gulliver could afford an expensive timepiece? (And there is either an extra comma or one too few in that sentence, depending on how you look at it.)

“…Make Doctor Who a reasonable offer for his Tardis!” A) He is not “Doctor Who”. He is never “Doctor Who”. Anyone calling him “Doctor Who” has not seen the show and should not be trying to score a brownie point with Whovians. B) It’s TARDIS, all caps, an acronym.

No, I didn’t give this very long. As I said, I tried, and couldn’t. The writing was impenetrable, and exhausting. And if the author’s research didn’t extend to getting “TARDIS” right, I’m loathe to think what he would do with Sir Francis Drake and Queen Elizabeth. This is not for me.

One more quote to underscore why I couldn’t handle any more of this: “the mountains he found himself climbing more than any others were the ones in the Sea of Tranquility on the moon”. Go look at pictures of Apollo 11, and Tranquility Base.

“Unlaced” was another in a string of failures to find something I once took for granted: a fun, satisfying, well-crafted book. I truly thought at several points that it would be a DNF, but I had made predictions about what would happen, and I was determined to see if I was right. There was skimming involved.

It is the tale of Lucy, 21, who wants only to continue to explore her natural gifts with animals. She has an affinity for all creatures great and small, and a knack for healing them, and in 1817 she does not have the option of going to train to be a legitimate veterinarian. However, she is sent to London, to have her debut, and she realizes that while she is there she can prevail upon another family friend to get her some kind of in with the veterinary college. She certainly doesn’t want to get married – she insists on that, frequently; she will go through with her Season to please her father, and then go right back to what she wants to do.

Enter Henry, Lord Mandeville, a marquess with Issues. His mother was cruel to him, and unfaithful to his father, and he has vowed that he will not follow his father’s example of blind adoring faith in an unworthy woman. He has no interest in marrying for love; he will marry a woman who will bring something useful to the match. (Character in the book: "He’s mysterious and moody, especially after that scandal three years past." My comment: Well, then, he's obviously The One.) (And, of course, that mysterious scandal is all very enticing.)

So far, so … good, I suppose, despite the fact that anachronistic feminism is hard to pull off. Would a girl of the period really develop the mindset Lucy has, however unconventional her upbringing or however great her gifts with animals? I didn’t quite believe in an early 19th century girl who planned to be a veterinarian, wore breeches, rode astride, and so on: desiring only "the freedom to learn, and maybe, just maybe, the opportunity to build her own informal veterinary practice." And I found it harder to believe in a local populace who would trust their animals, from lapdogs to carthorses, to a minimally educated “informal” dilettante. A farmer could never afford to let an untrained vet tend the animals that were his livelihood; God knows I wouldn’t let an untrained vet touch any pet of mine. There are a great many professions at which one can do quite well for oneself without formal training; any form of medicine, be it human or animal, is <I>not</i> something that can be tried out with enthusiasm and a smattering of learning. One does not know instinctively how to, oh, for example, deliver a foal in a breech position.

And this made me question a lot of other things which might otherwise have skated by. Lucy coming out at the late age of 21, and her attitude toward same. The main characters, Lucy and Henry, begin calling each other Lucy and Henry within about an hour of meeting – in 1817. Lucy scampers about the countryside completely unchaperoned, which for a lady I thought was completely unacceptable, and for a young lady in the midst of her Season beyond completely unacceptable. There’s plenty more, but this will be quite long enough.

Another failure, in my opinion, was in the author’s knowledge of horses. There was not a tremendous amount of horse-related stuff, but everything there was seemed a little off. Henry and Lucy, both stated to be excellent riders, were constantly digging their heels into their horses’ sides. Who knows, maybe riding was utterly different a hundred years ago, and it’s been a while since I’ve been on a horse, but when I was taking lessons, if I’d kicked a horse like that I think my lessons would have come to an end. At one point Lucy is asked about the foal she helped bring into the world. “The filly? Oh yes, the foal.” Yes. The foal. Which is female. And therefore a filly. This is not something I can imagine anyone who knows horses saying. Ever. The author also flips between “it” and “he” when referring to a horse, at least once in consecutive sentences. Lucy’s other main equestrian patient came when she was summoned urgently to a horse with colic, because no one else knew what to do for it. Not the grooms; not the horsemen; not the horse owners; not another single soul had a clue in the world what to do for colic. Colic is not a rare and exotic ailment. This is absurd. "Digging a heel into Thunder’s side, she led her horse..." A) Again with the digging. And B) she has 2 horses? Because riding and leading are different things." Finally (for the purposes of this review), Lucy's brother let her mare get fat while she was away. Why? "You can’t expect me to go around on a mount called Princess now, can you?” Why not? Does she commonly wear a fluffy nametag with "Princess" picked out in hearts and flowers? Are people going to point and laugh and say "Hee hee, there goes whatsit on a girly horse"? So you let a horse go without decent exercise for months? Who was there to even see besides servants?? These people irk me.

I saw something recently, and I wish I had made a note of exactly what it was and where, about how, really, the advice to writers of “show, don’t tell” is bogus because when you write you’re always telling. I wish I had noted the name of the person writing that, so that I can avoid their work. Or so I could shoot them a message recommending this book as an example of “tell, don’t show”.

Because:

Lucy is held up as an example of a sensible, logical girl. However, when someone wakes her up and calls her out to deliver that foal (filly), she puts on a dress of butter yellow. Anyone who’s read the James Herriot books knows that large animal delivery is a messy business - pale yellow is an idiotic thing to wear. Also, she keeps putting herself into situations where untoward things happen, and then wonders how and why. The whole idea of cause and effect seems beyond her. (At hearing the news that a horse is sick and she is needed, she hurries off to prepare, “beaming delightedly”. It’s a bit off-putting that because a horse is ill and she can have a chance to show off, she is delighted.) Again, there are plenty of other examples.

And because:

Henry is held up as an example of a terrifically good man. However, the second time he meets Lucy, within an hour or two he is groping her and kissing her “senseless”. And then blaming her: “And do those odd activities of yours generally include allowing men you barely know to kiss you senseless?” And he proceeds to behave much the same way any time he is even close to being alone with her. (His hands "moved down her sides, brushing softly against the curve of her breasts"… my simultaneous reactions were that she needed to slap him, a lot, and that her anatomy must be rather odd if he moved his hands down her sides to her breasts.) It is utterly hilarious when he is described as "normally a man of acute restraint". He seems to feel she is less than a lady (small “L”) because she is the daughter of a physician and there are no titles in her immediate family – and because she pursues these “odd activities” – therefore he can treat her however he wants. This is wrong on so many levels that if I go into all of them this review will approach NaNoWriMo proportions. Why do romance writers do this? At less than a 1/4 of the way in, the Hero had pawed Lucy, insulted her, apologized to her, defended her, insulted her again, and by that point could be found drunkenly pawing her again - in a locked room. A room he locked them into. I was ready to call 911, and she? Melted into him. Which goes back to how sensible she is. But, we are told, Henry made some liberal speeches, and saved a wounded puppy. Oh, well, if there’s a puppy – well, then.

"I mustn’t forget your reputation”, he says, after having forgotten her reputation at least half a dozen times.

Of course, he’s a remarkable artist. Proof being that he draws Lucy. Half-naked. Then wanders about London with the drawing. She sees it. She doesn’t mind. In fact, she says: "These should be displayed somewhere.” “‘...That one I’ve begun in oil on canvas.’ He’d sketched her from the back, her chin tipped over one shoulder. She wore nothing but a corset, partially unlaced.” I find it remarkable that he is unconcerned about who might see it in progress or when completed (i.e., anyone who knows or might meet Lucy, ever). And what does he plan to do with the completed piece? Does he have a sleazy man-cave?

As anyone who has read my reviews of historical fiction before might know, my number one pet peeve is the improper, anachronistic use of the work “okay”. I have closed books permanently upon coming across a medieval or Victorian “okay”. I have flung books. This book was on my Kindle, so I couldn’t fling it when I came to “Everything okay, miss?” It’s a stupid, careless, easily avoided mistake, and I have no patience for it. But I kept reading. Even when there was a second “okay” about a third of the way through. It began to almost literally hurt after a while. Because there were so many other language errors. I never understand why anyone with a tin ear for language chooses to set a book in a time for which she has no feeling. To refer to “blocks” as a unit of measurement in 1817 in reference to country estates? To talk about something being therapeutic? (It took me less than two minutes to find that that word wasn’t used before 1846.) "It’s grown infected"… I have to give her this one; I was sure that “infected” was anachronistic, but the word was in use in the 14th century. However, that possibly correct usage was more than outweighed by “You, my lord, are pressing your luck.” Here’s another quote: <a href=”http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=press+one%27s+luck&searchmode=none”>“to push (one's) luck is from 1911”</a>

Besides the anachronisms, there were the other oddities of language, the (say it with me) “I don’t think it means what you think it means” syndrome. Lucy’s legs “shaking madly”? Lemonade referred to as a “pungent liquid”? ("Affecting the organs of taste or smell with a sharp acrid sensation.") The foal mentioned above “ceased it strident suckling”. There’s a missing “s” there; use of “it” is obnoxious after the emphasis on the foal’s gender a minute before; and … strident? … How? … “characterized by harsh, insistent, and discordant sound” – suckling?

Similarly: Colin, re Lucy: “‘You’ve taken a spirited mare and broken her beyond recognition.’ Right. I love horses. You compare me to a mare, in any way or shape or form, and there will be hell to pay.

"He felt a sharp pain shoot through his gut. Regret? No, it must be hunger. He hadn’t eaten all day." How unintentionally hilarious. It was a free book: this is good. It was a bad book: this isn’t good.

I haven't posted here in ages! But I promised a review for this book, so... 

I received this audiobook free from Audiobook Blast! in exchange for an honest review; thanks. I just wish that I could honestly give it a more positive review, especially since it’s my first book through the program.

However.

It’s a sort of odd young adult-flavored cross between [book:Gardens of the Moon] and the Dresden Files. This is not meant as a compliment. It attempts the cocky quippy fast-paced style of Dresden, and also boasts many similar features: it’s in the first person; there are vampires who are succubi, “the nether”(essentially the Never-Never), named and powerful swords, “Ethereal sight”, and main characters who go into battle with a snarky remark and get the ever-loving snot beaten out of them several times and still bounce back up with another snarky remark (or deliver said remark from the ground while still unable to get back up).

What reminded me of Malazan was an irritating refusal to info-dump. Now, <a href=“http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1128563-Dump-the-Information-Dump”>info-dump</a> is usually a bad thing; it’s one of the hallmarks of poor writing. But its polar opposite is, I think, in its way just as bad, where the story galumphs along and tosses out fragments of detail without any attempt to weave it together or explain much of anything at all.

The latter is what happens here. Words are tossed out, from Japanese phrases to setting-specific phrases, with no explanation. What on earth is the shield of Kongounoikutai? Why are Japanese phrases used in spells, especially when the girl’s Japanese swords are (bizarrely) named for Egyptian gods, and why is “White Sparrow” in English? The heroine lives in Southern California, we are told (it has zero bearing on the story), and it is mentioned that there’s a sort of glamor that keeps normal people from seeing creatures like demons and such. So, I thought, fairly standard contemporary urban fantasy setting. But then came this: “Now Rome was home to little more than biker gangs and street rats, a stunningly permanent reminder of the horrors of war.” It turns out that Rome, and Jerusalem, have been nuked. What war? When? Long enough ago that Lillim can wander through Rome without hazmat gear. By whom? In what context? Who knows? But there is silver dust in the air, and that is completely unexplained. It is an effective deterrent to weres – but was it done on purpose to keep weres out? Don’t know. Lillim’s story is, eventually, fairly well fleshed out, but it takes a while, and the setting in general is still up in the air by the end of the book.

And the plot? It starts off with a message calling her on a quest, but then she is sidelined by another mission, and then something else happens, and by an hour in the plot is as tangled as the proverbial bag filled with yarn and kittens.

It's a kind of a kitchen-sink story: Bears and Owls and weres and dragons and vampires (and a vampire “founder” named Bob) – only apparently the bears and owls are vampires? And succubi, who are, as in Harry Dresden, another breed of vampires. A katana and a wakazashi (with Egyptian names) (and introduced almost every time they appear – “my katana, Isis”, “my wakazashi, Set”) (and from what I can tell it ought to be wak-<b>I</b>-zashi) – a twice-kidnapped baby; demons (with souls?) and Deoscuri, ghosts, nuclear war … reincarnation and gargoyles. Talking swords. “Goblin maintenance” on the apartment. A pet hedgehog (with no meteorological awareness). And oh you have got to be kidding me, an asteroid. No – several. Or, you know, meteors; the words are used interchangeably. (They’re not interchangeable.) Wait a minute, wait a minute – a Magic Eight Ball?! Oh. Lord.

I’m sure there’s a way to incorporate this much … stuff – but this isn't it.

I seem to always say this, but there are some good things in here. That’s why I originally gave it two stars instead of one. It’s just so hard to discern the good stuff in the flurry of cliché and excess.

Take the main character, our Heroine Lillim Callina (who is usually referred to by her full name). She’s been reincarnated, sort of. She’s sixteen, but not really, being both much younger and much older. She looks just like her previous incarnation, and spends half the book protesting that she isn't Dirge (yup, Dirge. I was disappointed when I saw it in print). Her mother is terrible (Ivan the Terrible terrible), so she lives on her own – with a ghost (and a hedgehog). (How she pays for her “tiny” apartment is, I think, never explained.) Her appearance? “I had soft lavender hair. It was so pale that it was nearly white. I’d taken to dyeing it black to cut down on the stares from random people. I had to do this pretty often, because, for whatever reason, my hair would start to lighten after a couple days.” Why? To reiterate: “For whatever reason.” She has a scary ex-boyfriend (we are told he’s scary, though not why for a while), and there’s another guy who gives her tingles (no, sorry, the nauseously coy phrase actually used is the “tightening of things low in my body”), and neither can be trusted (unless they can), and frankly I never got them straight. For me they were as interchangeable as asteroids and meteors, but I might not have been paying much attention; I had just noted to myself, happily, that there was no current love interest when abruptly there appeared a rather Biblically named love triangle. Lillim isn't very big, and says several times she’s not very strong, and <i>she’s sixteen</i>, but she kicks the butt of every opponent she comes across (but still needs rescuing in the end). (Which is why I made sounds of protest when she said “You came to rescue me. …No one’s ever done something like that for me.”) At one point she says “Of all the elements ice was the one I had never quite mastered”… Aside from the fact that ice is not an element, isn't it a bit remarkable that at sixteen she has apparently mastered all of the other elements? Unless she’s including her past life/lives. Basically, she’s sixteen when it is convenient, and whatever else when that is useful.

The writing… I liked the semi-Dresden-esque quality; it was pulled off fairly well, in places. But the majority of sentences follow the same basic structure: "I (verb)", "He (verb)", "I (verb)", "It (verb)"... (see example above, re: hair). And the author leans very, <I>very</i> heavily on simile. I enjoy a good simile, and some of these are good: “The inside of the room felt like wet breath”. Most, though, are not: “The rain was coming down so hard that it was like standing in a monsoon” (the common usage of “monsoon” basically means “heavy rain”, so the heavy rain was like … heavy rain); “eyes surveying me like a prowling lioness” (her eyes were like the lioness? Or the eyes of the lioness?). A search on Google Books brings up 94 uses of the word “like”, but with current books it won’t search the whole text so I’m sure there are many more; simile is used several times <i>per page</i>. “His hand burst from the ground like a zombie… Pain, so intense that it was like rubbing lemon juice soaked sandpaper on my flesh”…

And there is a fair larding of cliché, unfortunately, including among the similes: “parting like the Red Sea”, “lit up like a Christmas tree”, “Well look what the cat dragged in”.

And repetition. Now and then it’s as though the author came up with a phrase she enjoyed so much she couldn't resist using it again. The problem with a neat phrase is that it might be memorable, and noticeable when used more than once. “The blade would be no more than a pretty sword” is used twice. The repulsive “blood and thicker things” is used at least twice. Also, repetition of cliché stands out: “not high on my bucket list” “neither of those ranked very highly on my bucket list”. There is also far too much reiteration of fact – yes, I know Maddoc the ghost will not appear in front of others. Yes, I know you’re not Dirge. Yes, I know your swords’ names. Overall, there was often a sense of <i>I just want to make sure the reader gets the point</i>: “There was a loud pop, almost like an exploding balloon as the butterflies within him exploded.” But tell me … what did it sound like? In one paragraph you find “She moved” “I couldn't move” “with one exaggerated movement”. Voices are compared with food at least twice: one voice like chocolate and cream; “voice rolled over me like warm honey”. There are not one but two edifices made of human flesh (and I could have lived without ever coming across one). I did a Google count on two words: “like”, and “so”. The latter came up 89 times. “So cold”, “so suddenly”, “so close”, “so bright”, “so hot”, “so wide”, “so loud”… “so much so” … This might not be an unusual usage of these words, but it stood out.

The profanity bothered me a bit; maybe things have changed, but no one swore this much when I was sixteen, and I found the blasphemies particularly grating. For one thing, a user of magic ought to be more careful using words of power, and the name of God is a powerful word. But then again the author/main character seems a bit unclear on some aspects of Christianity: "The nails used to impale Christ" may be technically correct, but … isn’t. Also, you’re not really allowed to accompany someone to Hell. That’s kind of part of the point.

There are a number of silly gaffes throughout the book. Mattoc the ghost goes missing – so Lillim physically searches her apartment. For a ghost. She notes to herself that the hedgehog isn't concerned about the asteroid. (Tell me true, should it be? Really?) She whips out a gun over and over in the many fights she gets into – but not a single one of the things she shoots is discommoded for more than a few minutes. (And where she gets hold of all these firearms, not to mention magical swords and other weapons, isn't really explained – but she always, always has one or more ready to hand.) She mentions having two last special bullets, but as far as I could tell she fires three. Language bloopers include - among several others - the misuse of “impales”, as above, and “grabbed me by the scruff of my collar”. “Return to me when you have gained the respect worthy of your master” – um, what? 

This might not be so much a gaffe, as (to me) evidence of poor taste: “It was like walking through one of those oil paintings that didn't focus on details quite as much as it should have.” I'm sorry, are you referring to (and dissing) Impressionism? Really?

For the most part I enjoyed the narration by Rebecca Roberts – except that, twice, the “c” in “scintillating” was pronounced, which made me twitch. There were the usual missteps in inflection here and there – emphasis on the wrong word in a sentence – but almost all narrators fall victim to that. Character voices were all right, though Lillim was a bit too little girl. I won’t avoid this reader in future, but neither will I seek her out.

Meantime, I think I rather will avoid this author. I’d rather read the actual Dresden Files. Or maybe even Malazan. I was leaving it at two stars because it didn't actually make me want to throw anything, but if I realize I'd rather read Malazan than anything else by this author... Yeah. One star it is.

Cast in Moonlight by Michelle Sagara
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was never able to make a dent in the first "Cast" (Chronicles of Elantra) novel; the wild variety of races defeated me, I recall, and I wasn't grabbed thoroughly enough to care enough to try to figure out who was what and what that meant. (Also, the fact that there is an avian race and also a law enforcement group called the Hawks, but the avians (Aerians) aren't necessarily Hawks and the Hawks aren't necessarily Aerians. That took adjustment.

A sort of similar hurdle in this audiobook (audio novella) is a very odd decision to show the main character, Kaylin, taken under the wing (though not literally) of an administrative assistant of the Hawks: Caitlin. (At least I don't think it's literal; I don't remember it being specified that Caitlin is human. Which is interesting considering that the others' races are talked about frequently.) On paper, that might be all right given different first initials. Orally, they're – obviously – almost identical, and if it wasn't for the very different character voices used it would be a mess. And this was, as far as I can find, exclusively released as audio. I think the characters were established already, but it's still very odd.

Because this was an audio, and I admit to not researching too deeply, my character name and race spellings may be wildly erratic.

The voices … Caitlin sounds prissy, which is not how the character is described. Kaylin sounds petulant at times when it's extremely inappropriate. I have a problem with the Leontine, Marcus, being Jamaican. Or maybe it's Bahamian…. I can almost understand the extraordinary accent, so completely different from the others': the voice being shaped by the muzzle… I think it would actually be kind of fun to listen to, under other circumstances – in a Terran setting, say, when the character would actually be from some tropical isle. But it dredges up a mental image from somewhere of a cartoon lion wearing flip-flops, a Hawaiian shirt, and sunglasses. I don't mind the character; I mind having that picture in my head. Almost as bad is when the Wolf Captain Neal shows up; he's a Cockney (and I keep picturing him as lyncanthropic with perhaps a soft plaid cap). I think Marcus's accent is supposed to relate to his race; I don't know what the deal is with a sudden Londoner in the midst of all Midwest US accents, but it was bizarre enough that I have no idea what the character said for quite a while, as I was been too distracted by the pronunciation.

I honestly don't know whether I like this story or not. There are some interesting ideas; the world seems interesting, if under-explained in some aspects. There are three basic ways to introduce a reader to a new world. There's the Malazan Method, in which the hapless reader is given a shove off the ship of reality into deep water, no lifeboat, no flotation device, to try to kick off her shoes and tread water and not drown or succumb to hypothermia. Nothing is explained, no allowances are made for the fact that the reader is not in fact living in the writer's head and can't know more than she's told. Then there's the opposite, for which I'm sure I'll think of an example later: not only is there a lifeboat and a Mae West, the reader is gently assisted into the lifeboat while it's still on deck (where it remains), and provided with further inflatables from water wings to a rubber ducky, and handed a lovely box lunch. The reader is assured that the sky is blue and the grass is green, and if there are new races or concepts no detail is too small to be included to make sure that the reader's image is precisely what the author sees in his head. The happy medium is a rare and wonderful thing, allowing the reader to find her own lifeboat and put together her own survival pack, and learn her way around the oars and whatnot naturally.

"Cast in Moonlight" leans toward the Malazan Method, though with maybe a pair of flippers and a small can of shark repellent thrown in. The races are introduced one by one, but either Sagara is more interested in the Leontines or she felt they warranted more detail: the sergeant is one of the only ones I have any real clear image of (though it is unfortunately Dreamworks). I don't know if the Aerians have other bird-like attributes. I have no idea what the Barrani are supposed to look like – neo-traditional elves? – or the Fa-alani (Tha-alani? Can't find it, even on Michelle West's blog), apart from some kind of mind-reading stalks on their foreheads. And why are the Barrani specifically so hateful to Kaylin? It's mentioned many times that in the fiefs where she has always lived, if you saw a Barrani you ran for it, but it's never explained what would happen if you didn't. Are there more races? What does it mean that someone is a Dragonlord – is it the head of some group like the Hawks and the Wolves, or … a dragon?

The language throws me a little. This is obviously somewhere else entirely, with both magic and technology and with at least four other races besides humans. But the narrative and dialogue are laced with very 20th - 21st century-US colloquialisms ("pissed off"; "I'll bet"; "who was that guy"; "big sucker"; "crappy" weather). And in several places the narrator makes a little editorial remark – along the lines of buildings being described as "too damn tall". If it's supposed to be Kaylin's point of view, that's the only really personal touch to it; otherwise the narrative voice is neutral. It's frequent, and it's odd, especially for a 13-year-old girl, even one from the streets. A related issue: there are a couple of occasions where characters engage in little side chats while something major is going on in the foreground, which annoyed me in two ways: I wanted to return to what was important, and also I was irritated with the characters for being distracted (and distracting me) from what was important.

Kaylin smacks a bit of Mary Sue in that she is adopted immediately by the Hawks, despite frequent protests that they have no use for a young girl, and she more than holds her own and evinces some unexpected and very useful talents along the way. People listen to her who shouldn't listen to her. In fact, it seemed like the text would just finish describing a character who would never in a millennium listen to a barely-teenaged girl, and then suddenly a few minutes later all is going just as Kaylin suggested. On the one hand, it is drummed into the reader's brain that she is only a 13-year-old stranger, known for mere hours: a completely unknown quantity – but on the other she is treated consistently as if she has been a member of the team, the "family", for a long time. (This is even glancingly addressed, as a couple of other characters express astonishment that she has only been with them a day. She is not an endearing child, and this instantaneous glomming-on is not quite believable.) In the end, the way in which the story is – somewhat – resolved is jarring, and I thought not properly dealt with; without spoilering, Kaylin goes through something she should not bounce back from immediately, but seems to do just that. And, in the end, I'm really not sure I like her, or the world she moves through, enough to hurry into the books.


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Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Probably two and a half stars, with a dash of generosity. I might change my mind. Never been so glad to finish a recreational book. Ever.

This will be, as often happens with me, long and a little spoilery, though I have retained most of the spoilers for my blog post. Still, please read at your own risk if you haven't read (or listened to) the book.

First of all, Wil Wheaton. I chose the audiobook largely because of him. I mean, okay, I never cared for Wesley Crusher (okay, I couldn't stand him) (okay, I hated his precocious guts), but Wil himself is king of the geeks (or president, at least). Wil's narration of this book is very nicely done – and it totally doesn't hurt that he gets to read the occasional (not frequent enough, IMO) Star Trek reference. Or Wil Wheaton reference. However … I can't help but wonder if, for me at least, it might have improved my opinion if I had read it, words on paper. I'll come back to that.

The idea of the book is a beauty. It picks up on something nearly everyone knows about (DVD and, apparently, video game Easter eggs) and on something everyone has at least a tiny seed of a dream about (winning lots and lots of money), and on a tried-and-true enjoyable gimmick (the treasure hunt), and blends it all together with real or pseudo (depending on the reader's age) nostalgia, a completely plausible excuse to get mileage out of all that time spent in front of TV and video game screens.

But I was disappointed. In some places, very disappointed.

Every review and blurb I've seen about the book celebrates the nostalgia, and to a certain degree that's valid for me. I never memorized WarGames, but this made me want to see it again. I've been watching a lot of 80's sitcoms on DVD lately - TV really was better then, in a lot of ways. And yes, I did indeed play D&D, and so the moment at the end of Halliday's video that echoed a certain manual cover made me smile. Nothing else in the book made me as happy as: "Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Kodan Armada" - ! Yes, I did indeed say it along with him.

But.

Keeping in mind, of course, that this story was a derivation of one man's 80's – Halliday's, heavily based, I presume, on Ernest Cline's – a good many things which were props and mainstays of my 80's are glanced at or missing entirely. ST:TNG was barely mentioned, and I thought it was the biggest geek Thing of the decade. Except for one thing: Princess Bride. Which was completely absent. Really? Are you joking? To my knowledge I've never, ever, met anyone in geek circles who can't (and doesn't) quote at least a quarter of the screenplay. Inconc- er, ridiculous. Overall: nostalgia? Meh.

The writing … "Infodump" is what happens when plot is brought to a dead halt for a period of explanation – like traffic being held up at an intersection while a really boring parade passes by. The idea is to, whenever possible, weave necessary information seamlessly into the action and dialogue so that the reader knows what's going on without being bored out of her mind. Ernest Cline? Not great at this. The beginning was pretty solid. Unfortunately, the smile that lingered on my face from the D&D and especially the Last Starfighter references Chapter Zero, refreshed briefly by the sardonic tone at the beginning of "what they should have told me", was wiped away by a ham-handed diatribe against organized religion (my attitude: you and your characters can believe whatever you want, just don't shove it up my nose) and – there it is. Big fat infodump, with the extra detraction of a jarringly bitter tone. The whole "life sucks" section put me off enough that I walked away from the book for several days.

After two full commutes spent listening to yet more info being dumped ... if this had been in a different audio format I'd have been seriously tempted to chuck this particular CD or tape out the car window. It was around then that I decided that for every painful instance of egregious infodump I was taking off half a star from the rating I'd be giving this.

Another exasperating habit Cline has is Reality Show Recapping. Having Wade watching a blow-by-blow recap of the situation on the news - I know. I was there. Don't tell me again. *headmeetdesk* Where was the man's editor? The repetitiveness might not have been so grating on the page, but aloud it was just one headbanger after another. Hearing the whole damned scoreboard read out again and again and yet again was worse than listening to someone chomp on ice cubes. (I hate that.) In a table on a page it could be skimmed for relevant information.

Another problem I had: despite the fact that I'm not one of those who reads mystery novels to figure out the killer before the detective, and actually almost never do manage to do so, still – I was about two steps ahead of a lot of this book's plot developments. Where Wade should look for the copper key? Aech's secret? I called it. That's not good. Yes, there were some surprises, but even they, in retrospect, were thoroughly telegraphed.

The characters were not built to become favorites of mine. Of themselves, they were entertaining, but my interest was almost academic, watching to see just what their challenges would be rather than how they would overcome them, much less whether. There was never much of a doubt as to whether, never much doubt about who would win (and even in what order). It was the writing that failed them, or me, or both. The "High Five" were in their late teens and early twenties, and acted like it – most of the time. They messed about and used foul language and were otherwise as un-endearing as the species is capable of … except when the plot demanded they speak or behave with more maturity and wherewithal (other than financial) than anything before made probable or believable.

And, obviously, I have no respect for someone who blows off a Shakespeare quote.

One last note: Art3emis's female-shaped robot fired from its breasts?! Oh. My. God. Seriously, how many psychological connotations does that have?

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Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson by Lyndsay Faye
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is inevitable that writers feel a deep-seated urge to pit Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper. The murders happened in the midst of Holmes's career; his contemporary readership must have wished he could step out of the pages and hunt down their nightmare for them. So it's no surprise that this is not the first time the idea has been pursued; there have been a couple of films (Murder by Decree with Christopher Plummer and James Mason as Holmes and Watson, and A Study in Terror), a handful of other books (including Michael Dibdin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story), and a video game. This was my first foray into the mashup.

Half an hour into the audiobook, I had small doubts. Holmes and Watson both faithfully give their solemn word that they will never reveal the details of the case the story starts with … but the concept is that the book is one of Watson's memoirs (albeit one he leaves sealed). It seems a bit odd that he'd even write the story down. I wasn't fond of this beginning, this prologue, wondering why it was starting there, with such an extended look at another case … until nearly the very end, when the reason for starting there becomes clear and it all just adds to the brilliance of the book.

First of all, as I commented somewhere, if Simon Vance narrated all audiobooks I would never read another page for myself again. I love this performance – every character is dead on: Watson, warm and a little dusty; Holmes, the famous clear strong tenor; Miss Monk, believably feminine and East End without going falsetto Eloiza Doolittle. And the Welsh accents just made me happy. All the accents made me happy. The reading was a joy.

I loved the Doyle-esque "Several highly publicized investigations that year displayed Holmes's remarkable skills to the public, including the appalling affair of the faulty oil lamp, and the matter of Mrs. Victoria Mendoza's mysteriously vanishing thimble and its consequences." Shades of the Giant Rat of Sumatra … Although perhaps Ms. Faye can be prevailed upon to do what Doyle never did, and give us those stories. (Along with "the affair of the second cellist".) I live in hopes that this is only the first of a new Holmes series.

There was, it seems, an innocence that was lost when Jack the Ripper began his work. It's hard to fathom that before 1888 ordinary folk could not conceive of such atrocities – or at least this is the sentiment Lyndsay Faye puts into the mouths of the gentlemen set to pursue the monster, from Holmes to the lowliest constable. Now, with 24-hour news and CSI and Criminal Minds and true crime novels, it's sadly hard to conceive of such a sweet time. There had been serial killers before the Ripper, but through some confluence of the media and the infancy of modern investigative techniques he became the first one to cause such a tremendous flurry, the first one to make the history books.

It's been some time since I read the actual original stories, but not so much time since I watched the wonderful current BBC series, and something that strikes me throughout Dust and Shadow is that this Holmes is much nicer than Benedict Cumberbatch's. He is much freer in his friendship with Watson than I was expecting – this Holmes is less "sociopathic genius with absolutely no social skills" than "so much smarter than everyone else there's no point in talking to them, with the exception of Watson". He placates Mrs. Hudson and pours tea for his friend and everything.

And this pastiche makes me want to go back and read all of the original work soon (had I world enough, and time). The characterizations of Holmes and Watson, and also LeStrade, are so engaging that part of me wants to hold them up against the originals. The tone of the writing feels very genuinely Watsonian. (Quotes are a right pain to make note of in the audio format – I usually hear lines I wish I could make note of while driving – but there have been several descriptive flourishes which made me smile at their Victorian purple tinge. Ah, there's one: "shafts of lunar illumination": beautiful) This is a Watson I want on my side, a Watson I want more of, staunch and solid and not remotely stupid. I love this Watson.

And I love this Holmes. A great deal of it is, of course, the really gorgeous tone of the narrator – his Holmes just rings out, clarion. But this is a Holmes that fits the template in my head: he feels right. This is one of the reasons I keep reading fan-fiction and pastiche and media tie-ins despite all the garbage that brings: when it's bad it's unconscionable, but when it's good – when the writer captures the voice of a well-known and well-loved character - it's so very much fun.

I also enjoyed the new part-time member of the team, Miss Mary Ann Monk. She's thisclose to being a cliché – but Lyndsay Faye pulls off a young woman toward whom it seems Watson and Holmes both harbor fondness, and indeed admiration – and I don't mind. Non-canon romance, liaisons outside of the bounds of the Official Story, is usually something that raises my hackles, but I found myself mentally nudging one or the other of the duo her way.

I think the only fault I can possibly find is that there's not enough Mrs. Hudson. I can live with it. And honestly, the use of Mrs. Hudson – particularly at the end – was wonderful. So … not a fault, after all.

There is a comeuppance that is received a good ways into the book which was one of the most satisfying examples of just deserts ever. And the final confrontation hit all the right notes. And that's all I'll say about that.

Being me, I looked up Ripper history. Lyndsay Faye was completely faithful to it up to the point of Holmes's growing involvement, and in fact wove him into the reality with enviable skill. And part of the brilliance of this book is the life breathed into a one hundred and twenty-four year old story: new suspense is added with the question of how it would play out. Would Holmes manage to save any of the victims? How would his involvement affect the sequence of events? Would the inconclusive end – the Ripper kills just ending with no real explanation – be worked into the tale? I can't really answer the questions without massive spoilers, so instead I will say simply this:

*standsup*clap*clap*clap*clap*

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