Archives - July 2006

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3 July 2006

Barbara Hambly, Dragonsbane, Dragonshadow, Knight of the Demon Queen, Dragonstar: I've read Dragonsbane before and still liked it very much. Lord John Aversin is known as "Dragonsbane", for the dragon he killed long ago; when another dragon threatens the kingdom, Lord Gareth goes north to the Winterlands to find John and ask him for help. When Gareth and John go south, they are accompanied by the witch Jenny Waynest, John's lover and mother of his two sons, who has long been torn between her desire for more magical power and her love for John. Their encounter with the dragon, Morkeleb the Black, is only the start of the challenges they will face, from a sorceress who wants to take over the kingdom, to Jenny's increasing conflict between her magic and her family. Dragonsbane is a quietly thoughtful, bittersweet novel about choice and sacrifice. And it has a really interesting dragon, too.

The melancholy mood of Dragonsbane becomes grim in the following trilogy, in which the lives of John and Jenny are disrupted, horribly, by demons. The demons are extra nasty, and the characters go through painful travails, and it all seems rather unnecessary. I was just barely interested enough to finish the trilogy, but definitely not to reread them. The ending of Dragonsbane was poignant and right, and I wish Hambly had left it there.

Books read: 4

4 July 2006

Dia Calhoun, White Midnight: a prequel to Firegold, and I liked it even more. The heroine, Rose, is a shy, scared, asthmatic, unattractive teenager who has to face and conquer her fears, and Calhoun does a brilliant job with her. Also, there's an interesting use of the Eros-Psyche myth, with non-standard consequences. Really, really good stuff.

Books read: 1

5 July 2006

Cecil Castellucci, The Queen of Cool: I blew through this in about half an hour and liked it quite a bit. Libby is the most popular girl in school, but she's massively bored, with her friends, the trends she starts, and her entire life. On an impulse, she signs up for an internship at the LA Zoo, where she's teamed up with two nerds: Tina, an aspiring actress who's also a Little Person, and Sheldon, an introverted, very smart "pizzaface". Libby's transformation is maybe a little too easy, but the characters are great, particularly Tina.

Books read: 1

7 July 2006

Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora: a rollicking, action-filled fantasy, set in a marvelously realized magical city. The narrative structure didn't quite work for me (though this is partly a flaw in me as a reader, I realize, that I don't do well with this kind of structure); it cut back and forth between past and present in what I often thought was an intrusive way, and later in the book, the past storyline just wasn't nearly as interesting as the present one, which caused me to be impatient every time the narrative broke away from the present. But once I got into it, I couldn't put the book down; the second half is a roller coaster ride of swashbuckling intrigue, and it's a ton of fun. I've heard there's to be a second book, and I'll be very interested to read it.

Books read: 1

8 July 2006

Tom Holland, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic: an excellent narrative history of the breakdown of the Roman Republic, from Sulla, Marius, and the Gracchi down to Caesar, Mark Antony, and Octavian. It's skillfully written, witty, and highly readable, with excellent narrative drive and characterization which make it as easy to read as a novel. Holland is sometimes careful to specify where he's speculating due to lack of evidence, sometimes not, and he uses quotations from sources like Suetonius without making it clear that Suetonius was largely putting words in his subjects' mouths; therefore, I wouldn't use Rubicon as a scholarly resource. As a rousing narrative of the fall of the Roman Republic, though, it's great reading.

Books read: 1

11 July 2006

Diana Wynne Jones, Wilkins' Tooth, Eight Days of Luke, Dogsbody, Deep Secret, The Merlin Conspiracy, Power of Three, The Homeward Bounders, Hexwood, Minor Arcana: all rereads, due to reading Mendlesohn's book (below). My favorites of this slew are Dogsbody (though I'd forgotten how sad the ending makes me), Deep Secret (though I could do without the constant references to a particular character as "fat Wendy"), and The Homeward Bounders, which is incredible and chilling. My least favorite is Power of Three, which I just don't find very interesting for some reason. I love the casually dazzling way Jones slips between fantasy and science fiction and all of the layers of legend and myth she uses, which help make the books very rereadable and rewarding of multiple readings.

Books read:

13 July 2006

Diana Wynne Jones, the Dalemark Quartet (Cart and Cwidder, Drowned Ammet, The Spellcoats, The Crown of Dalemark): also rereads, though I haven't read them in so long that I'd largely forgotten them and just enjoyed them as though I was reading them for the first time. Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet tell largely separate stories which take place at about the same time, while The Spellcoats goes back in time to tell some of the early history of Dalemark; The Crown of Dalemark brings all of the threads together for the conclusion to the quartet. I like the way in which Jones plays with time, using different time periods for different books, and even bringing in a character from the future for the final book. Also, she's created a nicely complex and believable world, more gritty and realistic than many fantastic medieval worlds.

Books read: 4

14 July 2006

Farah Mendlesohn, Diana Wynne Jones: Children's Literature and the Fantastic Tradition: an excellent, cogently argued study which caused me to reread a lot of Jones with an increased appreciation for the depth of her work and the ways in which she engages with the tropes and traditions of fantasy.

Books read: 1

15 July 2006

Lorna Hill, Swan Feather: the latest in Girls Gone By's reprintings of Wells' children's novels dealing with the Sadler's Wells ballet school. The plot of this one is perhaps overly melodramatic, but there's a nicely understated romance which I liked. Hill isn't really a patch on Noel Streatfeild -- her characterization isn't nearly as good -- but since I've read all the Streatfeild there is (at least all the theatre/dance-related ones), Hill is worth reading as a followup.

Books read: 1

16 July 2006

T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone: the story of the education of the boy Wart (afterwards King Arthur) by the magician Merlyn. I've read The Once and Future King many times, but never this version of The Sword in the Stone, which White wrote and published separately first and then revised in order to make the first part of The Once and Future King. I wish our copy of The Once and Future King weren't on loan at the moment, because now I'd like to reread it to spot the differences; some entire episodes are in one book but not the other. Anyway, I really liked this version, which struck me as a little more lighthearted than the later one, and I love White's odd mix of medieval and modern language and customs.

Books read: 1

17 July 2006

Dia Calhoun, Aria of the Sea: Cerinthe is chosen to be a student at the Royal School of Dance, after her mother's death causes her to reject her talent for healing. Cerinthe is torn between dancing and healing, and her struggle to choose is beautifully portrayed by Calhoun. The characterization is excellent, and the plot takes some unexpected turns; I particularly appreciated how Calhoun handled Cerinthe's incipient romance with a fisherman and her rivalry with another student.
Dia Calhoun, The Phoenix Dance: The Phoenix Dance takes place in the same city as Aria of the Sea, years later; several of the characters from the first book appear, but not as main characters. Here, Calhoun takes on a challenging subject: bipolar disorder (which she says in the book's afterword that she has herself). Phoenix is a young apprentice shoemaker who suffers from what the healers call the Illness of Two Kingdoms: the Kingdom of Brilliance, and the Kingdom of Darkness. When she is drawn into a mystery surrounding the twelve princesses of the kingdom, whose shoes are mysteriously in tatters each morning, she must confront her illness and learn to handle it.

I didn't like this quite so much as Aria of the Sea; I thought Calhoun was maybe trying to shoehorn a little too much into the book and didn't quite do justice to the "Twelve Dancing Princesses" part of the plot. I admired her portrayal of Phoenix, though, and her courage in taking on what must have been a difficult thing to write about. I would be very interested to know how people with more experience than I have with bipolar disorder feel about the book and how successful it is in its portrayal of the disorder.

Books read: 2

18 July 2006

Robert B. Parker, Blue Screen: Here, Parker brings together the protagonists of his two non-Spenser mystery series, Boston PI Sunny Randall and small-town Massachusetts police chief Jesse Stone. It's a good partnership, full of witty banter and sexual tension, but I wish Parker had managed to come up with a mystery worthy of his characters. What he gives them instead is a mishmash of movie making, prostitution, money scandals, and hidden pasts, much of which is unconvincing and the rest of which is boring. I mean, a movie star with a sordid past unknown to the press but which the investigators manage to figure out in about a day? A new National League baseball team called the Connecticut Nutmegs? (Here I am marveling at both the idiotic name and the totally unlikely location of the team.)

Books read: 1

19 July 2006

Tom Harrisson, Living Through the Blitz: Harrisson was the cofounder of Mass-Observation, an organization begun in Britain in 1937 which in Harrisson's words "sought to supply accurate observations of everyday life and real (not just published) public moods." In Living Through the Blitz, Harrisson uses these observations, by everyday people recording events and impressions, to form a picture of the Blitz from the point of view of the citizens who lived through it. It's very interesting and full of fascinating everyday details, and I think it would make excellent research reading for anyone writing fiction set in this period.

Books read: 1

22 July 2006

Elizabeth A. Lynn, The Chronicles of Tornor (Watchtower, The Dancers of Arun, The Northern Girl): I picked up Watchtower a while ago because it won the World Fantasy Award in 1980, and I've been making it a small, slow project to read all the WFA winners. (Interestingly, I note that The Dancers of Arun was also up for the award that year.) Watchtower, which tells the story of a young prince's fight to reclaim his keep from southern invaders, is slow-paced and thoughtful; I didn't really realize how caught up in it I was until the bittersweet ending. The other two books take place in the same land, The Dancers of Arun 130 years later and Northern Girl more than 100 years after that. What I liked best about all three was the worldbuilding; Lynn focuses on different aspects of it and different areas of the country each time, and it all becomes progressively deeper and more real-feeling. I also liked the matter-of-fact acceptance and exploration of sexuality; homosexual as well as heterosexual relationships are absolutely the norm.

Books read: 3

25 July 2006

Scott Westerfeld, the Midnighters trilogy (The Secret Hour, Touching Darkness, Blue Noon): There is a secret hour in the day, beginning at midnight each night; most people are frozen in time while it passes, except for those people born on the stroke of midnight, who have the ability to move about during the midnight time, and the creatures of the night who live only during that hour. When Jessica Day moves to a small town in Oklahoma, she discovers that she is a Midnighter, and she joins a small group of fellow teens and their battle against the darkling creatures, who are threatened by Jessica's mysterious special power. The premise is intriguing and well thought out, and the worldbuilding supporting it is very well done, particularly in the second book, where we start to learn more about the history of the Midnighters. I actually thought Jessica herself was a little boring, but I loved several of the other Midnighters and was pleased that they got more screen time in the second and third books. Also, I spent days afterward picking out thirteen-letter words in everything I read. (Hey, "worldbuilding"!)

Books read: 3

26 July 2006

Michael Palin, Himalaya: a companion volume to his BBC series (which I haven't seen but would like to), compiled from the notebooks and tape recordings he kept along the way. It's very witty (and thankfully not Pythonesque silly funny), well-observed, and packed with fascinating historical and cultural notes. The photography, by Basil Pao, is excellent, both the people and the landscapes.

Books read: 1

28 July 2006

Geraldine Jewsbury, Zoe: This was Jewsbury's first novel, begun as a collaboration between herself and Elizabeth Paulet, with criticism by Jane Welsh Carlyle, but finished by Jewsbury. It's overwritten in spots, but powerful and undoubtedly shocking to her readers, as Jewsbury portrays the passion between a married woman (Zoe, the heroine) and a Catholic priest. I was somewhat bored by the parts having to do with the priest and his religious doubts, but I was much more engaged with Zoe's story, wherein Jewsbury questions (as she does in The Half-Sisters) women's roles in society. Also, I really liked the friendship between Zoe and Lady Clara, which could so easily have devolved into jealousy and catfighting; instead, Jewsbury gives them a relationship in which each supports the other.

Books read: 1

29 July 2006

Anya Seton, Dragonwyck: still not Katherine (all right, all right, I should just reread that already), but a reasonably good Gothic set in 1840s New York. Many of the standard ingredients are here, all well done: a young, beautiful naïve heroine comes to work as a governess in the magnificent mansion of a wealthy, dark, enigmatic man with a jealous wife. There are also a young, red-haired doctor, a mysterious and frightening servant, a family curse, and a ghost. Also, apart from the fairly effective Gothicness, there's a lot of interesting stuff about the upper and lower class ways of life in early 19th-century New York, plus convincing cameo appearances by Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe, among other.

Books read: 1

30 July 2006

Marcia Muller, Vanishing Point: the latest in her Sharon McCone mystery series, about a San Francisco PI. Here Sharon investigates a case that's been cold a long time: a woman who disappeared twenty-two years before, leaving behind her husband and two daughters. The quality of Muller's McCone books continues to be high; personal developments in the lives of Sharon and her friends and family help keep the characters interesting, and the mystery is nicely done as well.

Books read: 1

31 July 2006

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop: a small, but lovely book. I say "small" rather than "short" (though it is, at only about 120 pages) because like Austen, Fitzgerald works in miniature here. The plot is simple -- Florence Green starts a bookshop in a small English town, and Fitzgerald examines the repercussions of her decision and its effects on herself and the other inhabitants of the town. For me, this turned out an interesting example of how reading tastes can change over the years. When I started it, I remembered belatedly that I'd read it several years ago (at least six, since it was before I started keeping track of my reading); when I looked it up on Amazon, I found that I'd only rated it two stars. I think this must have been on the grounds that, as some of the reader reviews there complain, nothing really happens in the book. Well, yes, there are no earthshattering events, and the characters are just ordinary people -- but Fitzgerald portrays their lives in a keenly observed way that, this time through, I was much more gripped by the book. Now I want to read more Fitzgerald.

Books read: 1

Total books read this month: 39
Total books read this year: 272


Last updated 23 August 2006. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.