Seed to Harvest – Octavia Butler

I finally read the Octavia Butlers that I grabbed on a whim at the Big Bad Wolf Sale. I finished Fledgling and moved on to Seed to Harvest. I was actually surprised at how much I liked her writing. For one thing, it’s simple and clear; and for another, the concepts she uses aren’t particularly complicated (as you can see, I am an easy reader. I am the Harley Davidson of readers).

 

Like me, but with less American flag and more pages.

For example, Fledgling starts off a lot like Tanith Lee’s Birthgrave, with an immortal of unknown power or origin awakening from a slumber. Except that unlike Birthgrave, Fledgling did not suck. More on that in another post.

Seed to Harvest is actually a compilation of Butler’s Patternmaster series – Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay’s Ark and Patternmaster. The first two explored the concept of breeding superpowered humans, and the struggle between the long-lived Doro (the guy who breeds everyone) and the women who are his match – the first he finds in some random place in Africa, the last is the final and most successful result of his breeding programme.

Like this, only psychic.

Clay’s Ark introduced an extremely virulent alien disease that results in those who survive it having children that are sphinx-like (I still have difficulty imagining them. Surprisingly I couldn’t find any DeviantArt fanwork of them). Clay’s Ark was pretty brutal with rape, torture and violence, but it fell in with the sort of post-apoc and pre-apoc (must be the first book I read that turned out to be both) setting.

Essentially, those three books were great. They laid down a myth, drew it out and introduced an adversary for the superhumans (who are now all psychics). They were novel ideas. My problem is with the final book, Patternmaster.

There is nothing new about Patternmaster. No new ideas, no new situations. If you had told me that Butler had taken a year-long vacation to Romania and had asked her 16 year-old niece who was a fan of pretty bad fantasy to ghost-write Patternmaster, I would have believed you. I would have been relieved to have believed you. Because Patternmaster sucks.

After building up to the superhumans with psychic abilities being led by the one great psychic who holds the pattern (slavery? or greater good?), and the introduction of the creepy-intelligent-animal Clayark creatures, Patternmaster is an afterthought to complete the cycle.

The story is that Clayark’s have attacked the Patternmaster, Rayal. As he lays dying, his son Coransee (not to be confused with the beer) tries to consolidate his power and either kill or control his only competition for the Pattern – his younger brother, Teray.

Not Coransee

This book is Teray’s monomyth. And Teray is an asshole.

That is the main problem of the story (aside from the sudden departure from good storytelling). Teray is supposed to be better than his slightly power-crazy older brother. We don’t ever see how he is better.

Yeah, he doesn’t place psychic geas’ on his underlings. BECAUSE HE DOESN’T HAVE UNDERLINGS. Yeah he doesn’t misuse his power as a Housemaster to steal people’s wives. BECAUSE HE AIN’T A HOUSEMASTER. Yeah he doesn’t treat people, especially women, like shit and expect them to obey him…oh wait. HE DOES.

So at the end when Rayal tells Teray that he is worthy of holding the Pattern because 1. Rayal was waiting for him and 2. His brother wasn’t ‘good enough’, you’re just like WAIT A MINUTE. I WANT TO VOTE HIM OFF THE ISLAND.

Some people like Teray.

Why was Rayal waiting for him? Before the idea of becoming Patternmaster took ahold of Mr Beer, he was a good Housemaster. In fact, before this, Rayal himself had killed all his siblings (except the one he married) to ensure that he would get the Pattern. Mr Beer was just doing what was expected of him. It sounds like the only thing he did wrong was wanting the Pattern. Which was expected of him.

????????

At the end, Rayal gives some wishy washy excuse about Teray’s healing powers making him a more suitable Patternmaster. That’s just a fluke of luck. He didn’t EARN his healing power. He didn’t WORK HARD for it. In fact, unlike Mr Beer or Amber the badass healer who for some reason follows Teray around, Teray doesn’t seem to have made an effort for anything beyond thinking about himself.

Basically Teray’s moments with Teray sound like this: POOR TERAY. LIFE IS SO HARD. OMG MY WIFE THINKS MY HOT BROTHER IS HOT! SHE BETRAYED ME. DESPITE THE FACT THAT I CHOSE TO PUT US IN THIS POSITION. POOR TERAY. SO POWERFUL YET STUCK HERE. DON’T THEY REALISE HOW POWERFUL I AM?? I AM SO POWERFUL!

It’s like listening to a fantasy lit version of James Franco. So, screw you, Teray. You made Patternmaster suck. And you spoiled all of Doro’s efforts. At least Doro was an interesting asshole.

And yet you’re still here, Franco. Making boring-ass movies like Oz and writing condescending reviews about Superman.

I would still suggest reading these books, but maybe stop at Clay’s Ark and pretend Patternmaster was never written (although it defeats the purpose of Clay’s Ark not to have Patternmaster. argghh).

Redshirts – John Scalzi

I haven’t accessed wordpress in so long I forgot my password. Actually that’s not indicative of anything; I’m always losing passwords. But this is the third time for wordpress so it has some sort of achievement award status in my life.

It’s not like I haven’t been reading any terrible books. But since the last review, I had picked up Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten on the strength of goodreads reviews. You know the usual. Strong female lead. Engaging plot. Great writing. And the result was inevitable.

After 16 pages of self pity I put down the book and thought, why do I do this to myself? Why? Seriously, why? The moment I see the words urban fantasy + strong female protagonist, I should know by now that it means self-absorbed little shit of a main character. I do know, I guess I just hope it will be a different kind of little shit, maybe one that is self-aware as well.

And by self-aware, I don’t mean doing shitty things and being aware of them like that gives you a free pass to be a shit. And I would also like these shits to be a little less liked by other characters, because people in real life don’t particularly like little shits, as far as I know.

So I stopped. Classes started, thankfully, so I didn’t have time to think about crappy books.

But now classes are over. And Redshirts fell into my hands. It was actually not too bad. It’s about the redshirts on a spaceship who start noticing that whenever they go on missions with the captain or the science officer or the other dude with a rank, they die in disproportionate numbers. An ode to every single sci fi series except Firefly (because Firefly was above all that. Also they couldn’t afford a larger crew anyway. They couldn’t even afford the actual crew).

SPOILERS

A bunch of redshirts figure out what’s going on (they’re in a TV series) and attempt to fix it (by going back in time).

Now, by that sentence you’d probably think ‘Oh’. Like, Oh, WTF. Which was my reaction when I discovered their plan.

The logic behind the plan: They are in the year 24somethingsomething. They discover that the reason redshirts keep dying on away missions is because they are on a TV show. The TV show is being written in 2012. They decide that they have to go back to 2012 and tell the writers to stop killing of people.

I enjoyed the novel right up to the point where they decided to go back in time as a solution. Then it didn’t make sense. If there was an actual show with actual actors being filmed, then why did this spaceship reality even exist at all?

I thought it would be like some kind of futuristic Mojoverse, where people are tortured for good entertainment. But (in my mind) they aren’t even directly connected to the TV series’ universe.

The logic is that the UU (Scalzi’s version of United Federation of Planets) has a fleet of starships, and it just so happened that some TV writers in 2012 happened to write about one of those starships, thus sucking the universe into an alternate reality. Or perhaps the writers in 2012 created this UU reality by writing about it. Despite the fact that it shouldn’t be affected at all because the entire thing, including people dying, was filmed onset. So what is the point of this alternate reality?

The hand wave is the alternate reality theory. Who knows why they exist? Keep this in mind when you hesitate before crossing the street next time. If you don’t cross, and had you instead chosen to cross, would you have been run over by that impatient asshat in a Vios?

Would you have gone safely across the street to your office, meeting by chance an old acquaintance whom you would have missed by the seconds you took not crossing at first, exchanging numbers, meeting up with her the week later, complaining about your job, she offers to hook you up with her editor, and you are in the job of your dreams four months later.

But you didn’t cross, so that is in an alternate reality. And every time you make a decision, a new branch of reality breaks off from that point. There are a trillion trillion yous, and they are all different.

Anyway. I had a problem with this books solution because I couldn’t understand the mechanics behind the alternate realities. Not the books fault, but may not be some people’s cup of tea.

I haven’t mentioned any characters individually because they’re all basically one person. There’s Dahl and Duvall, and Hester and Hanson. But it doesn’t matter because the snappy dialogue could have come from any of them. There are no physical descriptions anyway, which is still okay. But they aren’t any character differentiation either, so it’s basically Andy Dahl (POV character) talking to himself.

I liked the codas at the end though.

If you want some creepy alternate-reality madness, try Ubik by Philip K Dick. I wanted so badly to throw that book into a wall of metal traps, and I think that feeling should be shared.

The Sabina Kane Series

Writing about good authors is so boring. Re-reading my post about Eugenides is so boring. Of course Eugenides is a good writer. Nobody cares if I think he’s a good writer. There’s actually nothing to discuss, unless we get into it academically. Complaining about shitty writers who disappoint me at every turn is way more fun.

Now, my choice to torture myself by reading the second part of Deborah Harkness’ witch thing series turned out to be a bust. I was unable to read past the part where Matthew’s brain takes leave of his body, and he becomes stupider than usual. You must admit that as heroes go, he is a dumbass. He has no idea what’s going on and why he does things, and then he tells the whole, still-burn-people-at-the-stake world that his wife is a witch. Matthew has special snowflake syndrome. He thinks he’s special because he married a witch and nothing can hurt them because of their specialness. And that is exactly how Harkness intends for it to be. If you have read the book, TELL ME THAT’S NOT TRUE EH? EHHH?

Noooo! I’m too special for this!!!

Reading Shadow of whatever left me positively devastated at the state of urban fantasy. Like. How come everything sucked? Why is stupidity celebrated? Lack of plot encouraged? Personalitiless characters glorified? Surely there is a writer out there who can write DECENT urban fantasy without pissing me off. With this goal in mind, off I went to goodreads.com to check out the highest rated urban fantasy whose synopsis didn’t sound like rubbish.

Which brought  me to Jaye Wells and the Sabina Kane series. Now, all of the books in this series have a 4-star or higher rating on goodreads (but then the 50 shades books also have a 4-star rating, so I don’t think goodreads is reliable. And after reading Wells, I can assure you that it is not reliable at all. At. All.). I happily downloaded ALL OF THE BOOKS. ALL OF THEM. And I read ALL OF THEM. Now that I think about it, I must have been infected with some compulsive disease that wears off after you have completed a herculean task that accomplishes nothing.

ALL OF THEM.

One of the things I hate about urban fantasy heroines is that many of them evolve. Evolution is fine, mutants did it and so should magical heroines. But every single one of the heroines so far have gone from Toad-level powers to Scarlet Witch reality-obliterating abilities (if they don’t start out with Scarlet Witch powers on the reveal). It’s disgusting. What’s the point of reading about a heroine who can just wipe dangers out with the snap of her fingers – but the whole book is about how she doesn’t because she’s so goddamned stupid (CASE IN POINT – Harkness’ Diana).

So. Sabina Kane. It started out pretty interesting. There’s the setup of duality in Kane: witch/vampire, killer/friend, right/wrong. The potential for an interesting character is there. Basically Kane is a half witch half vampire (with purple eyes? right? because this is the sort of character you came up with when you were 15 and watched too much Buffy and Fushigi Yuugi) who works as an assassin for the vampire queens. She’s actually related to one of them, but because she’s tainted with witch blood, she is unworthy of a noble education, thus killing people is her job. There’s a dynamic between Kane’s feelings of inferiority, her desire to be accepted and the way she’s treated by the other vampires. Or at least there could be, if anyone other than her grandmother (one of the queens) treated her shittily.

Like this.

Or this. 

She finds out things are not as they seem with the vampires, discovers she has a twin sister and then goes on some godawful pointless quest to save the world. There are two main things I didn’t understand at all about this series. Spoilers ahead. Not that it would reduce the enjoyment of these confused books if you read them.

1. THE TONE. I believe the tone of these books got hit by a bus and then run over by Optimus Prime. Because it starts out serious and dark, with Kane killing someone she claims is her friend, and the whole muddy relationship with the vampires, parental issues etc. And then Giggles the demon makes an appearance, and the whole tone is shot. Everything becomes a joke. You don’t know whether to take this series seriously or not. And it goes on like this the whole time. People die, Kane is sad, some slapstick humour is introduced. The absolute worst was the final story arc, where some fellow who is supposed to destroy the world pretty much ruins Kane’s life and kills her father (and sister I think. Not sure) is revealed to  be some pathetic jilted lover to be made fun of. LOL. He’s so lame and stalker-y, like that guy you went out with once and then wasn’t interested in, but then he kept emailing and calling you and sending you poetry?? LOLOL. Guess what? It’s not funny!! Fuck you Jaye Wells. Fuck you for raising my hopes and then shitting on them with your lousily-paced slapstick humour.

2. THE MARY SUES. Yes, there is more than one Mary Sue. Can you believe that? Kane and her twinnny twin twin. They turn into goddesses at the end. You can’t get more Mary Sue than that. But in true uneven Wells fashion, she can’t decide that after they defeat the big bad (who was more like lame and snivelly) whether they are still as powerful, so Kane is happy just taking some title on the vampire council or whatever. Gimme a break. You use goddesshood as a Deus Ex Machina, and you can’t even  be bothered to follow through with the implications of having a goddess among the unwashed supernatural masses? Like hell she would just sit on some damned council and let people continue to disrespect and ignore her like before. Like hell the other, less powerful characters would allow that.

Oh, and I just thought of 3. DISTURBING UNDERTONES OF SEXUAL IMPRISONMENT. That’s just a dramatic heading because I didn’t want to outright type HOMOPHOBIA. Basically there’s this lesbian werewolf who has hooked up with a vampire girl. Her father is the leader of some pack and keeps insisting that she get married off to some other pack dude. I actually thought that Kane would do something about it, or it wouldn’t be a serious issue (considering the tone of the book) but what happens is the werewolf girl gets married off and Kane gets invited to the public mating/marriage ceremony. Where they turn into wolves and mate onstage. And Kane actually sees the werewolf girl try to run away from her mate, and then she turns away and all she can hear is her despairing howls. Basically the girl is forced into marriage and then raped by her husband. Onstage. And Kane’s reaction? OH, TOO BAD. Can’t do nothing about it. And later on in the last book (I think), she finds out that the werewolf girl and her mate have a child, and she’s like, AW SHUCKS, I GUESS EVERYTHING TURNED OUT FINE.

Unless you’re, like, gay. Or a werewolf. Or both. 

Now do you see the problem with the tone of this series? What am I supposed to take seriously? What do I not? Why is she so flippant about rape and sexuality? She builds up to deaths, and then they become meaningless because the villain is a joke. In fact, if I could describe Wells’ writing in one word, it would be flippant.

I think I have made myself upset thinking about point no 3, so I will stop here. I think Wells has other series’, and I hope that she has fixed the flaws that made Kane so uneven. I’ll probably read them when I’m desperate again.

Cheerful recommendation: Naomi Novik’s addictive Temeraire series.

Awesome Temeraire pic from fuckyeahtemeraire.tumblr.com.

Middlesex

After the horrors of the wedding and 15 page assignments written in two days, I decided to seek refuge in my (pirated but beloved) ebooks. I didn’t have time to download anything new (and I can’t seem to find anything interesting! WHY? Is it me or has there been a reduction in good books lately?), so I read the Jeffrey Eugenides’ that I already had, The Marriage Plot and Middlesex. Eugenides is an awareness writer. Really. His books have a central theme: Bipolar disorder – Marriage Plot, Hermaphroditism – Middlesex, and the story is built on that. I won’t say plot, because I’m not sure if Middlesex had a plot. I haven’t read Virgin Suicides, but Greg did and he says issues of parental control and emotional abuse come up.

Sorry, this was all that came to mind after the last sentence.

So it feels a little bit like you’re reading a well-written brochure for whatever issue Eugenides has taken under his wing. Just a little, because it is well-written, and you don’t mind gathering all this new information while reading about romance and disappointment and just people being people. He tends to meander though, and as I was reading Alexander McCall Smith’s Blue Shoes and Happiness at the same time, it was like meandering squared. My mum hates McCall Smith because she believes that his books are pointless and the heroines are useless. Eugenides’ characters are McCall Smith for my mum then, because things happen and they react to it, but things tend to go off on (interesting) tangents here and there.

On to Middlesex itself. Middlesex is the name of the house where the main character lives for most of his formative years and is also a literal representative of Cal Stephanides himself. The book is basically a historical/genealogical record/story starting from his grandparents, an incestuous relationship within which the seed of middlesex found fertile ground, and it is sporadically interrupted with a few paragraphs of modern day Cal and a lady that catches his eye. It actually reminded me a little of Indian literature, you know, House of Blue Mangoes, A Suitable Boy etc because of the focus on the family story. Not the horrid Amitav Ghosh sort of writing. One day I will write about how much I hated Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide. One day.

While hermaphrodtism is the main focus of the book, there’s also issues of immigrants, racism, war and sexuality. It’s all handled with the same deft, sympathetic hand, and you can imagine being that character and feeling those feelings. I did have a problem understanding the incest at the beginning because it just didn’t make sense to me at all. But it’s done in a way that doesn’t ignore the magnitude of what they are doing, while at the same time presenting it in a matter of fact fashion. ‘Yes, I married my sister, oh god I’m going to have nightmares about it’ sort of thing.

Like this, but in the 1920s. And Greek.

I would get the actual book if I wanted to read Eugenides again though. It didn’t have the proper depth being read on a kindle. It was robbed of some of its old-fashioned weight when translated into digitised format. His works are the kind that need physical form because they’re so dense with life.

Shadow of Blahhhh – Deborah Harkness

Before I Kindled the sequel to Deborah Harkness’ atrocious A Discovery of Witches, I asked myself, Why?

Why would I put myself through that mind-numbing frustration, vacillating between being impressed with descriptive writing and being appalled at the utter stupidity of the so-called romance and the so-called plot. Plot! Hah! My roast vegetable have more plot than this book. Plus the roast vegetables are freaking delicious!

Look at all that delicious plot. 

Why? According to Seth, it is because I enjoy being miserable. He should know, he has to listen to me when I am. Also, that sounds like something my mother would say about me. My brother claims he understands that I have to see this through. I HAVE TO KNOW. Or maybe I am a sadist, like that lady who does chapter by chapter reviews of 50 Shades of Grey. (I have heard a lot of accusations saying this book is un-American despite being set in Boston or whatever, because of tea or prams or whatever, but my main bug in this line is the spelling of Grey. Grey is British spelling; Gray, American. Everytime I see the cover, I mentally correct it to Gray).

Every dang time.

So far I have gotten to Chapter 4. As you can imagine nothing important has happened, even though they are on the run for their lives basically. Christopher Marlowe makes an appearance. Other people do too, but I had to read Faustus last semester (weird and unimpressive, only because I was expecting something like a play version of Swinburne’s Faustine), and was curious about Marlowe. Of course, Marlowe is in love with Christian. I mean Matthew. Because Matthew is so lovable despite being grumpy, rude and one-dimensional. Also stupid. How stupid? Oh LET ME COUNT THE WAYS.

One of the reasons they go back in time is because the Congregation (the Creature Council, basically) disapproves of marriage/mating between species. Diana and Matthew are threatened and tortured because of it. And also because drama = plot for Harkness. So in modern times, Matthew says the Congregation is not as powerful as it once was, but they still managed to do a lot of harm. So what is the first thing Matthew does when he GOES BACK IN TIME, WHEN THE CONGREGATION IS EVEN MORE POWERFUL?

He fucking tells everyone that Diana is a witch and she is his wife. Every. Bloody. One. His servants, his friends, the bitter guy with an unrequited love for him. And for what purpose? No freaking idea. It doesn’t serve anymore purpose than if he’d just  told them she was his captive, or some girl he’d found or some friend of the family’s that he was now responsible for. Nope. Matthew is SO BRAVE, that’s why he tells every Tom, Dick and Harry that the goddamned witch is his wife. What happens? She gets accused of witchcraft in the village.

In fact, this is unworthy of a full facepalm because it is just too ridiculous.

The other reason they go back in time is because witches of our modern era are weak and   have no mojo to teach SuperPoweredGoddesWitch Diana to get a handle on her powers, and so they need a proper witch from the past to educate Diana. So I assumed that when they chose that specific time to return to, it was because Matthew knew there would be a witch or witches there to teach Diana. Otherwise, what was the point of going all the way back there and putting your friends and family in jeopardy while you took off, right?

This is how I think they feel about their friends and family.

So guess what happens when they get there. Nothing. Nothing happens. Because Matthew not only doesn’t know a single goddamn witch, THEY’VE ALL MOVED AWAY BECAUSE OF HIM. This may have occurred to him while hatching this plan with his mated nitwit Diana, but as you can see, Matthew is not the brightest bulb on display. Instead of some awesome witch, they drag in the village healer so that Diana can show off in front of her so that later she can accuse Diana of being a witch in the marketplace. Oh joy.

See what I mean by frustration? Yet the descriptions of food is just so wonderful, and I can see there’s a talented writer under all that absolute buffoonery.

That’s right Deadpool, a man I would love more if he were not so incomprehensible.

Kraken – China Mieville

I have to admit that I am unable to spell Mieville’s name without googling the correct spelling first. Why his name couldn’t be Andrew Andrews or something, I don’t know. So Mieville is actually a pretty…respected?…author. His books are everywhere, he’s the new Neil Gaiman+Michael Chabon etc etc. They are, in fact, so abundant in bookstores that somehow Seth and I have managed to collect four of his books over the past year. Not a big deal right? Except we’ve never read a single one of them. Until now.

I did attempt to read The City and The City, and I nearly threw it against the wall in frustration. I kept it away and vowed never again to read Mieville because he gave me a headache and went to read my Sneaky Pie mysteries to calm down. Recently though, I picked up Kraken because 1. the cover kept reminding of sashimi during my vegetarian fast and 2. it sounded too interesting not to read.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiightttttttttt???

And I have to admit that it was worth reading, if only for the details. I went into Kraken expecting it to have a Victorian steampunk setting, what with museums and cults and things, and was a bit disappointed to find that it was set in modern day London. I kept having a slight feeling of disjointedness throughout the book when they mentioned modern day things like lolcats and google and Star Trek; I think that was partly my botched expectations as well as the fact that maybe these things were not inserted as smoothly as they could have been. Or maybe they should not have been mentioned at all. These references can date a good book.

I know, I’m doing it wrong. BUT LOOK GINGER KITTEN ARRGHH. 

Recap: Basically the giant squid goes missing from the museum, tank and all, and there’s a rush to find out who took it because it’s going to cause the apocalypse. There are weird cults, gangsters, BPRD a paranormal police dept, a bunch of seers and miscellaneous supernatural things. Billy Harrow is the museum fellow who put Kraken in his tank and now everyone wants him, for reasons that even after the book I didn’t really understand (so he’s sort of like Kirsten Stewart). We more or less follow him around throughout the book, although there are about 3 million other characters who pop up.

Like this, but with less Bender.

The Good: It was a really interesting book. I kept going because I wanted to see what Mieville was going to come up with next, what creepy power, what disgusting way to die, what magical tracker was going to be used, ‘angels’, ‘demons’, all kinds of amazing things. This book would make an excellent movie. I suggest David Lynch directs it. The world Mieville created is rich and layered. I would be willing to read a guidebook of Kraken’s world, that’s how interesting it is.

Yes, I am embarrassed to admit I have design training. 

The groups Mieville created all have personalities of their own (a good thing, because there are quite a few groups running around in the novel), are propelled by specific motivations and act according to those personalities. So in this sense, the groups he has created are not simply there as page decoration; they act according to their designation. I hate when authors just pull dozens of characters out of their arse, and they’re supposed to belong to one faction or another except they run around and do out-of-character shit because they couldn’t be bothered to discipline the poor character.

The Bad: Two things irked me about this book, but I wouldn’t say that they’re reasons not to read it.

1. The characters. While the characters working in groups have a personality and agency according to their groups, individual characters seem to suffer. I honestly cannot recall much about any single character’s personality (besides maybe Collingswood, but only because he kept pushing her so much. LOOK AT COLLINGSWOOD! SHE’S SO GODDAMN AWESOME AND BADASS! BUT SHE STILL DOESN’T TUCK HER SHIRT IN COZ SHE’S WORKING CLASS AND SHIT). They were mostly defined by their group motivations rather any memorable individual quirk. Except maybe that security guard guy. He was okay.

What Collingswood wants to be when she grows up. 

2. The ending. I do not know or understand what happened at the end. I can’t understand why or how it ended like that, or even why and how the culprit was who he was. Which is why I think it’d make a good Lynch movie. But it’s also why this book was not as fulfilling to me as it should be, given the attention to detail and overall good writing.

The Ugly: Marge, the girlfriend of Billy’s dead friend, Leo. She insists on investigating Leo’s death. Everytime I got to one of the chapters with her in it, I told myself, AHA this must be where Mieville will insert plot device to show that she is indeed important to the story! But no. She really is just pointless. I have no idea why he dragged out her story. I am upset with Mieville because of this. I would like an explanation from him.

Yes, Marge. Yes you can. *pat pat*.

Verdict: An interesting book with interesting ideas. Maybe a bit too many ideas to the detriment of character building? I enjoyed the book though.

The Horns of Ruin – Tim Akers

I’ve been meaning to post a review of this book for so long I can barely remember what the plot is. Not that there was much plot to begin with. Let’s recap before getting to the gnawing of bone and gnashing of teeth. SPOILERS.

Recap: The scrumptiously named Eva Forge is a Paladin of Morgan, the God of War. Morgan is a dead god. He was thought to be murdered by his brother Amon, also dead. The setting city of Ash was built by Amon, the Scholar, but is now ruled by the third brother, Alexander (who gets to be god of everything seeing as he didn’t die). Morgan is a dying cult, so when its members start being targeted for death by mysterious and powerful forces, it is up to Forge to figure out what is going on before the cult disappears forever. She and her trusty articulated sheath. And her angriness. Forge is always angry. It’s like reading about yourself if you lived in a steampunk era with living gods and guns and curses and had neverending PMS.

Yeah whatever.

Forge discovers a nasty secret (with the help of a seer and a cop with a welsh name) that could tear Ash apart. Which it more or less does at the end.

The Good: Wellll. The cover artwork for the Pyr edition I have is pretty nice.

Not bad right? Except I don’t imagine her like this at all. 

The idea of Ash is interesting – a steampunk city that runs on what I imagine is some sort of eldritch magic. The unification of science (steampunk) and fantasy (spellcasting etc) is consistently evident throughout the book. Warriors use spells but also carry swords and guns.

The Cult of Amon was by far the most interesting aspect in the, but little was explained of it  – how it works, the story behind the scholar turned betrayer, the shunned librarians with their shackled superpowers deserved more page-time in comparison to the less than charming Eva Mary Sue.

The Bad: Quiet a few. This book was not a good one, but I’ll narrow it down to a couple of things that irked me the most.

1. Eva Forge. She started out promising, and then turned into a whiny-assed anger management candidate. She’s supposed to be really badass and take-charge, but the way she’s written is like a petulant superpowered adolescent. IT’S MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY. DISAGREE AND YOU’RE WRONG. I’M ALWAYS RIGHT. Which leads us to the inherent issue I have with this lady. Mary Sue-ness.

That’s right you irritating, self-righteous, un-mystiqueal cow. 

See, I’m pretty sure the book implies that with the Gods fallen at the end, and the existence of nascent gods among the populace has been brought to light, Forge is herself a God – perhaps the most powerful at the time (I think I finished my comma quota with that sentence). Now. Nowwwwwww. She strikes me as a Mary Sue mainly because even when she’s wrong, she’s clearly always right. But even though she’s rude, whiny, abrasive and likes to waste time indulging her anger, people thinks she’s awesome. Even when she’s intimidating people to do what she wants, or wasting precious time telling everyone all the hardship she’s been through, or being unnecessarily angry, she’s still always in the right. Overbearing righteousness and a tendency to lay on the self-sacrifice orchestra – she reminded me a lot of Anita Blake and her everyone-sucks-except-me attitude.

2. The Plot. I did not really understand it. Partly because I was rushing to the end of the book. There was a lot of pointless meandering as I recall, and I didn’t know why Eva did this or that half the time. As far as I know, the plot is Eva Forge Kills Everything.

Like this, but lacking awesomeness, summer glau and basically every attractive element. 

3. World Building. The problem I had reading this book is that the ideas were there, but they are never fully realised. It’s like ideation constipation. It’s frustrating as heck to keep expecting the book to live up to expectations (Amazon seems to love it) and it just keeps not doing that. It’s like, oh follow the interesting plot point…to a fart. Seriously.

The author has the image of this complex world in his mind, but his attempts to convey them to us is confused and one-dimensional. He should take a break and read Greg Keyes’ The Waterborn, a beautiful and awesome work of fantasy that does incredible world-building.

4. Articulated fucking sheath. What. the. hell. is.it?

IS THIS WHAT YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT YOU PRETENTIOUS SWORD-CARRIER?? WHY CAN’T YOU USE A SCABBARD LIKE EVERY OTHER GODDAMN SWORDSPERSON. Ass.

The Ugly: This book reads like a fanfic of a WoW paladin or something. It feels lazily written and lacks a certain maturity that adds weight and results in a good book in genres like steampunk and fantasy. I was surprised to discover that Akers was not a first-time author; this was his second or third book in fact.

The Verdict: Not worth the time. For a more satisfying read, I’d recommend  The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder instead.

The Undrowned Child

I bought this book solely based on its cover and cover blurb. I didn’t at all realise that it was a children’s book, what with the in-thing now to have illustrated covers for all genres (which I like, really. like little works of art on your shelves. I’m one of those people who’d buy a book they’re iffy about if the cover is pretty).

It’s really a wonderful book – literally full of wonders. It reminded me of a small-scale Golden Compass, except a lot less convoluted and I felt a lot less confused reading it. The book is weaved around Teodora, an orphan, and the prophecy of the Undrowned Child and Bajamonte Tiepolo, the Traitor. There’s also another character, the adorable Venetian the prophecy calls the Studious Son. Bajamonte (the Italian version of Benjamin?) had attempted to overthrow The Doges of Venice once before, but his baddened magic was defeated, and his bones and spirit were cast asunder, never to be united for fear of him returning to his former power. But he comes back, just when Teodora is in Venice and she is pulled into a world of mermaids, cat ladies, handsome ringmasters and traitorous ‘friends’.

I enjoyed this book because of Teodora. Reading it, I could easily imagine my eleven-year-old self creeping about an antique bookstore and smelling the books. Books smell delicious! Why should one not smell them? She was clearly a child, but a mature one. Sometimes I find young adult/ children’s novels with characters that sound like adults, but without believable character maturity (Ender’s Game, I’m looking at you). The good in this book are clearly good, but not one dimensional. And the bad are clearly bad, which made me quite happy. I like a straightforward book once in awhile.

And the mermaids! I loved them, with their salty tongues and spicy curries. I loved the Grey Lady too; the fantastic characters in this book have personalities of their own, rather than just being there for ostentation. Like, Ooooh, look at me, I have talking polar bears and witches and demons and flying pigs and whatever.

I fully recommend this book to everyone, and especially people who love to read. Although female protagonists who claim to be ‘scholars’ and ‘love books’ (I’m looking at you Merit from the disgustingly atrocious Friday Night Bites) are a dime a dozen nowadays, Teo doesn’t take pride in loving books, but neither is she ashamed of it. She’s just a child, and she acts like a child, and it made me wish I was a child reading this.