A Bayard From Bengal Being some account of the Magnificent and Spanking Career of Chunder Bindabun Bhosh, Esq., B.A., Cambridge by F. Anstey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a tricky one. It's a British author pretending to be an Indian author, and comically getting English idioms wrong as he tells a story of an Indian man (not the supposed author) in England, having unlikely adventures that sometimes assume that England is like India. The illustrations are also supposedly by an Indian illustrator, though actually by an English one, and are done in a Mughal-influenced style, showing the British scenes as a not-very-knowledgeable Indian person might imagine them.
It wouldn't fly today, in other words; there would be a firestorm on Twitter, and the author would have to disappear and resurface several years later, possibly under a pseudonym. The tricky part is that the main body of the text is actually quite amusing at times, though that's brought down badly by the supposed translations of parables and the pseudo-author's commentary on the illustrations, the first of which is often not funny at all, and the second of which is heavy-handed and obvious.
On the whole, not recommended.
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Thursday, 21 November 2024
Wednesday, 20 November 2024
Review: Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Stories of the Witch Knight and the Puppet Sorcerer
Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Stories of the Witch Knight and the Puppet Sorcerer by Garth Nix
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The contribution of the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories to this volume's DNA is strong and clear, not only in the general feel of the world and the partnership between the two protagonists, but in the tone of the stories. The various encounters they have do not tend to end well for other characters, or even for Sir Hereward; he frequently desires to dally with women they encounter, but even if they're not outright antagonists they're often victims and/or agents of the otherworldly entities that the pair hunt down and exterminate on behalf of the Committee for the Safety of the World.
The language, too, is similar to the prose of Fritz Lieber (author of the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser tales). It's not as over-elaborate as, say, Jack Vance, whose stories I particularly dislike, mainly for the alienated, dark characters, but also for the overwrought prose, which unfortunately gets imitated by other writers who don't have the chops to pull it off. Nor is it the highly charged, dramatic prose of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. It's formal in cadence, but mostly straightforward in syntax, and progresses at a steady pace through these shadowy mini-tragedies, helping to insulate the reader by its very matter-of-factness from the horror of some of the events.
There is the odd dangling modifier, and there are a few too many commas between adjectives sometimes (including one after "one," which is an adjective, technically, but should never have a coordinate comma after it). Otherwise, the copy editing is good, and while the author sometimes uses an old-fashioned piece of technical vocabulary as part of his worldbuilding and tonebuilding, he always seems to use it correctly.
I'd read three of these stories when they were collected before, but was happy to come back round again and read several more. While they're darker than I usually prefer, they're well written, and I enjoyed them.
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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The contribution of the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories to this volume's DNA is strong and clear, not only in the general feel of the world and the partnership between the two protagonists, but in the tone of the stories. The various encounters they have do not tend to end well for other characters, or even for Sir Hereward; he frequently desires to dally with women they encounter, but even if they're not outright antagonists they're often victims and/or agents of the otherworldly entities that the pair hunt down and exterminate on behalf of the Committee for the Safety of the World.
The language, too, is similar to the prose of Fritz Lieber (author of the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser tales). It's not as over-elaborate as, say, Jack Vance, whose stories I particularly dislike, mainly for the alienated, dark characters, but also for the overwrought prose, which unfortunately gets imitated by other writers who don't have the chops to pull it off. Nor is it the highly charged, dramatic prose of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. It's formal in cadence, but mostly straightforward in syntax, and progresses at a steady pace through these shadowy mini-tragedies, helping to insulate the reader by its very matter-of-factness from the horror of some of the events.
There is the odd dangling modifier, and there are a few too many commas between adjectives sometimes (including one after "one," which is an adjective, technically, but should never have a coordinate comma after it). Otherwise, the copy editing is good, and while the author sometimes uses an old-fashioned piece of technical vocabulary as part of his worldbuilding and tonebuilding, he always seems to use it correctly.
I'd read three of these stories when they were collected before, but was happy to come back round again and read several more. While they're darker than I usually prefer, they're well written, and I enjoyed them.
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Review: Worlds of Eternity
Worlds of Eternity by Aaron Hillsbery
My rating: 0 of 5 stars
The authors never use one short sentence when three long sentences will do, and it quickly became tedious to read. Here's an example:
"A faint vibration came from Michael's pocket. It was his phone, demanding attention. Mindful of the person seated next to him, he kept his elbow close to his body as he struggled to extract the device. After considerable effort, he finally succeeded. Straightening himself, his eyes fell on the screen, revealing a new message."
Or you could just say, "Michael's phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out - with some difficulty because of the crowded tram - and saw a message from his sister." That's 25 words in two sentences, and it conveys slightly more information than the 54 words in five sentences above.
A lot of those long sentences involve an introductory participle (like the last sentence quoted above), and occasionally those participles dangle, referring to something other than the grammatical subject of the sentence. There are also a few issues with tense (missing past perfect, mingling of past and present), the usual excess commas between adjectives, and some odd or incorrect use of vocabulary, like "she glanced the woman" instead of "she glimpsed" or "she glanced at". It's well within the normal range of errors, probably better than average, but that tedious, long-winded prose means there's not much plot per thousand words, and slows the pace to a crawl even in the action scenes. I only got 5% of the way through, so I can't say much about characterization, worldbuilding, or plot; it moved so slowly I hadn't seen much of any of those yet, just wordy narration of the mundane and obvious.
I received a pre-release version from Netgalley for review, and some of the minor issues may be fixed before publication.
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My rating: 0 of 5 stars
The authors never use one short sentence when three long sentences will do, and it quickly became tedious to read. Here's an example:
"A faint vibration came from Michael's pocket. It was his phone, demanding attention. Mindful of the person seated next to him, he kept his elbow close to his body as he struggled to extract the device. After considerable effort, he finally succeeded. Straightening himself, his eyes fell on the screen, revealing a new message."
Or you could just say, "Michael's phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out - with some difficulty because of the crowded tram - and saw a message from his sister." That's 25 words in two sentences, and it conveys slightly more information than the 54 words in five sentences above.
A lot of those long sentences involve an introductory participle (like the last sentence quoted above), and occasionally those participles dangle, referring to something other than the grammatical subject of the sentence. There are also a few issues with tense (missing past perfect, mingling of past and present), the usual excess commas between adjectives, and some odd or incorrect use of vocabulary, like "she glanced the woman" instead of "she glimpsed" or "she glanced at". It's well within the normal range of errors, probably better than average, but that tedious, long-winded prose means there's not much plot per thousand words, and slows the pace to a crawl even in the action scenes. I only got 5% of the way through, so I can't say much about characterization, worldbuilding, or plot; it moved so slowly I hadn't seen much of any of those yet, just wordy narration of the mundane and obvious.
I received a pre-release version from Netgalley for review, and some of the minor issues may be fixed before publication.
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Tuesday, 19 November 2024
Review: The Adventures of Dr Thorndyke
The Adventures of Dr Thorndyke by R. Austin Freeman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This author pioneered the "reverse mystery" which most famously appeared in the TV series Columbo, where we, the audience, see the crime committed and know who did it, and the interest is in watching the detective work it out. Thorndyke is no Columbo; he's a snob, for a start, and as sophisticated and elite as Columbo is an everyman. He also relies on meticulous forensic science to track down the perpetrators, no matter how careful they have been.
These stories are varied; most, but not all of them are "reverse mysteries". They're entertaining mainly from a problem-solving point of view.
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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This author pioneered the "reverse mystery" which most famously appeared in the TV series Columbo, where we, the audience, see the crime committed and know who did it, and the interest is in watching the detective work it out. Thorndyke is no Columbo; he's a snob, for a start, and as sophisticated and elite as Columbo is an everyman. He also relies on meticulous forensic science to track down the perpetrators, no matter how careful they have been.
These stories are varied; most, but not all of them are "reverse mysteries". They're entertaining mainly from a problem-solving point of view.
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Review: The Attenbury Emeralds
The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Paton Walsh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
There are a couple of mentions early in the Wimsey canon of his first case having to do with the Attenbury Emeralds, and in this book we finally get that story. Suffering from shell shock (what we now call PTSD), Lord Peter in 1921 was just starting to take his first tentative step back into society, a country house party with people he had known for a long time. There's a theft involving the emeralds of the title - or, rather, one emerald in particular, the "king stone," which turns out to be one of a set, sold off by an Indian maharajah to save his people from famine in the 19th century.
The whole business is rather reminiscent of a similar mystery in one of the Wimsey short stories, down to the host not wanting his guests treated like criminals and even how the stone is to be smuggled out, though in this case the plan is both less clever and yet more successful. The inept police inspector that Lord Peter later clashes with in Whose Body? is in charge of the investigation, and his sergeant, Charles Parker, is the same man who becomes Peter's friend, collaborator and eventually brother-in-law.
There are one or two very minor inconsistencies I noticed between this book and the Dorothy Sayers portion of the series. The one is that several people, in Peter's flashbacks, call him "Lord Wimsey" and he doesn't correct them, as he did in one of the early books. The possible second is that Bunter's son (now revealed to be named Peter) seems closer in age to Peter and Harriet's eldest, Bredon, than he did in A Presumption of Death, where he was referred to as a "baby" while Bredon was three years old; it's not completely out of the question to refer to a toddler as a baby, of course, and it's never actually stated that they are the same age or close to it in this book, just that they are both at Eton and Bredon is 16, which means that Peter Bunter could be 14 or so. I'm overthinking it, aren't I?
The actual mystery involves multiple similar emeralds and multiple occasions when they could have been switched in a plan that stretches over decades and requires at least three murders. In the end I felt it was improbable - the plan, that is. (view spoiler)[A woman living in poverty is so outraged by her late husband's family's rejection of their marriage that she holds on to a valuable stone that she legitimately owns and that could make her and her daughter comfortable if she sells it, because by complete coincidence she could also use it to get a weird sort of revenge against different members of the family entirely, and she picks the revenge option and kills three people to keep the very long-term plan on track? And also the two stones were both at the same party during World War II, again by coincidence, and someone present doesn't recognize her sister's close friend, and it's all a red herring, because they could have been switched then but, as it turns out, weren't? It's all a bit thin.
Not, then, as strong as the earlier Jill Paton Walsh books in the series, both of which built on much more foundation of Dorothy Sayers (the first an unfinished manuscript, the second a series of epistolary pieces published during World War II). Peter and Harriet are still mutually supportive without question or deviation, which was endearing in the earlier books, but here seems less real somehow, as if they really should argue about something, at least, given the strain they're both under. I'll still read the last book in the series, but now with reduced expectations.
That's not to say it's a bad book; it just doesn't reach the heights of the earlier ones, for me at least (and apparently for others, based on the average ratings by other Goodreads reviewers). It goes on my annual recommendation list, but in the lowest tier. (hide spoiler)]
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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
There are a couple of mentions early in the Wimsey canon of his first case having to do with the Attenbury Emeralds, and in this book we finally get that story. Suffering from shell shock (what we now call PTSD), Lord Peter in 1921 was just starting to take his first tentative step back into society, a country house party with people he had known for a long time. There's a theft involving the emeralds of the title - or, rather, one emerald in particular, the "king stone," which turns out to be one of a set, sold off by an Indian maharajah to save his people from famine in the 19th century.
The whole business is rather reminiscent of a similar mystery in one of the Wimsey short stories, down to the host not wanting his guests treated like criminals and even how the stone is to be smuggled out, though in this case the plan is both less clever and yet more successful. The inept police inspector that Lord Peter later clashes with in Whose Body? is in charge of the investigation, and his sergeant, Charles Parker, is the same man who becomes Peter's friend, collaborator and eventually brother-in-law.
There are one or two very minor inconsistencies I noticed between this book and the Dorothy Sayers portion of the series. The one is that several people, in Peter's flashbacks, call him "Lord Wimsey" and he doesn't correct them, as he did in one of the early books. The possible second is that Bunter's son (now revealed to be named Peter) seems closer in age to Peter and Harriet's eldest, Bredon, than he did in A Presumption of Death, where he was referred to as a "baby" while Bredon was three years old; it's not completely out of the question to refer to a toddler as a baby, of course, and it's never actually stated that they are the same age or close to it in this book, just that they are both at Eton and Bredon is 16, which means that Peter Bunter could be 14 or so. I'm overthinking it, aren't I?
The actual mystery involves multiple similar emeralds and multiple occasions when they could have been switched in a plan that stretches over decades and requires at least three murders. In the end I felt it was improbable - the plan, that is. (view spoiler)[A woman living in poverty is so outraged by her late husband's family's rejection of their marriage that she holds on to a valuable stone that she legitimately owns and that could make her and her daughter comfortable if she sells it, because by complete coincidence she could also use it to get a weird sort of revenge against different members of the family entirely, and she picks the revenge option and kills three people to keep the very long-term plan on track? And also the two stones were both at the same party during World War II, again by coincidence, and someone present doesn't recognize her sister's close friend, and it's all a red herring, because they could have been switched then but, as it turns out, weren't? It's all a bit thin.
Not, then, as strong as the earlier Jill Paton Walsh books in the series, both of which built on much more foundation of Dorothy Sayers (the first an unfinished manuscript, the second a series of epistolary pieces published during World War II). Peter and Harriet are still mutually supportive without question or deviation, which was endearing in the earlier books, but here seems less real somehow, as if they really should argue about something, at least, given the strain they're both under. I'll still read the last book in the series, but now with reduced expectations.
That's not to say it's a bad book; it just doesn't reach the heights of the earlier ones, for me at least (and apparently for others, based on the average ratings by other Goodreads reviewers). It goes on my annual recommendation list, but in the lowest tier. (hide spoiler)]
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Thursday, 14 November 2024
Review: OverLondon
OverLondon by George Penney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Many books claim to be in the tradition of Terry Pratchett; far fewer can back it up even partially. This one, I think, can, though of course, compared with the master's best work, it falls short. Then again, compared with his best work, his early work fell short as well.
The setting is an alternate-history Britain where the differences are intentionally absurd. "Floatstone" enables cities (and airships) to fly, including OverLondon, where we lay our scene. Ann Boleyn, rather than being executed, went mad, had Henry VIII executed instead, and declared herself a deity, breaking from the Catholic Church. This is mentioned as having been several centuries ago, but it's not clear exactly when we are; there are elements that feel Elizabethan, including doublets and the existence of a playwright named Wobblespeare who's obsessed with Verona, but there are other elements, like bowler hats and the general clockpunk aesthetic, that feel more Victorian. It didn't seem like the worldbuilding was intended to make much sense, so I won't ding it for the fact that, while printing (except of the Vengeful Queen's holy book) is forbidden - this is a plot point - "penny dreadfuls" still exist, a phenomenon that was only enabled by cheap printing. There also seem to be a lot more cathedrals in OverLondon than in real-life London, though we don't see any bishops. There are anthropomorphic animal people, just because that's amusing.
The book needs more editing, including for some basic things like punctuating a dialog tag as if it was a separate sentence and not preceding or following a term of address with a comma, as well as the increasingly common "may" when it should be "might" and a collection of mostly familiar vocabulary errors: tenants/tenets, reigns/reins, proscribe/prescribe, disenfranchised/disenchanted, produce/product, rifled/riffled, discrete/discreet. The authors occasionally put too many negatives in a sentence and end up reversing the obviously intended meaning, and don't always get apostrophe placement right. It's no worse than average, but needs a tidy-up. These are mostly things a lot of people get wrong, which accounts for the fact that none of the many people mentioned in the acknowledgements apparently spotted them.
The plot is a kind of farcical hard-boiled mystery; I say "hard-boiled" because there's quite a bit of violence directed at the investigators, they spend a lot of time in the mean streets, they're chronically short of money and they drink a lot (especially their leader). Also, (view spoiler)[they end up getting shafted for the reward (hide spoiler)].
Priests are exploding, and Captain Reign, a swashbuckling pirate who has just managed to save her life by signing up as a privateer, becomes a private ear or investigator to try to earn enough money to get her ship out of hock. Her ferret-girl cabin boy Flora and intellectually different bosun Sid assist, or do something that sometimes resembles assisting, as does a clever young artificer named Elias. I enjoyed the reluctant thugs, the grubby urchins, the sinister guild leaders, the Cry (the sole news medium, town criers who announce the news on the hour), the flamboyant villain, the scary nuns. It's a fun world, and although sometimes it's violence or squalor played for laughs, it never felt like dark comedy. I'm not sure what makes the difference; the overall light and zestful tone, I think, and the optimism the characters retain about life and human nature.
I would definitely read more in the series, and it makes it firmly into the Silver tier of my annual recommendations list.
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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Many books claim to be in the tradition of Terry Pratchett; far fewer can back it up even partially. This one, I think, can, though of course, compared with the master's best work, it falls short. Then again, compared with his best work, his early work fell short as well.
The setting is an alternate-history Britain where the differences are intentionally absurd. "Floatstone" enables cities (and airships) to fly, including OverLondon, where we lay our scene. Ann Boleyn, rather than being executed, went mad, had Henry VIII executed instead, and declared herself a deity, breaking from the Catholic Church. This is mentioned as having been several centuries ago, but it's not clear exactly when we are; there are elements that feel Elizabethan, including doublets and the existence of a playwright named Wobblespeare who's obsessed with Verona, but there are other elements, like bowler hats and the general clockpunk aesthetic, that feel more Victorian. It didn't seem like the worldbuilding was intended to make much sense, so I won't ding it for the fact that, while printing (except of the Vengeful Queen's holy book) is forbidden - this is a plot point - "penny dreadfuls" still exist, a phenomenon that was only enabled by cheap printing. There also seem to be a lot more cathedrals in OverLondon than in real-life London, though we don't see any bishops. There are anthropomorphic animal people, just because that's amusing.
The book needs more editing, including for some basic things like punctuating a dialog tag as if it was a separate sentence and not preceding or following a term of address with a comma, as well as the increasingly common "may" when it should be "might" and a collection of mostly familiar vocabulary errors: tenants/tenets, reigns/reins, proscribe/prescribe, disenfranchised/disenchanted, produce/product, rifled/riffled, discrete/discreet. The authors occasionally put too many negatives in a sentence and end up reversing the obviously intended meaning, and don't always get apostrophe placement right. It's no worse than average, but needs a tidy-up. These are mostly things a lot of people get wrong, which accounts for the fact that none of the many people mentioned in the acknowledgements apparently spotted them.
The plot is a kind of farcical hard-boiled mystery; I say "hard-boiled" because there's quite a bit of violence directed at the investigators, they spend a lot of time in the mean streets, they're chronically short of money and they drink a lot (especially their leader). Also, (view spoiler)[they end up getting shafted for the reward (hide spoiler)].
Priests are exploding, and Captain Reign, a swashbuckling pirate who has just managed to save her life by signing up as a privateer, becomes a private ear or investigator to try to earn enough money to get her ship out of hock. Her ferret-girl cabin boy Flora and intellectually different bosun Sid assist, or do something that sometimes resembles assisting, as does a clever young artificer named Elias. I enjoyed the reluctant thugs, the grubby urchins, the sinister guild leaders, the Cry (the sole news medium, town criers who announce the news on the hour), the flamboyant villain, the scary nuns. It's a fun world, and although sometimes it's violence or squalor played for laughs, it never felt like dark comedy. I'm not sure what makes the difference; the overall light and zestful tone, I think, and the optimism the characters retain about life and human nature.
I would definitely read more in the series, and it makes it firmly into the Silver tier of my annual recommendations list.
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Review: The Aeronaut's Windlass
The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'm a fan of Jim Butcher's urban fantasy series, even though it's now getting darker than I usually prefer. He used to be one of the few authors I bought in hardback, because his books stand up to re-reading; he has a smooth, competent style, wry humour, and a knack for writing action, and his main characters are clever, creative and principled.
All of those characteristics are on display in this book, which I've been wanting to read for a while. I enjoy the idea of steampunk, even though the execution often lets it down, so I wanted to see how a writer I knew was above average dealt with it.
As I expected, Butcher refuses to follow the unwritten rule that you can have airships, or you can use vocabulary correctly, but not both (since I listened to the audiobook, I can't swear that there are no homonym errors, but I doubt it, because he's not prone to those). I did notice he sometimes fell into the common error of using "may" during past tense narration instead of "might," and possibly confused "hurling" and "hurtling" at one point. His young female characters are actually intelligent and sensible, though Gwen is a lot less sensible than Bridget. And he includes talking cats, an element which improves every book I've seen it used in, even otherwise bad ones.
The characters in general are varied and distinctive, and several of them get viewpoints. There are three completely different etherealists, semi-wizards whose work with ethereal forces leads to various kinds of mental illness and eccentricity, and one of them, Folly, is a viewpoint character. There are three completely different Spirearch's Guard who get viewpoints: the experienced and competent Warriorborn Benedict, the princessesque Gwen, and the physically strong and personally humble Bridget, who is technically a member of the quasi-aristocracy but whose house has fallen to the point where that doesn't make much difference in practice. She works with the cat Rowl (I'm assuming the spelling, because audiobook); there are several other completely distinct cats, but only Rowl gets a viewpoint. There's also the airship captain Grimm with a viewpoint, and one or two of the invading marines.
As well as these central characters, we get several members of Grimm's crew, none of whom I had any trouble telling apart; a couple of other guards, including an aristocratic snot that Bridget is going to duel at one point, though that whole subplot disappears and is never revisited after another spire attacks; the Spirearch, a puckish older man with a lot more political influence than he pretends, and considerable nous; and Brother Vincent of the Wayist Temple, a Buddhist-like sect of martial artists and librarians. Of course, listening to the audiobook means that the different characters literally get different voices, but I feel like I would have been able to distinguish them on the page just as easily. Their interpersonal and (in the case of the viewpoint characters) intrapersonal dynamics make sense and are in close relationship with the plot, both driving it and being driven by it, as they should be.
The worldbuilding is... local. What I mean is that we don't get much that isn't directly plot-relevant. We know that humanity has inhabited Spires, made out of almost-indestructible Spirestone by the long-gone Builders, on a hostile world for thousands of years. We know they get their meat, leather and food in general from vats, because one of the characters is from a family who has a vattery. We know quite a bit about how the various kinds of etheric crystals work, because they power the airships and the weapons and are valued, scarce resources, and another character is from a family that grows them. We know that the creatures of the surface are highly dangerous, because the heroes fight some, and that therefore wood (which apparently can't be grown in vats, but has to be harvested from the surface) is extremely expensive. But we don't know where metal comes from; it just never comes up, even though quite a few things are made of metal - usually brass, because, after all, this is steampunk - and we know that iron rusts extremely quickly if not protected by a copper coating.
Spires trade, but also fight, using airships in both cases; they're more or less countries, just vertical countries made out of extremely hard stone. And that's the background to this book. A spire that periodically goes to war for economic reasons is attacking the spire where our heroes live, and they must pull together and be heroic in order to repel the invasion. There are pitched battles, investigations, negotiations, and a small amount of romance of sorts, as well as coming-of-age-style character growth.
It gets intense; there are deaths of innocents and named characters, widespread destruction, and considerable pain of various sorts for our heroes, including a strong depiction of post-battle horror of the kind that can lead to PTSD. For my taste, it (and the recent books in Butcher's main series, The Dresden Files) are getting darker and more intense than I prefer; I'm more of a cozy fantasy reader these days. But they're so well done that I tolerate it better than I would from a less skilled author. I'd still hesitate to read a sequel, because military SFF has never been a favourite of mine. I'm a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan novels despite, rather than because of, the military parts, for example, and the ones I like the best are the least military.
The mismatch to my personal taste does figure into my rating, placing this in the Silver tier of my annual recommendation list, rather than the Gold tier it might deserve if I was rating more objectively. It's still a recommendation, especially for fans of Butcher, Bujold, and steampunk done well.
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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'm a fan of Jim Butcher's urban fantasy series, even though it's now getting darker than I usually prefer. He used to be one of the few authors I bought in hardback, because his books stand up to re-reading; he has a smooth, competent style, wry humour, and a knack for writing action, and his main characters are clever, creative and principled.
All of those characteristics are on display in this book, which I've been wanting to read for a while. I enjoy the idea of steampunk, even though the execution often lets it down, so I wanted to see how a writer I knew was above average dealt with it.
As I expected, Butcher refuses to follow the unwritten rule that you can have airships, or you can use vocabulary correctly, but not both (since I listened to the audiobook, I can't swear that there are no homonym errors, but I doubt it, because he's not prone to those). I did notice he sometimes fell into the common error of using "may" during past tense narration instead of "might," and possibly confused "hurling" and "hurtling" at one point. His young female characters are actually intelligent and sensible, though Gwen is a lot less sensible than Bridget. And he includes talking cats, an element which improves every book I've seen it used in, even otherwise bad ones.
The characters in general are varied and distinctive, and several of them get viewpoints. There are three completely different etherealists, semi-wizards whose work with ethereal forces leads to various kinds of mental illness and eccentricity, and one of them, Folly, is a viewpoint character. There are three completely different Spirearch's Guard who get viewpoints: the experienced and competent Warriorborn Benedict, the princessesque Gwen, and the physically strong and personally humble Bridget, who is technically a member of the quasi-aristocracy but whose house has fallen to the point where that doesn't make much difference in practice. She works with the cat Rowl (I'm assuming the spelling, because audiobook); there are several other completely distinct cats, but only Rowl gets a viewpoint. There's also the airship captain Grimm with a viewpoint, and one or two of the invading marines.
As well as these central characters, we get several members of Grimm's crew, none of whom I had any trouble telling apart; a couple of other guards, including an aristocratic snot that Bridget is going to duel at one point, though that whole subplot disappears and is never revisited after another spire attacks; the Spirearch, a puckish older man with a lot more political influence than he pretends, and considerable nous; and Brother Vincent of the Wayist Temple, a Buddhist-like sect of martial artists and librarians. Of course, listening to the audiobook means that the different characters literally get different voices, but I feel like I would have been able to distinguish them on the page just as easily. Their interpersonal and (in the case of the viewpoint characters) intrapersonal dynamics make sense and are in close relationship with the plot, both driving it and being driven by it, as they should be.
The worldbuilding is... local. What I mean is that we don't get much that isn't directly plot-relevant. We know that humanity has inhabited Spires, made out of almost-indestructible Spirestone by the long-gone Builders, on a hostile world for thousands of years. We know they get their meat, leather and food in general from vats, because one of the characters is from a family who has a vattery. We know quite a bit about how the various kinds of etheric crystals work, because they power the airships and the weapons and are valued, scarce resources, and another character is from a family that grows them. We know that the creatures of the surface are highly dangerous, because the heroes fight some, and that therefore wood (which apparently can't be grown in vats, but has to be harvested from the surface) is extremely expensive. But we don't know where metal comes from; it just never comes up, even though quite a few things are made of metal - usually brass, because, after all, this is steampunk - and we know that iron rusts extremely quickly if not protected by a copper coating.
Spires trade, but also fight, using airships in both cases; they're more or less countries, just vertical countries made out of extremely hard stone. And that's the background to this book. A spire that periodically goes to war for economic reasons is attacking the spire where our heroes live, and they must pull together and be heroic in order to repel the invasion. There are pitched battles, investigations, negotiations, and a small amount of romance of sorts, as well as coming-of-age-style character growth.
It gets intense; there are deaths of innocents and named characters, widespread destruction, and considerable pain of various sorts for our heroes, including a strong depiction of post-battle horror of the kind that can lead to PTSD. For my taste, it (and the recent books in Butcher's main series, The Dresden Files) are getting darker and more intense than I prefer; I'm more of a cozy fantasy reader these days. But they're so well done that I tolerate it better than I would from a less skilled author. I'd still hesitate to read a sequel, because military SFF has never been a favourite of mine. I'm a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan novels despite, rather than because of, the military parts, for example, and the ones I like the best are the least military.
The mismatch to my personal taste does figure into my rating, placing this in the Silver tier of my annual recommendation list, rather than the Gold tier it might deserve if I was rating more objectively. It's still a recommendation, especially for fans of Butcher, Bujold, and steampunk done well.
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