Book report time!

[megwrites]

- Archangel by Sharon Shinn



I've been wanting to read this book for about ten years now, but I sort of kept putting off picking it up because I was either bored or in the mood for something else. I wish I'd read it sooner, because I really enjoyed it.

Archangel is the story of Rachel, a slave woman who is ordained by Yovah to be the wife of the angel Gabriel, who will soon ascend to the position of Archangel. She and Gabriel must lead the Gloria, a festival of singing lead by the angels that, if not sung, will cause destruction to rain upon the land. As you might expect, Rachel and Gabriel do not get along with each other and it's pretty much hate at first sight. To make things worse, the current archangel, Raphael, is up to no good and may not step down or allow the Gloria to be sung.

I wanted to give this book at least a full B because it was a really good read. I liked the plot, the structure. It was written with a sort of structural clarity that I appreciate as well as a prose-level clarity that also made it easy for me to keep up with the story even while being pushed around on the subway/bus.

However, there are some underdevelopment and oversimplification issues.

For one, the world is somewhat underdeveloped. It's clear, from reading, that this sort of alternate universe Old Testament!World is actual somehow the result of technology and space travel. It isn't explored or even explicitly stated, but it is heavily suggested. To the point where the entire novel becomes ridiculous otherwise.

The oversimplification comes in with Rachel and the various groups of people in the novel. As far as Rachel goes, I didn't really like her. I felt that she was cartoonishly difficult and stubborn, even when there was no reason for her to be. Sometimes I felt like she was picking fights, and while that's not necessarily bad, I felt like the tone of the interactions - especially between Rachel and Gabriel - made it seem like the novel was trying to justify her every whim.

The people, also, were painted with much broader strokes than I thought they should have been. It was made clear that the Edori were these freeloving, nomadic, happy-go-lucky good guys who just wanted to roam around and sing kumbahyah all the time but they got picked on by the big bad Jansai and that the Edori were always good and the Jansai always bad.

This passage, particularly, really made me roll my eyes: "Rachel felt physically ill. "I can't imagine -- Among Edori, children are valued above everything," she said. "You would sell yourself into slavery before you would permit harm to come to your child. We don't believe in allowing ourselves to have children unless we are able and willing to care for them. To have one on a gamble, on a chance, for some other purpose than to love the child for itself - (Shinn, 142)"

Oh, *please*. There hasn't been a group of people in existence *yet* who's had that kind of responsible reproductive ethos. The idea of having children just because they're sweet little babies that you want to love and cuddle is sort of a modern idea. People today have children for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do for love. Getting welfare checks. Keeping marriages together. Because they think they should have them. To make themselves feel better.

Children have been pawns, tools, and ready slave labor since the beginning of time. You think people had fifteen of the damn things just because they were fun? No. They had them because half would die and the other half needed to work the farm or carry on daddy's name or pick up daddy's trade or whatever they needed kids for.

I don't know what kind of nomadic societies the author has been reading about or what Old Testament she studied before writing this, but this is such a *crock*.

Unless you have perfect use of birth control and a society where men never rape women, you're going to get unwanted children hanging about, and thus you're going to get people doing some rather atrocious things to said children.

Like I said, broad strokes.

I also felt like the novel punished the sitting Archangel, Raphael, for having a valid question about why they're continually worshiping this particular god and doing everything the same and what if they stopped. It's a valid question. I mean, nobody has any definitive proof that the Gloria needs to be sung. It's not wrong to question something that has no proof. Especially when it becomes clear that Raphael has been testing the system and getting results that point, quite clearly, to there not being a god or at least not one who's paying attention.

After all, he knowingly breaks the laws and has a false angelica and gets away with the Gloria every time they've sung it together.

He may not have been the nicest guy, but the novel seems to be unsure about how it feels about atheism - especially since it's clear that there is a large (and somewhat awkward) theological and biblical discussion going on here. I mean, it's a novel about a place that's basically every part of the bible just *spelled* differently.

It's made clear the tools the prophets use to communicate with Yovah are actually technology, and it's pretty much said (if not explicitly stated) that one time some guy got teleported to a spaceship and saw things he didn't understand, which drove him mad when he came back.

So, we're being told that their god, and indeed their entire system, is clearly a constructed reality, but the one guy who questions the constructed reality gets blown to bits along with all those who question along side him.

It made me queasy. Not to mention that I felt like names sometimes were borrowed from the Old Testament without their meaning and context being examined or even acknowledged.

The ending seemed a little too neat and clear cut for me. Especially since it was like "okay, well, Yovah blew them all to bits. We'll sing and everything will be good again." Seeing that kind of destruction is going to have a dark, dark affect on the psyches of people. I would have liked to have seen some of that explored.

The wrap of Rachel and Gabriel's difficult relationship also made me a bit angry. I thought Rachel was being entirely unreasonable at being angry with Gabriel.

Especially when her reaction, after Raphael and all of his people are blasted out existence and they're considering what to do is:

"Semmorah," she said in a voice that carried to the whole circle. "He will first strike the mountain and then Semorrah." And clenching her hands at her sides, she shocked everyone by laughing. (Shinn, 335)

So, she basically bwa-ha-ha-ha'ed after seeing a mountain go kablooey and she's pissed because people don't trust her. Hmmm. This reaction is, of course, on top of her many many prayers for Yovah to smite Semorrah, and her clear hatred of the city.

She's mad at Gabriel - who has to look after the entire frickin' planet for not trusting this very angry, emotional, unreasonable, unstable woman to act rationally rather than getting the people she hates blown to smithereens for her own revenge?

However, it was a good read, and I did enjoy the plot of it. I enjoyed the other characters, especially Nathan, Matthew, and Gabriel. I felt a strong sympathy and affection for Leah, who I think deserved to get some sort of award for all the crap she put up with. I really did like Gabriel, even more than I liked Rachel. He was a character I liked because he had to put up with a lot, he did his best, and didn't really turn into a whiny bitch at any point. I appreciate characters who suck it up and do their best, thus I appreciated a lot of this novel.




- To Say Nothing of The Dog by Connie Willis




To Say Nothing of the Dog is the story of a time traveling historian, Ned Henry, who is suffering a very severe case of time lag from the frantic attempts to find the bishop's bird stump for the opening of a replica Cathedral by the unreasonable, unyielding, and extremely rich Lady Schrapnell. However, along the way one of his colleagues, Verity, brings back a cat (saved from drowning) and an entirely new problem is created when Ned messes up the timeline of events when he goes to take the cat back.

This book is your basic wacky comedy of errors with lots of running around and misleads and a kind of mystery that revolves around who's going to get married to whom, with lots of flouncing females and bumbling old guys and frankly, it's like The Importance of Being Earnest with time travelers.

It's amusing, although it can get a bit tiresome at points. There are places where the author shows off her immense and rich knowledge of her subject by having characters ramble on and on and on and ON about things that aren't important.

Fortunately, you never miss anything by skipping. Especially since, as in all good, classic mysteries, there's the chapter where the sleuths explain everything.

There are a lot of characters and small details to try to keep track of, and the overall mystery of "who is Mr. C" (who is the intended husband of Tossie, and who's marriage and diary are what set Lady Schrapnell to Cathedral building in the first place) was easy to figure out. I solved it very quickly.

There are also a lot of small, small details to keep up with when the discussions of time travel and slippage come up. If you lose count, don't worry. There will be a summation at the end. They'll solve the mystery for you. Just keep going and enjoy the scenery.

I liked all the characters and since it was a novel in which everyone is either unreasonable or unreasonably time-lagged, it didn't matter that they were all characatured.





- Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette




This book quite nearly gets an 'A' from me. NEARLY.

Companion to Wolves is the coming-of-age tale of Isolfr, who, when the wolfheall comes looking for young men as a tithe choses to go against his father's wishes and join up. He becomes bonded to a wolf meant to become the alpha female (konigenwolf), but along with that comes some rather startling consequences and side affects.

A lot has been said and discussed of the lack of female humans in this novel. It neither bothered nor bewildered me.

Firstly, because the point of this novel was for Bear and Monette to take the much beloved genre of animal companions and play Queer Eye for the Straight Genre. In order for the queer to come out at it's queery, queery (query?) best, they have to take the dominant and completely subvert it.

Unfortunately, the dominant is men and manhood and masculinity.

Femininity has the advantage of having a fluidity - at least in Western culture - that masculinity doesn't. Let's face it. If this had been a bunch of chicks running around with wolves getting on with each other, you wouldn't have been as shocked by the penetration, would you?

Secondly, it's not that women aren't important, they're just not visible. The most important thematic statement of the novel comes from a woman. The statement which causes all other events to transpire comes from Isolfr's mother.

Thirdly, that's what you get when you borrow from Germanic literature. I guess it didn't push any buttons for me because I spent an entire semester reading such lovely things as The Prose Edda and Saga of the Volsungs, so I got used to living in ManlyMan!World.

As with any book, story, or other work that Elizabeth Bear is party to, you cannot zoom through this thing. You have to be willing to re-read constantly and be willing to let go of the linear. Sometimes you need to read backwards, sideways, and possibly diagonally. Or inside out. Or with alien space goggles from the 10th dimension. It will get *that* twisty.

I can understand how that might have bumped a knot in the tails of those who came from Sarah Monette's camp. Her books (Melusine, The Virtu, etc) read as smooth and as quick as butter sliding down the side of a hot pan.

This is not a smooth read. The authentically Germanic names will give you fits, hurt your eyes, and make you cry out for the steady vowel-consonant-vowel pattern that more Latinate names tend to give you. Seriously. I had a less hard time adapting to a cast of characters with Japanese names than I did this novel.

But if you take a deep breath, concentrate, and try coming up with a shortened version in your head, you'll get through it.

I think the book mostly rewards you for your efforts. I'm not sure that plotwise or characterwise it does anything particularly acrobatic. But that's not what I read it. I read it because, well, surprise buttsex WINS THE INTARWEBS. On a far less intellectual level, I just like reading the male/male slash stuff because it's my anti-drug, yo. Don't judge me.

There are some rather graphic scenes of penetration in this novel. Be forewarned. If this triggers, disturbs, offputs, or in any other way causes you to feel uncomfortable - then maybe give this one a pass.

This novel is an experiment, and you need to keep this in mind. You're reading an exploration. So you need to attune your brain to the meta even when the surface level makes you break out in hives.

As Isolfr's mother says, "You must decide what honor is...and hold to it." That's what the big point of this book is. Honor is a decision, and in the end, personal. We have to decide what's honorable, what's queer, what's wrong, what's right.

Because, wolves and queering and buttsex aside, that's what growing up is. It's the ability to make bigger and bigger decisions. And when you decide right and wrong, when you decide life and death for yourself? That's when you're an adult.

But don't let me tell you that. Grow up, put your big person underwear on, and read it for yourself.




- Cast in Courtlight by Michelle Sagara




Cast In Courtlight is the sequel to Cast In Shadow. It is the continuing story of Kaylin Neya, who is a Ground Hawk with runes all over her that she doesn't understand, abilities she can't control, power she isn't quite certain of, and gets caught up in circumstances that might just kill her. This book is the tale of Kaylin being called to the Barrani court during the time of the Festival, despite bearing the mark of the outcaste Lord Nightshade, to heal the High Lord's youngest son. In doing so, Kaylin gets plunged into the deep, murky waters of the intrigue, politics, power and origins of the Barrani courts and the High Halls.

The plus given to the novel is not at all objective. Objectively, I'd have to give it a lower score for being needlessly complicated in some areas, but frankly, I don't care. I'm sort of in love with this universe. Big irrational love.

I missed Tiamaris like everything, though, because he was my favorite from the prequel, but I did swoon over Nightshade like a lady of quality, so that was good.

The only thing that gave me even a moment's hitch was the occasional characterizational excess. For instance, this one during a big climactic moment in the novel: "His face was twisted with hung and pain and - yes - humiliation. He fought; she could sense the Other in him. It was the source of the voice. But the darkness was lying, and she knew it. Prayed - which, given her stance on gods in general, was stupid, but entirely human - that the Lord of the Green would know it just as clearly.(Sagara, 436)."

Uh. So, lemme get this straight. You're taking time out of *the potential Barrani apocalypse* to reiterate Kaylin's wacky, hey-go-mad agnosticism? You know what, 436 pages in, I've got it. I know Kaylin. I've been told, several times, that she and the many gods of Elantra don't exactly exchange pleasantries. I'm cool with it.

There are also places where I felt like the continual harping on Kaylin's big mouth, lateness, and being a bad student were getting a bit over the top. She marches around wearing the mark of an outcaste Lord, a medallion from a Dragon, runes that *nobody* can properly understand, has defeated a Dragon, lived to survive the treacherous Barrani court and nobody says, "Wow. That's impressive. Good job. Here, have a week off and get some sleep."

I kind of wish at least one person had taken time to acknowledge that it was pretty damn extraordinary for a *beat cop* to be doing all that.

Still, I love them. I love Marcus and I'm starting to like Severn better. Kaylin's teacher was actually pretty cool. Although I can understand why she hates the classroom. If they teach people things by being deliberately difficult and obscure instead of explaining things in a clear, concise manner, then yeah. I'd be a lousy student, too.

Luna Books have let me down in the past, but at least I can always count on the Kaylin novels to be what I want. They're solid both as procedurals and fantasy, and I like that they're a slightly different blending of the two than usual. Most people don't take the higher up fantasy and blend it with Law & Order (usually it's the gritty urban PI-and-Vampire novel), but this works well. Much like peanut butter and honey. Not it's usual traveling companion, but still, nice and sweet with a nutty crunch.

They're my guilty pleasures, really.




ETA: Did not mean to assault your f-list with GINORMOUS pictures. Sorry about that.

Comments

[sarah-prineas.livejournal.com]

I really enjoy these reviews. Thanks for posting!

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I'm glad that you enjoy them.

[ktsparrow.livejournal.com]

I like them a lot too -- thanks!