jinian | July 2006 books

Witch Way to Murder, Shirley Damsgaard. Library shelf. Ophelia (really) is resisting her powers, but intrigue means she's asking her witch grandma for help an awful lot. A fine choice of train-fluff; clearly first in a series; not so much worth reading when other books are around.

Temporary Agency, Rachel Pollack. Wim's shelf. Less numinous than the first one, but a chance to revisit Pollack's cosmology is nothing to sneeze at. (It's the same world, but no particular chronology wrt the first book was evident.) I'd like to see so much more from Pollack, but she doesn't seem to be writing SF any more.

The Naming of Names, Anna Pavord. Received as an excellent gift. Very interesting exploration of the journey from inconsistency to codification in plant names, which came out a bit too Western-focused to satisfy me. I'd like to read about naming of organisms in other parts of the world too.

Excession, Iain M. Banks. Within a diffuse plot liberally salted with ship names, the character development found in proper novels is applied more widely than one might think. If you haven't read a Culture novel, please do.

Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen, Tamora Pierce. First reread. I actually saw what Pierce was going for with Aly's banter this time, though I still think she didn't get there. I like a lot of things about these books, but something about them just doesn't come together.

Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison. Intimidating literary criticism on the role of black people in fiction I should have read (or, like Huckleberry Finn, should remember better). Didn't get a lot out of it, feeling a little inferior as a result.

I LIVE WITH YOU, Carol Emshwiller. "I Live With You and You Don't Know It" is actually very scary in a highly Emshwilleresque way, but the anthology title makes me smirk in its 50s-movie-ness. Like Shirley Jackson's stories, Emshwiller's lose their impact when read all in a lump. Space them out and weird your life more effectively.

Thirsty, M. T. Anderson. From Neile Graham. Morbid and funny story of a teenager unwillingly becoming a vampire and bargaining with the supernatural to get out of it. Not as compelling as Feed, but worth reading.

The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin. First read. Still pondering. Very Le Guin.

The Great God Pan, Donna Jo Napoli. Having read one of Napoli's short novels is like having a gem inside my mind, that stays shining and Platonic-solid until it fades off into my sadly limited memory. I am not going after them, just grabbing them as they come, because there can only be so many of those around at once, and The Lathe of Heaven turned out to be one too. Having said that: this was totally crossover fic.

The Gold Coast, Kim Stanley Robinson. This is the one of the Three Californias that got me really interested when

rysmiel talked about it. In this future California, things are a lot like now, just more so. Jim, the main person in an ensemble cast of friends and family, teaches community college and writes poetry and tries to develop integrity. Meanders some but is so evocative I can't complain a bit. The part with the ruins, yes, yes, yes.

I, Coriander, Sally Gardner. From Neile Graham. Largely enjoyable while reading, troubling later on. Only evil people are fat, ugly, or disabled, while Our Heroine has wild red curls and "river-green" eyes. Mother dies, in essence because she was not good enough, and daughter takes over her magic. A real-world love interest appears for the sole purpose of being pompous, entitled, and dumped. Coriander lacks depth as a character and does at least one thing that's morally questionable, the implications of which are apparently not even realized by the author, much less addressed. Not recommended.

Boy Proof, Cecil Castellucci. From Neile Graham. Charming and sweet, but it goes with Surviving the Applewhites in the "do kids really want to read this story?" bin. I wanted to read books in which society was WRONG WRONGITY WRONG, they should let that girl play her music! She ran away and the fire lizards liked her, she showed them! Also READING is nice, people who don't let you read SUCK, and you get a magic horsie and SHOW THEM. Possibly a dash of "I fill my bag myself." None of this "oh hey it is kinda nice to conform" crap, even if it does involve finding a vocation; what good is all that if you don't shave your head and paint on brightly-colored eyebrows? I ask you.

But it was a remarkably introspective decision to be nicer to people, and a good choice of work. A fine book for anyone old enough to be tired of Mary Sue.

(

wiredferret and other fellow disambiguators may wish to know that the title should indeed have a hyphen. I was imagining something more interesting.)

Jennifer Government, Max Barry. Most recently from a recs thread chez Maya. "Capitalism" is here spelled "capitalizm," which confused me (Elizabeth Capitalism?) until I realized: it's because it's American. Ha fucking ha. I found the satire heavy-handed and unfunny in other places, too, but to me "government.com" was precisely the right note, and I bet lots of people wouldn't even notice that. Jennifer is a scary person I would prefer not to meet, but her POV is a lot of fun. The plot got tastily complicated when the threads started to converge.

The Cup of the World, John Dickinson. From Neile Graham. YA but oddly dry and mature for that target. Interesting exploration of the nature and consequences of magic in something between a dynastic saga and a romance novel, centered on a woman who starts out a naive teenager and winds up distant, having been through a lot. Some court intrigue, too.

The Coroner's Lunch, Colin Cotteril. From

misia. Entirely charming episodic novel about an elderly coroner and unwilling shaman, who solves murder mysteries in communist Laos. Great, unusual characters. Very clearly a series opener, but definitely worth reading even so.

Toast, Charles Stross. Mildly mind-bending near-future SF short stories. I didn't remember the Burgess Shale section of "A Colder War" being riddled with errors, but it was still creepy as hell. I'd read a couple of the other stories already too. Good stuff.

Princess at Sea, Dawn Cook. At least one major plot point is not entirely believable, but this is a decent successor to the way-fun Decoy Princess. Wait for more books in the series, so that this will be a low point quickly recovered from (I hope).

Starwater Strains, Gene Wolfe. A wide selection of short stories, from the charmingly strange ("From the Cradle," "Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?") to the fucking creepy ("Mute," "Try and Kill It," "Hunter Lake"). I was impressed by the angle on the tension between reality and unreality in "Of Soul and Climate," which deals with a psychiatrist's useful delusions and/or actual paranormal experiences. "Golden City Far," which I think I'd read in one of the Year's Best anthologies, revisits the myth/reality relationship interestingly.

Dragon's Milk, Susan Fletcher. I kept seeing this, and the summary kept looking bad, and I kept putting it down. Curiosity overwhelmed good sense, and I was stuck reading something with a rampant Y addiction and lame characters. Race trouble here: Kaeldra is raised by people of a different height and coloring than hers; she never succeeds at blending in, and her obligatory long hair pisses her off. Upon becoming involved with a man of her own race, she decides to conform to their clothing and hairstyles instead! How about a heroine who actually decides something for herself next time? The complete lack of examination of either of the cultures makes it worse. I am type B, so I will do B things! How freeing!

Boys Over Flowers 17, Yoko Kamio.
Ceres 14 (complete), Yuu Watase. Is it just me, or is there an awful lot of reproduction in Watase manga? This is the only one in which it's quite so plot-central, though. I thought the attempt to show Kagami's decent side failed miserably, and I sheesh at the Touya ex machina.
A Distant Soil: The Gathering, Colleen Doran. Bishounen from spaaaaace! Also, Galahad. Sure. Why not? I think it will sum up the apparent purpose of this book if I mention that the BFS have a space camouflage unit that allows Doran to draw them in different outfits, including hairstyles, every few pages. Or does the series get better? I don't much like the art, which seems too realistic-busy for black and white.
East Coast Rising 1, Becky Cloonan. Cloonan can draw, but the writing and/or storyboarding need some serious work. Also: Deathsnake is a man? What?
Fruits Basket 14-19, Natsuki Takaya. Scans. Posted spoilerishly about this.
Naruto 7-20, Masashi Kishimoto. Print 7-8, then scans. Lots of characters and some magic-geeking, good fun even though the fight scenes are perpetually hard to follow. I remain mostly interested in the Sakura/Ino dynamic, Naruto himself, and Shikamaru, with a side of Hinata. Sasuke can get eaten by giant snakes for all I care.
Salamander Dream, Hope Larson. On childhood and relationship to nature, sweet and sad. Art reminiscent of Ellen Forney with a little Carla Speed McNeil.
The Three Incestuous Sisters, Audrey Niffenegger. "I call the books I make visual novels to acknowledge a debt to Lynd Ward, whose 'woodcut novel' Gods' Man was the first book of this kind I ever saw, and to differentiate my books from graphic novels." And why exactly do you want to do that, Ms. Niffenegger? You're working in the tradition of Edward Gorey rather than Marvel Comics, but disclaiming graphic-novel nature for something that so clearly is one is infuriating on the level of Margaret Atwood and Philip Pullman claiming not to write SF/fantasy. Just for that you're going in the comics section. (It was reasonably good surreal graphic-novelty, lacking much actual incest, and the aquatint technique is interesting with attractive results.)
Xxxholic 6, CLAMP. I think this Watanuki/Doumeki thing is entirely nonslashy, though the artists' flirtation with the readers on that point is obvious.