11.14.09
The List (A)
I’ve mentioned The List here and there; it’s something I started when I was a kid who needed to keep track of what books by whom I’d read and hadn’t read and owned and didn’t. It grew into two lists, sort of; there are the logbooks in which I list all of the books I own (now largely done on Librarything and, to a lesser extent, Goodreads – I like Goodreads, but love LT), and The List, which is the roll of writers whose bibliographies I intend to read through, and possibly own. One of the greatest joys the internet has brought me has been the ease with which I can now update The List. I used to have to rely on “coming soon” blurbs and articles in Publisher’s Weekly mined at the library – I don’t know how I did it. Now I’d hate to have to do without Fantastic Fiction.
As of right now, The List comprises the bibliographies of some 269 writers, from Lynn Abbey to Sarah Zettel, including separate listings for more prolific pseudonyms. (It’s still 269 even though I removed Yasmine Galenorn and her very silly alias, since I added C.s. and Charlaine Harris. I really ought to see about removing C.J. Cherryh…) Well, no, technically it’s 267 writers and two shared worlds: Bordertown and Liavek. (Why don’t I have Thieves’ World listed separately, or Merovingen Nights? Mainly, to answer my own question, because they’re listed under Abbey and Cherryh, respectively, as editors (if I remove CJC I’ll add back Merovingen Nights), and there were not as far as I know any independent single-author novels like there were for the other two. I’ll have to check; I think there might have been for TW at least.) There’s fantasy and mystery, of course, and also straight fiction and a smattering of nonfiction. I keep track of pseudonyms separately as well as under the writer’s most well-known name so that they get their own places on the roll, for easier searching. (And no, Goodsearch.com, I’m not a robot, nor am I trying to defraud the site on behalf of Animal Haven. I’m looking up my writers. Stop deactivating my IP address.) So: I probably need to add MV and TW, probably remove CJ Cherryh, and good grief why have I never added Charles Dickens?
There are a few writers who were on The List when I started keeping it, handwritten in the back of a notebook, and who will always be on it: Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper, Elizabeth Goudge, E. Nesbit, Tolkien of course. There are a few of writers – the aforementioned Sarah Zettel, Jeanne M. Dams, David Holland, etc. – by whom I’ve only read one book, but which was a lovely enough book in whatever way that they’re automatically in, and I will one day get to more by them. (It’s a lot easier to take someone off nowadays than it used to be. Ask the Galenorn woman.) There are even a handful of people on there I haven’t actually read anything by… I know, it’s odd, but Shelby Foote is an honorary member because I adore him; I haven’t ever gotten around to his novels, and his Civil War Narrative is too expensive to buy new and rare as hens’ teeth used. Then there are Kenneth Flint and Sean Russell, several of whose books I’ve collected over the years based on the covers – some of Flint’s have covers by Don Maitz! – and the apparent themes of the novels (and I admit to having been a sucker for the VLFN, which – as it stands for Very Long Fantasy Novel – describes Sean Russell very well), but which for some reason or another I’ve just never read. Gene Amole is also an honorary member, because I heard an interview with him on NPR years ago and wanted more; I hunted down the series of essays he wrote for the Rocky Mountain News narrating his life as it ended… From what I heard of him on NPR and read of him online, he’s on The List forever. And Tom Baker’s honorary just because he’s Tom Baker.
Most of the folks on The List, though, are tried-and-true favorites, whose books I’ve read all or most of, and either own or plan to. I don’t let go of books easily.
Aw, why not – here’s “A”:
1. Lynn Abbey
2. Diane Ackerman
3. Joan Aiken
4. Susan Wittig Albert
5. Lloyd Alexander
6. Margery Allingham
7. Gene Amole
8. Leo Axler
I’ve only read a few by Lynn Abbey (primarily fantasy); she’s been in my line of vision forever, along with Robert Lynn Asprin, but she made The List when I read The Wooden Sword. Unicorn and Dragon I did not think so highly of – I had to drag myself to the last page, and I honestly don’t remember much of it (granted, it was a couple of years ago). She’s alphabetically high on The List, but otherwise low; another book or two will tell the tale, so to speak. I own six by her (all picked up second hand), plus the Thieves’ World Anthologies containing her contributions. I’m interested in the contemporary fantasies she’s written (why didn’t I think of that sooner??)… One of these days. Not a priority, these.
Diane Ackerman (poetry and popular non-fiction) made The List with A Natural History of the Senses. It’s my favorite kind of non-fiction – accessible yet intelligent, fascinating, perspective-changing. It’s been at least fifteen years since I read it, and I found a copy not that long ago; I’ll have to make time for it before too long. I don’t remember much about A Natural History of Love, which I bought in hardcover when I worked at Barnes & Noble (which was like letting a drunk work at a package store); most likely if I still love Senses I’ll back it up with Love. I haven’t ever read anything else by Ackerman… the tinge of New Age that seems obvious puts me off, and I am unashamedly not a huge fan of poetry (mostly), so it may stay that way for a while, though her book about gardening looks possible. She’s a background Lister.
Joan Aiken (young adult, fiction, romance, suspense) is one who’s been Listed forever. I must have read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Nightbirds on Nantucket at some point, but I don’t remember; kids apparently read them in school, but I don’t think I was so lucky. However, I have read several others, like If I Were You (which I own) and The Girl from Paris (which I do not) and several others, and I plan to hunt down her Austen books. She’s a classic, and yet another someone else I need to reread before long; she’s never been one of my very favorite writers, but she certainly is a favorite, unqualified.
One of the also-known-ases with a life of its own is Susan Wittig Albert (period and contemporary mystery). She’s on there with her husband as Robin Paige; as herself she’s running the China Bayles series (read the first one and quite liked it; haven’t gotten further yet) and the “Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter”… I own the first of that series, haven’t read it yet, and it worries me a little. I trust it’s not overly twee, but … it worries me. We’ll see; it kind of fits my current Gaslight theme. (On a slightly different note, I need to see that movie again…)
Lloyd Alexander (young adult, fantasy, memoirs, translation) is one of my heroes. Taran the pig-boy and Vesper Holly and Theo the printer’s devil are three of the characters so woven into my life that if you removed their threads I might collapse. The intelligence, wisdom, and humor of his young adult writing is such that I will be reading and rereading his books until I have to stop due to senility, or death … I have never gotten my hands on any of his books for adults, but I plan to. (To be sung to the tune of the Barenaked Ladies’ “If I Had a Million Dollars”.) It shocks me a little that no one seems to have a real Lloyd Alexander fan page, much less an official page. There was one; I had a link to it saved on The List, but it is no more (insert Parrot Sketch quotes here.) I was deeply grieved when he died in 2007… Hm. One of these days I might have to reopen my Angelfire account.
Margery Allingham (contemporary mystery, fiction) … She gets a bad rap, I think, among some mystery snobs. She may well have started off writing a sort of a parody of the Lord Peter novels – her Albert Campion being, covertly, nobility, and blond and foolish-looking and actually smarter than any three average bears put together. But the books are good; last year I reread The Crime at Black Dudley, the first Campion, and loved every page. The writing evolved, and so did Campion. I’ll never rank him with Wimsey in my affections – but he ranks, certainly. If I say “I need to reread these books soon” one more time I will weary the reader and make myself queasy, so I won’t. Take it as, er, read. Black Plumes and Deadly Duo are two of her excellent non-Campion works, and only solidify the need to find and read all of them.
Geme Amole (memoir) I spoke of earlier… I would love to be able to listen to his radio show. The brief sample given on NPR – which story, God bless ‘em, I found in their archives (but not, drat it, the Letters segment which included a message regarding a story they had done about Star Wars, after which Linda Wertheimer (I think) signed off with “NPR this is” and nearly made me drive off the road) was magical. He seemed like a true gent, Gene Amole did, and how astonishingly generous to write as intimately as he did about the process of learning to die. Even if he hadn’t published actual books in addition to the hundreds (thousands?) of essays, he would always be on The List, so that I would never be in danger of forgetting him.
And finally for the A’s: Leo Axler. I picked up a couple of the Bill Hawley books at a library sale, and liked them; you can’t say a detective who’s an undertaker isn’t different. IIRC, he was a pretty great character, and the three I’ve read were very well done, which makes it surprising to me that, for one thing, there is very little out there on the net about Axler or the books, and for another as far as I can find he hasn’t published since 1996. Pity.
Eight down; only 261 to go.
11.13.09
C.S. (not to be confused with another C) Harris: What Angels Fear
A while ago, at the same time that I bought Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris I bought another by her, the first Sebastian St. Cyr mystery (on which she is listed as “C.S. Harris” – wonder why): What Angels Fear. (Oh, that’s why – it’s not Charlaine Harris. Well, that kind of explains it. Don’t I feel silly.) I made the jump from Urban-slash-contemporary fantasy to plain old good-stuff fantasy to period mystery with this one… And I’m following it with a reread of Caleb Carr’s The Alienist. The two are superficially similar: both are set in the murky depths of a city somewhere around the turn of the century (although different centuries). Both feature gaslight and hansom cabs and foul weather. Both begin with the depraved and sexually tinged (if rape can ever be called sex) murder of a should-be-but-isn’t-innocent. They’re both very well written indeed, and both excellent books…
What Angels Fear opens with the murder of a young woman who turns out to be an actress-cum-prostitute (Cyprian – I’d forgotten about that term). At the scene of the crime is found a dueling pistol with the name “St. Cyr” engraved on it – which obviously incriminates Sebastian St. Cyr, young nobleman and rake, who has been a sore disappointment to his father. But Sebastian (SSC) didn’t do it, and when the officious twits of the London police force come to arrest him, he is rather indignant, especially when the Beau Brummel-wannabe sergeant mouths off to him. SSC puts the latter in his place, which may have been a bit of a tactical error given the circumstances – and given that the sergeant has a knife and a temper. In the end, the second constable stumbles onto the knife, the sergeant is yelling that SSC has killed him, and SSC runs for it. At that point his choices are: turn himself in and hope for the best (although the case is strong against him, and whoever else could or would have stabbed the constable?); find a ship to smuggle him to America or somewhere; or stay hidden and try to find the real killer. SSC being SSC, he has no real choice – he has to try to clear his name.
In working to do so, SSC must turn to the woman who broke his heart several years ago, Kat Boleyn, and a doctor friend who provides valuable forensic information; he is also joined by a young boy who starts off trying to pick his pocket and, in the grand tradition of Regency and Victorian novels, becomes his ally. (And of course he’s much cleverer than SSC was expecting; I swear I’m tempted to write a book about a street urchin being taken under someone’s wing, someone who realizes the boy is at least as intelligent as anyone in society, and educating him and training him to “pass” – and maybe end up in Parliament. I’ll call it “My Fair Laddie.”) I don’t want it to sound like it’s Just Another Regency; it has some rather standard plot turns, and I admit I saw the end coming a ways off, but I was enjoying myself so much that didn’t care. And I did think the killer was someone else; there were some lovely red herrings.
There was political intrigue – the French, of course, and the mess surrounding the Madness of King George – which usually annoys me, but this was quite well done and well integrated into the plot: it’s integral, and more cloak-and-dagger than oh-lord-not-another-worldwide-conspiracy. There was some truly wonderful period detail. And I loved the characters. The supporting cast could easily have been a cast of cliches, but Harris provided enough twists and quirks that those who peopled this novel came quite close to living and breathing. Sebastian St. Cyr is not Mr. Darcy, nor Julian Kestrel, nor William Monk, nor yet Sherlock Holmes, or any of the other dandy or detective (or both) heroes of gaslit fame; he is himself, damaged by childhood tragedies, a cold father, and heartbreak and war horrors as an adult. I have to admit, I was still in Fantasy mode when I started this, and still thinking it was by the author of supernatural mysteries, so when the narrative started talking about how he could see almost perfectly well in the dark and hear what no one else could I kept expecting a paragraph along the lines of “He caught the scent of blood on the constable’s coat, and turned his face away. He had learned to manage his unholy hungers, but since the night he was bitten he lived in constant fear of losing control”… Obviously I was wrong, and I’m glad of it. (It was an odd experience, though…) I loved the book; it wasn’t perfect – again, there was really only one way the climactic struggle could end – but it was close enough. C.S. Harris is on The List, and I can’t wait to get hold of more of her books, SSC and everything else besides. (The SSC series has what has to be the slickest theme for its titles that I’ve seen: What Angels Fear, Where Serpents Sleep, Why Mermaids Sing, When Gods Die – very nice. No Who?)
While What Angels Fear takes place in London in 1811, The Alienist is set in 1896 Manhattan, but the feel is much the same: masterful writing, a milieu lit by gaslight, a sea change in the political arena, hansom cabs and boys snatched from certain hanging to work for “nobs”; depraved murder of someone the public won’t miss, and about whom the public wouldn’t care except it’s not the only killing and at some point less expendable members of society might be targeted… Unusual detectives and hansom cabs and fighting the Establishment to find the real killer: these are the similarities. I know the resemblance ends about there, but I only just began The Alienist and it’s been years since I first read it, so I’ll not venture further. I do remember absolutely loving the book, and being rather disappointed that Caleb Carr a) didn’t write dozens more and b) turned out to be something of a radical. But I’m already relishing the reread.
Oh dear. Now I’m going to be stuck in the groove of Gaslight Mystery. Anne Perry, here I come.
10.19.09
More angels and elves…
Rather than accomplishing anything useful, I finished two books today: Blood Angel by Justine Musk, and Crystal Sage by Kara Dalkey. I started the latter because I was reaching the end of the former, and I knew that ending wasn’t going to be anything I wanted to read at work. With the level of intensity I expected, I decided I was better off finding something else to read over lunch.
I was right, and wrong, and wronger. I was right that the ending of Blood Angel was fairly intense, and most certainly not something I would have enjoyed reading at work or over lunch. Or any other event involving food. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It was a good book. It’s billed as “dark urban fantasy”; I do tend to steer clear of fantasy labeled “dark” for the simple reason that I don’t enjoy the gorefests those tend toward. I can live without images of violence dancing in my head, and particularly the often gratuitous violence featured in dark fantasy. I’m not weak-stomached about blood and gore in general (I grew up with M*A*S*H on during dinner – hemorrhages and spurting blood over the mac and cheese? No problem), but in these books there are so often demons or other creatures who romp about wreaking horrible and gratuitous mayhem and littering the landscape in often a most creative fashion with body parts, purely for the enjoyment of it …. Not my idea of a good time. I had a feeling even when I bought the book that I was risking it, but I also had a good feeling about it. Good cover, interesting back blurb – I took it. And when I needed a next book in my current kick of contemporary fantasy (still not over, though I don’t know what’s next), I went for it.
I’ve found that I’m not a harsh judge of plot. I don’t always notice flaws others pick up on automatically (which, yes, concerns me a bit for my own writing). My two main concerns are writing and characterization. For me, a book can have the dumbest plot in the world, or none at all, but if the writing is masterful and the characters are interesting and/or likeable and/or hateful, as applicable, it can rank fairly high with me. In this case, I wasn’t in love with the progress of the story; it seemed rather disjointed and episodic – but each episode was very well done, well imagined. I’m a little puzzled about the mythology, by how the angels of the book, some fallen (or all fallen?) are intended to relate to better-known manifestations of angels, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. (Though, naturally enough, I can’t help thinking that somewhere in there would have been the ideal place for the confrontation I talked about here… …) I liked the protagonists (though it’s never fun not knowing whether main characters can be trusted or not); they had solidity and depth, and I enjoyed spending time with them, investing time in them. The demon Del was a little masterpiece. The writing carried the day, coolly handling every eventuality… maybe a little too coolly, in a way, leading to an ending which proved me partially wrong: as I said, intense, but not as intense as expected – it was almost detached. I was involved, but not rapt; mildly horrified but not actively repulsed; glad but not to a personal level. There was a lot of background that felt skimmed over, but … It was a unique story, well told. Overall, very good job. Justine Musk is, tentatively, on the List.
(On a side note, the author is a little younger than I am, has five (!) sons, and is apparently divorcing her husband, who is the founder of Paypal. That’s an unusual sort of bio…)
The other one, Crystal Sage (which I have to mention I have been mispronouncing in my head, thanks to my brother… he tells a story about going to a McDonald’s and being waited on by (of all things!) a sullen teenaged girl; he noted her nametag, and if it was pronounced sah-GAY? And she snarled back that it was “Sage”. My brother doesn’t accept attitude any better than I do, so when he left he said “Have a good one, Saggy”…) (This is the same brother (not, praise be, that I have more than one) who overheard someone at a hockey game talking about an autistic child of their acquaintance, and said, “My sister’s autistic!” Meaning me. I was in art school at the time.) (Back to Crystal Saggy) …. The first Kara Dalkey I read, I believe, was The Nightingale, in the Terri Windling Fairy Tale series. I loved it, and, as I always do when I love a book, put the author on my List and have sought out her books. The problem is … Well, I’ve discovered that my taste as a teenager often … not to put too fine a point on it, it sometimes sucked. I loved Sword of Shannara as a kid; I tried to read it a couple of years ago, and it offended me so deeply I threw it across the room. I’m not saying that the situation with Kara Dalkey is the same, but … I need to read The Nightingale again soon, to see it it’s held up. I’m starting to think that if it has it’s an anomaly among her books, because I’m realizing that I’ve hated every other book of hers I’ve read. I loathed The Curse of Sagamore; I did not enjoy Euryale; I couldn’t get into Goa; and Crystal Sagg – er, Sage… Hm. I sense a trend. Oh dear. I don’t remember her Liavek stories. Again, I’ll have to try them again sometime, just to see if she’s better in the short haul.
The story centers around a woman named Joan Dark, whose parents were apparently idiots to name her thus, and whose ancestry may or may not include that other Joan. She’s brought up now and then, but the mentions bring absolutely nothing to the story, and have nothing to do with anything, so really the only point to even including any discussion of Joan of Arc (Jeanne D’Arc – which … never mind) seemed to be making the parents morons (which the father’s cameo appearance bears up) and muddying the waters. Her family ranch has been sold, willingly, by her parents, and she trudges through the entire book being bitter about it; she is now self-employed cleaning houses, and has an apprentice … waitaminnit. An apprentice house cleaner? But … never mind. The apprentice is Miriam, is as flaky and New Age as they come, not that that’s a cliché or anything. Given that Joan is hard-headed and realistic, they butt heads – sometimes, it seemed, for pages at a time. If you edited out all the sniping between these two, you’d have a novella. It would be a start, like the joke about a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean. The first job the book takes them to is to the apartment of a friend of Joan’s, who is not home – or so it seems. Long story short, she’s there, she’s just been turned into a guitar by an evil elf. Yup, I know. The reasoning for this, such as it is, is that there is a song called the Lay of Amadan which was gifted to a long-ago ancestor of the guitar (Gillian) by the Sidhe, and another later ancestor turned it into a summoning device, and now Gillian has rediscovered it and used it and ticked off the big guy it’s named after, and, in a semi-related story the elves are planning to take over the world through landscaping. The Indians are helping (sorry, Amerinds – isn’t that as insulting as just plain “Indian”? It’s short for American Indian, which – they aren’t, Indian I mean, and isn’t that the whole point of using “Native American”?), only not all of them, and in fact we only ever see one, and others are fighting the Sidhe (sort of), and in fact not all of the elves are going for global domination, but the ones who aren’t don’t much like Joan (does anyone?), but they don’t have much choice … Oh dear.
I said earlier that I’m not usually a strong critic of plot, but even I have my limits. This was a bloody awful silly mess. We are never told … much of anything, really. And much of what we are told goes nowhere. The Chekhov quote about not bringing a loaded gun in if you’re not going to use it? Not heeded. There were all sorts of guns lying about unused by the end of this. Why was Joan such a good singer? No reason, really. Why was such a point made about their little town being not as peaceful as they thought? No reason, really. What was the connection between the Lay of Amadan and the plot to take over the world? Besides Amadan, who has nothing whatever to do with music in the book, nothing. Why did so much of the important stuff happen off-stage? Why was so much other important stuff, or stuff that might have been interesting, glossed over? ‘Cause. I didn’t much care for this book as I read it, I’m not sure why I finished it, and the more I think about it as I’m writing this the more my dislike grows.
I also said earlier that my main concerns with a book are writing and characterization. Oh, as usual, dear. (<- Gratuitous Buffy quote.) The latter: Joan … It's just not enjoyable when a character is consistently abrasive, and also prone to snap judgments: she dismisses people around her as "Euro trash" and "Rockies jocks", etc. She's derided by her sidekick as being anthropocentric – i.e., regarding humans as the central and most important feature of the universe – and she is, but that's not her biggest detriment, although her attitude toward anything otherworldly is so stolid it's a little hilarious. She's also pedestrian, unimaginative, and narrow-minded, and did I mention surly and abrasive? She doesn't think much of her partner, for the most part; she doesn't think much of the old friend she's doing all of this for, and in fact drags her feet most unattractively when she has to take some time off her work to do so; she feels betrayed by her parents because they sold THEIR land and after decades of back-breaking work are now off enjoying themselves with the money. She calls an old friend in the police department for help, and is abrupt with him. She ticks off every one of the "Others" who try to help … in short, gosh, who can figure why she's single? Miriam… is annoying. Dim-wittedly flightily New Age, and conscientiously anti- anthropocentric… 'Nuff said. The Bad Guy, Amadan, is one of the least Bad Bad Guys I've seen recently; none of the characters were much more than two-dimensional, but he barely made it past one. Even Miriam points out midway through that maybe Gillian did something to deserve being turned into a guitar. (Unwittingly, she did.) And Gillian … we never meet Gillian pre-guitar; we're never even given that much of an indication that Joan was much of a friend, no reminiscences, no frantic worry, certainly no tears. Given the disruption to their lives chasing after Amadan involves, and, as it turns out, the danger, I would think it would have been wise to build a closer bond between them. Instead, it's as if she's being asked to help someone she barely knows, and can barely get past her resentment of having been asked. In the end, Gillian turns out to have been not entirely worth the effort – so (again) what was the point?
As for the writing … if one more character, or the narrator, had used the phrase "woo-woo", this book might well have gone the way of Sword of Shannara. The writing wasn’t actively bad … except where it was. “‘Does he mean it or was he just pulling our legs to get us out of his hair?’” Really? Said with a straight face? The paragraph in which Miriam (lord, is it Miriam or Marian? I think I’ve called her both in this post – and the measure of how little I cared for the book is that I’m not bothering to check) tells Joan that they’re up against the Sidhe is one of the most annoying attempts at Laurel and Hardy-esque humor I’ve seen in quite some time. So – it wasn’t actively bad; just periodically bad.
I don’t know. There’s just an unpleasant feel to the whole thing. Which is funny to say given that the last book, Blood Angel, involved torture and mutilation and gratuitous murder; that was unpleasant, yes, but it was all the work of the Bad Guys (now THOSE are Bad Guys!), and the plot of the book involved battling them, and stopping them … Here, the white hats were as unpleasant in various ways as the black. The wolf-boy or whatever he was supposed to be – coyote? Were-canine? Pooka? Who knows? Joan never really questions what he is, which is pretty funny, until perhaps the point that he pees on her carpet, and maybe not even then. Cain, that was his name – and he was pure irritation. His dialogue doesn’t bear repeating. The man running the magic shop Marian frequents fired a boy who helped her and Joan, and was an out-and-out bitch even while he was himself helping them. Nice. (In fact, everyone except that poor schlub of a cop seems to be helping the two girls simply because they don’t have a choice, because they don’t want Amadan to win, not because they want the two girls to survive.) Again, Gillian is an idiot, and Joan and Marian don’t trust each other half the time and snipe at each other for other reasons during the half they do sort of trust each other. Their priorities alternate between being skewed and being blurred, and in the end it’s not really clear what they were fighting for, whether they’ve won or not, and whether they should have won.
It’s a disappointment. Hence the “wronger” above… I might have been better off reading about ripped-out livers over lunch at work. I remember really looking forward to The Curse of Sagamore and being shocked at how little I enjoyed it; I don’t think I had the same high expectations here, but I did expect better.
On, as the Ghost Hunters say, to the next. Hope I fare better.
10.07.09
Adventures in customer service
I hate customer service. I hate needing it – companies make it difficult to reach a human being, and when you do get to a person it’s a crap shoot as to whether you’ll get someone who can even pretend to care, or who speaks English, or who is sitting in an office in this country, or who can answer your question or solve your problem.
Even more, I hate working in customer service. It’s basically what I’ve done nearly as long as I’ve worked in an office, and before, really – all those retail jobs were face-to-face customer service, where you don’t have the option of putting someone on hold and muttering about them. Someday I should post selections from by Barnes & Noble vent book; my fellow booksellers and I all had so many great Stupid Customer Stories that I finally picked up a five-subject notebook and wrote “B&N Vent Book” on the cover and left it on the break room table. It filled up in a matter of a couple of months. So did the second one (which vanished, alas). There’s some truly great stuff in that notebook.
My first “real” job was working the phones at Blue Cross, God help me. If I could survive that, I can survive anything – but I swore a solemn oath that I would never wear a headset again, and that I’d do something drastic before ever working as a customer service rep again. Yeah, well, easier said and all that.
While I have a couple or three good memories of BC/BS – talking to one elderly man about books in general and Christopher Morley in particular until the call lasted about 15 minutes and well into my lunch break; and then there was … um … er… anyway, while there was a good memory, and while I made some good friends among the other poor unfortunates in the office, I hated that job. An astonishing percentage of the people who called were insane – not being funny: there were two segments in particular who stood out from the rest as hatter-like, which I won’t name so as not to offend… except that one of the groups was those calling from dental offices. People have always seemed fairly normal when I’ve gone to my dentist, but I have to say the staff of two oral surgeons I’ve been to … *phew.* And nearly every single person who ever ended up on my line who was calling from a dental office was flaming barmy.
I learned a lot from that job; I learned a great deal about how not to handle a call from some of those around me, from being appalled at their responses to calls. I learned to use the phrase “you people” sparingly; it was nearly always spat out as if it meant “you evil spawn of Satan who have ruined my life and taken all of my money”. I try only to say “you people” when I mean that. I learned that humor in some situations can be a lifesaver, and in others is exactly the wrong approach, and that it’s not always all that easy to tell the difference. I learned that putting someone on hold for a minute or so can calm them down – which is strange, because my fuse shortens in proportionto the amount of time I’ve had to listen to hold “music”. I always try to get the name of the person I’m talking to, spelling included, because if necessary I can ruin *his* life, or, far more rarely, praise him to his boss. I learned to cut the customer service rep a little slack, because it’s a crappy, crappy job, and he probably doesn’t want to be there. That being said, I also learned to be a really and truly awful customer, because if the rep I’m talking to takes up that little bit of slack and goes for more, that doesn’t cut it. I never start out mean, never – but the second someone cops an attitude, or can’t be bothered to answer a reasonable question, or in any other way demonstrates his unwillingness to be on the other end of the phone call, all bets are off. Don’t want to be there? No worries. I’ll do my best to make it happen. And if I ask for a supervisor, you WILL get me a supervisor. I know – not pleasant. But I have had to summon up or feign compassion and know what I’m talking about and be willing to talk about it for longer than I care to think about. My employers have required it. My customers have required it. My own self-esteem and integrity required it. And I require it just as much from people I’m talking to.
I meant it quite seriously when I swore I’d have to be desperate to ever take on customer service again. It’s draining work; everyone who calls in is in a crisis of some kind or other, and every one of them expects a csr to drop everything and serve them. In any given day there are a thousand things that need doing, to which is added answering the &^@! phone, and to the time involved in simply answering the bloody damn phone is, about fifty percent of the time, added anywhere from five to fifty-five minutes in taking whatever action the call demanded. At BC, we were required to log every call, or at least most of them, but we weren’t allowed to take time in between calls to do so, so … I don’t know how people did it. I had a hell of a time. Nowadays, the routine is: me working on something, frequently involving a ruler to keep my place on a spreadsheet while I try to keep track without a ruler on the monitor, several highlighters, and a pen … and the phone rings in mid-formula. Five minutes later I am working on the return authorization or research or whatever fire I have to put out. In the middle of that, the phone rings again, with a new joyful surprise. Half an hour after that, with a few more price-and-availability calls in the midst for extra spice, and I finally pick up my ruler… and find that I have no idea where I left off. And given that accuracy is kind of vital to my job, it tends to make me just a tad short-tempered. I haven’t actually answered the phone with “Good afternoon, what the HELL do you want” – yet…
Anyway. What brought on this diatribe is, unsurprisingly, a call that happened today. I rate it at among the top ten worst calls ever, on any job. It doesn’t surpass the Worst Call Ever: in which a doctor’s office called to find out why a boy’s coverage lapsed; I had to tell them that although the boy had cancer, his father somehow neglected to sign him up for extended coverage when he turned 18, and, well, it was too late to re-up him … upon which the office person passed me on to the doctor himself (never a good sign. No offense to physicians who don’t deserve to be offended, but in my experience doctors are usually arrogant pricks, and when brought in on customer service calls, ALWAYS), to whom I explained again, and who informed me that I’d better be happy, because this made me a murderer. I called him a son of a bitch as he hung up, which I don’t think he heard, or I’m sure he would have gotten me fired (do me a favor). I should have taken his name so that I could call him periodically and ask him how his choice to charge obscene amounts of money for cancer treatment so that this boy required the coverage his idiot father failed to provide him could continue to survive didn’t make HIM a murderer. The finale of the story was when I told the whole thing to the department manager – not the horrible evil one that I named one of the villains of my book after, the good one who took over from her – and she managed to get the poor kid reinstated.
So today’s didn’t involve my being accused of a crime… but. The upshot was that the caller had one of our lights, which was purchased through a company whose name he pronounced incorrectly, and a part broke. And the distributor told him to call us. For which I would love to send them a lovely thank-you gift; a stinkbomb, perhaps, or dead roses. Anyway, the man wasn’t entirely coherent – not drunk, not English-as-a-second-language, not elderly – he had none of those excuses. He was just a moron. He did have the model number of the light, which is one up on many callers – but after that’s where it went pear-shaped. What part was it that he needed? The plastic piece that swivels. Believe it or not, that doesn’t narrow it down enough to be helpful. A few minutes in his circumlocutory manner was making the eyes roll back in my head; no one, including me, ever has much luck describing parts that they’re looking at and the other person isn’t. One man’s starter is another man’s little kind of round white plastic thing. I’ve pretty much learned when I can or can’t figure out what someone’s talking about, and the surest method I’ve found is: “Can you take a digital picture of the light, and the part you need replaced, and email it to me?” That would in this case be a no – No one had a camera. And why did I need a picture, anyway, when he had so clearly described exactly what he needed. I tried to explain the little fact of life we call the BOM: the bill of material. In this case it was three pages of parts to choose from:
I’ve been doing this for a year and a half. I still always can’t match part names with … parts. I don’t know what this man was thinking I had in front of me, perhaps a detailed diagram with all parts tagged. I don’t have that. I have a photograph, and I have a BOM, and never the twain shall meet. But he described what he needed, said he. I told him again that I had no idea what part he was describing. He suggested that maybe if he spoke more slowly I would understand. I didn’t call him an SOB – I was too stunned. In all the years I’ve been doing this crap I’ve never had someone vocally slam my intelligence. Tone of voice, yes; actually as much as saying I must be stupid, no. After telling him that there was no need to be rude, I was trying to help him, stupid *&^@!, I did what I usually do – I sweetened my voice and stood my ground. That’s how you can tell I’m pissed on the phone – my voice is dripping with saccharine. I suggested that I could send him the BOM and he could just pick out what he needed… yeah, no. So I asked him for his name and number so that I could check with someone else and call him back… Why? He had so clearly and accurately described what he needed. It looked just like in the picture. I just kept pushing for his bloody name and his damn phone number, and finally got “Robert” out of him. Phone number? He didn’t know, he had to ask the guy at the desk. Really. I heard him confirm with that person that his name was Robert too. I repeated his detailed description back to him – he needed the plastic piece between the head and the arm that swiveled, and was the only plastic piece in that part of the light. And though it took me a couple more explanations that I wasn’t any more able to give him an answer now than I was two minutes ago the last time he said how he didn’t understand how I could not know exactly what he was talking about, I finally detached him to take the BOM and go ask the production manager. Lo and behold, he actually did give me enough information: there is only one plastic piece in that part of the light. It’s the control knob, which you turn one way to loosen so that you can position the head of the light, and tighten so that it stays where you put it. Knob. It’s a knob. That’s a fairly common English word. Knobs turn. They do not “swivel”. At no time did Robert the Brilliant and Offensive ever mention the useful little details that the part he broke had anything to do with positioning the head… So I called back. I have no idea what the person who answered the phone said when he answered it; it didn’t sound like what Robert had called the place. I said who I was and asked for Robert. Thus was begun one of the least coherent excuses for a conversation I’ve ever had. I think he said “Que?” Or maybe not … I asked if I was calling where I thought I was calling. I don’t know what he said in reply. We went back and forth a couple of times – I don’t think he was speaking Spanish, but I … dunno. Just as I was about to acknowledge that I had the wrong number and hang up, someone else came on the line – it was Robert. Yay. I identified myself, and he said I had been speaking to … his assistant. His …? An assistant who had to a) check what his name was and b) didn’t know the telephone number? Really.
What I should have done was find out how long they’d had the lamp, try to weasel out how the thing broke (if it just broke and it’s still covered, warranty replacement; you broke it by being a moron, you bought a new one)… I couldn’t do it. It would have involved talking to these people longer.
The only thing I liked about Terry Goodkind’s book Wizard’s First Rule was the explanation of the title; it’s something I live by. Wizard’s First Rule? People are idiots.
Amen. Oh, and Robert, wherever you are: you’re an idiot AND a jerk.
10.04.09
Faerie, Fairies, and angels …
Onward in the quest for urban fantasy … I suppose I don’t really need to qualify it as “contemporary”, do I? Witchling proved less than ideal, and skimming to the end showing it to be … endless, in the sense of without resolution – meaning “go buy the sequel” I find this reprehensible – a beginning, a middle, and an end are supposed to be three of the requirements for a book, I thought? This had a beginning (a rather poor one), and then was all middle. The preview of the second book was from the second sister’s point of view, which tends to indicate that the third book is from the third sister’s, which tends to also indicate that the second book will not only not have an end, but it won’t have a proper beginning: ALL middle, I’m thinking. Not interested.
It’s funny how similar aspects can be used in two completely dissimilar books. I rifled through my shelves for options, and came up with a short stack, including War for the Oaks by Emma Bull. Wow.
Eddi McCandry is a singer in a rock and roll band that also includes her boyfriend and her best friend, until one early spring night it goes south. Her boyfriend, who has been becoming more and more odd, flips out, their current gig falls apart, and she and her friend Carla finally walk. And Eddi literally walks home… and her life takes a wild left turn when she is grabbed by a phouka to be a part of a war between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts of Faerie. Her presence as a mortal on the battlefield will allow the combatants, otherwise immortal, to be able to kill each other dead (not something I’ve ever heard of in fantasy before, but convincingly presented)… She is taken to stand on the side of the Seelie Court, and of course once the Unseelie hears about it they will be out to kill her as a blow to their enemy… In order to protect her, the same phouka who chose her and snatched her is set to protect her. Day and night. Every minute. For the entire six months the war is expected to last. Eddi is not best pleased by any part of this situation – but, once chosen and revealed to the Court, she has no choice; she is marked as the mortal representative, and even if the Seelie Court let her go, the Unseelie Court would assume it was a ploy to misdirect them and kill her anyway. She’s stuck.
Those are the bones of the story. What the book is really about is want. It’s about wanting what is needed to survive, and wanting what is needed to live; wanting what will make life better, wanting what is not good for you, wanting what you can never have, wanting something which, attained, isn’t what you thought it was… Every person in this book desires something, or someone, or both… Yearning weaves through the pages like the weft of a tapestry, sometimes subliminal and sometimes plainly stated:
A terrible longing swelled in Eddi as she watched [the high ones of the Seelie Court], like a balloon being inflated painfully in her chest. Her vision distorted with tears, and she blinked them quickly away. She had no idea what she longed for, but she felt as if the memory of that glittering assembly would remain with her forever, and the rest of the world would look dim and blurred beside it.
I’m more than halfway through, and – unlike with the last book – both anxious to see how it wraps up and wishing it was longer. I knew by the first page that this was what I was looking for: “Down through the silent business district the mall twists, the silver zipper in a patchwork coat of many dark colors. The sound of traffic from Hennepin Avenue, one block over, might be the grating of the World-Worm’s scales on stone.” Nice. And it gets better. Beautiful, unique characters; tight, lyric yet down-to-earth writing, a view of Faerie which would shock the owner of the “Fairies and Angels” gift shop I stopped into today in a fit of morbid curiosity, but which is, based on actual legend, “accurate” … I’m having a wonderful time. Though I don’t wish I was there. (This book is a wonderful antidote to the feeling of preferring a fictional world to the real one; in this, like in so many others of its type, there is a wild world of magic and Otherness lying just beside the mundane one, and on occasion mortals slip into it in one way or another … and it’s usually not healthy.)
About that store… I was at the strip mall for another reason, which I may or may not go into at another time, and while I was there stopped into this shop and a cheesecake shop. Cheescake To A T – the owner said I’d be back. I probably will. The strawberry swirl cheesecake was phenomenal: cookie crust (not graham cracker), and a mile high, beautifully textured. I could live on this stuff, except I’d be dead in a week. The fairy store… Oh dear. Now, first of all, the twee point of view is always a little nauseating to me, and kind of incomprehensible. Exactly what fairy tales and stories of angels are the people who perpetuate this crap used to? The fairy tales I know never (ever) feature cutesy adorable sweet eensy weensy rainbow-winged darlings. I don’t have anything against the occasional pretty rainbow-winged fairy – I have nothing against pretty for pretty’s sake if it’s done well – - but come on. Read a little. The fae are often beautiful, but it’s univerally acknowledged among the non-twee that it’s a perilous beauty. And angels… at this hour I can’t even begin to get into the theological and spiritual issues involved in this way of looking at angels. Put it this way. In my book, “cute” doesn’t apply to either species. The store in question was sparsely stocked, though what was there was pretty enough, most of it – except that the little “captive fairies” she was so proud of were a little appalling in the context of the place. They were, as may be obvious, little figurines inside glass jars sealed with corks. I want to say they wore expressions of frustration and horror, but I didn’t stop to examine them too closely, so I’d be making stuff up. The shop is based on the idea that fairies and angels are sweet and cute and don’t you just want to squeeze them… So… what’s cute about having a fairy captive on your shelf? In what way does this show you’re a fan of fairies? It’s like saying you love Taylor Swift and having a little blonde voodoo doll with pins stuck in. I hope there were at least air holes in the cute little jar prisons … So, there are trapped fairies showcased in the shop. Are there angels having their wings clipped in the back? Maybe a unicorn or two being gelded? Yech.
Oh, to quote Achmed the Dead Terrorist, holy crap, I feel even queasier: I found the website the things are from. “Come and see The Freshly Caught Fairy Folk …” (Except that most of the pictures I’m seeing on the site are surprisingly poorly lit…) “The Friend Catchers?” I – but – that – oh my God. I don’t even know what to say. Except … so that’s how you make friends: with a net.
They do look dismayed! Okay, I was wrong about the cork stopping the bottles – I didn’t look closely, and that was the impression I had – but still.
How nice: “Freshly caught Fairy Princess holding a wand and available in three dress colours”. The wand didn’t do the poor bint much good, I take it. Ooh, you can get Christmas fairies under glass, too. Charming – because how better to note the birth of the Son of God than by sticking Jack Frost in a canning jar? I’m refraining from using the “contact a fairy catcher” link, but only because anything I say in this mood would come off even more tweaked than they are.
It may be the lateness of the hour, or too much cheesecake, but I’m entertaining fantasies right now of Titania (or better yet, Mab) or Raphael confronting someone like this shop owner. There’s a short story in there.
10.01.09
Vampires and werekittens and faeries – oh, dear.
The book of the week is one I’ve had a little while, Witchling by Yasmine Galenorn. I read one of her mysteries some time ago, in which the heroine sees ghosts, Ghost of a Chance. It was pretty good, good enough that I added her to my List. I was interested in Witchling now because, as mentioned, I’m in a groove of here-and-now urban(ish) fantasy. Sadly … This isn’t good. I’m not done yet – most of the way; I suppose I’m approaching the climax of the story (as opposed to the main character’s multitudinous climaxes) (sorry), and … This should be ramping me up to an anxiety to know how (not if) the three half-Faerie sisters at the center of the book (and assorted sex partners) are going to win the day and save the world against unimaginable odds.
*yawn*
The writing is not good. There’s a great deal of unaccountable repetition, much in the manner of Hell’s Kitchen: recapping what happened a few minutes ago, or what JUST HAPPENED A SECOND AGO, for the benefit of … I never can figure who these things are aimed at on the show. Really, I was here. Not suffering from catastrophic short term memory loss, I recall it. As it turns out, it’s as intensely annoying in print as it is on tv – maybe moreso, actually, because in order to get to page 100 you generally have to read the 99 preceding pages. Not always, of course; maybe Galenorn anticipated the skimming that is inevitable with the book. There’s a strange sort of sputtering stop-and-start feel to the narration, like hitting the gas to rev up to fifty and then stomping on the brakes and hitting the gas again.
I found the introduction of the main character fairly annoying: it took a very long time to learn why she was coming as such an arrogant bitch. She expresses what seems to be contempt for FBH’s (Full-Blooded Humans), at least men in terms of dating them and the ones who come seeking her out because of what she is, even though she accepted a pair of very expensive shoes from the latter. What it is that she is (besides not someone I like much) isn’t revealed for a good couple of chapters. (At least it seemed that long.)
One thing that bugged me all out of proportion was a bit toward the beginning. The situation has been outlined, and it’s already starting to look grim, so, naturally, Camille (POV character) goes shopping. She spots an ottoman in an antique shop, and likes it, but backs off when she sees that it costs $700. She and her sisters inherited money and land, she explains, and they get a bit of a salary for being operatives for the Otherworld Somethingorother, but she definitely can’t drop that much money on a footstool. Instead, she goes across the street and spends about $270 on lingerie. At least the $700 footstool would have been something all three of them would have used, and daily as opposed to whenever sluttiness was called for.
I can’t think of another book where the first-person narrator spends so very much time describing her own clothes. I’m supposed to care that she dons a lavender whathaveyou with the vintage coat and so forth and so on and on, with ankle-high boots with precarious heels? I can’t possibly care as much as she does, given that her attention is so captivated by her own clothes that she pauses at a grisly murder scene to make note that one of her boots is scuffed and she needs a new pair (never heard of polish?), and her main reaction to having been slightly possessed and beguiled into a violent and intense sexual encounter is that her clothes got muddy. If anything I’m contemptful because she’s going out where there’s bound to be some hiking involved, and she’s dumb enough to put on those heels. And it is largely in her hands that the safety of two worlds rests. Harry Dresden she ain’t.
Going back to the sluttiness: I suppose there’s a segment of the fantasy reading audience who seeks out the play-by-play stroke-for-stroke (so to speak) sex scenes. I wasn’t expecting it; it didn’t seem particularly well done; it just seemed inserted. (No matter what I say right now will sound like a double entendre.) I think they’re supposed to appear as three strong, independent, not-quite-human sisters. I see them as three slutty – no, that’s not fair, the vampire hasn’t been banging anyone (I’ll come back to that phrase) – two slutty sisters, one of whom is only newly slutty and is otherwise about twelve years old mentally (Hello Kitty pajamas?), the other, the one whose eyes – again sorry, whose lavender with silver streaks eyes we see through… she’s amusing, in that up until a few chapters in she has been chaste for a while (thank God the readers are spared that boredom!), until her astonishingly beautiful (of course) Bad Boy (sorta evil, actually) lover turns up. Then there’s the other guy… *sigh* I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to build interest in what’s going to happen when the two guys come face to face. I don’t care.
(Wait! I forgot! Vamp sister is sniffing around someone. Literally. I was right – they *are* all sluts.)
The language is annoying – not as in Blood Engines, where it was the four-letter vulgarity that bugged, but as in … you can’t do better than that? There is some four-letter vulgarity (in this case including frequent references to a male anatomical part for which surely there is a less childish word she could have used), but it’s more pervasive than that. Pratt’s book seemed to be mean-spirited but not ill-written. This is … amateurish. Camille goes about calling everyone “dude”. She’s not a cowboy, or even a cowgirl, and the book was not written at the height of the 90’s. Stop it. The slanginess doesn’t translate to good/realistic dialogue, it comes off as awkward and cliched silliness. Also, there are some bizarre phrasings; e.g.: when they call their father for help (via a mirror), the vamp sister (Menolly, and the writer needs to apologize to Anne McCaffrey for that) leans forward, her face eagerly drinking in the sights … Really. Like a moisturizer. Interesting. Most annoying to me in this department is the nickname for the bad guy: Bad Ass Luke. I mean, he doesn’t have to have a name like Voldemort (or even He Who Cannot Be Named), or The Necromancer, or anything like that, but does every character have to say the whole silly thing every single time? And I’m expected to believe that a many-hundred-year-old Faerie coined the nick? Hm.
The repeated use of “nekkid” was about as much fun as thumbtacks in my shoes, too.
The buildup to the confrontation with Bad Ass Luke is starting to grate. Yes, thanks, I remember the almost-every-page references to how bad ass he is (ohhhh! Hence the name. Got it). Yes, I remember that he attacked the ladies’ father and his squadron, and destroyed everyone but dad. Which is why I think it’s kind of humorous that dear old dad, who was spanked by the baddie in the company of said doomed squadron (all supposed to be old and powerful faeries), now expects his three offspring to take him on with a couple of other guys and win. Considering that Camille is a half-assed witch (which ranks her far below Bad Ass, obviously) whose spells apparently backfire more often than they work (and yet she keeps trying to work them, and trying bigger and more powerful things), Delilah is a were-kitty cat with no control over her change and the emotional maturity and wisdom of a tween, and Menolly is a cranky vampire with Issues… Maybe dear old dad just wants to clean up the family tree a bit. The story has done far too good a job of convincing me that Camille is absolute rubbish at witchcraft and that the world would be safer if she quit; I won’t believe in some miraculous upsurge of control and skill.
And if Luke is so very bad – sorry, Bad Ass – then why is it he’s been working purely through agents of varying potency up till this late point? Some firsthand experience of the … dude might have been effective. And if he’d tried a little harder – either concentrating those agents’ efforts or popping in briefly himself – he could have wiped out the sisters and their boytoys without too much trouble. Missed opportunities are so sad.
I may not bother finishing this if I can turn up something else (and I think I can). It’s first-person, so obviously they win; it seems idiotic that they do so, so I should want to read on to find out how. Actually, I think the only thing that could make me finish reading would be the promise that the last few chapters contain a detailed description of the fangirls who frequent Camille’s shop coming to their senses and beating her with their shoes.
09.27.09
Vampires and werewolves and Faerie…
Oh, my. (I had to. I’m very sorry.)
So, lately you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a book chock-full of vampires. (Not being funny, but who *ever* came up with “dead cat” as a unit of measure?) Fantasy started undergoing a resurgence, I think – or a surgence, maybe, because I don’t know if there was anything “re” about it – around the time of the LotR movies. Then came Harry Potter, and *boom* – it seemed like everyone was coming out with wizard-based stories for kids. Then, of course, Twilight came along (2005), and suddenly every other book was a contemporary, often urban fantasy where vampires and werewolves etc. etc. exist in a sort of side-by reality, unbeknownst to everyone not tied to that reality in some way. (Someday if I ever bother to read anything beyond Twilight, or if I bother to reread it, I might explore that worn topic. Or not.)
The series that’s been around longest – since before Twilight, certainly (the short-lived TV series came and went before that came out) – is The Dresden Files (starting in 2001). I remember someone on The Board Which Shall Be Nameless, or one of the offshoots from it, going on about how no, seriously, you MUST read the Dresden Files. He was right. They’re truly wonderful books. Harry Dresden is a professional wizard (listed in the Yellow Pages as such) in a slightly alternate Chicago – slightly alternate in that it’s pretty much the one that exists, except for that additional reality of magic. They’re first-person narratives, and Harry is a near-perfect companion. He’s a Good Guy, consciously and unconsciously; he’s had plenty of opportunity to be otherwise, and in fact is expected on many occasions to be otherwise, and is aggressively gleeful about being able to prove himself. And bitterly resentful and offended when those negative expectations crop up. He’s not perfect – and never will be, and doesn’t try to be: he tries to be the best friend and wizard and overall human being that he can be. Harry is chivalrous to a fault – and if it is a fault it’s not one of the ones he aims to work on correcting. Crimes against innocents bother him, deeply. Crimes against women or children drive him mad. He has high standards for himself, though he’s a bit more forgiving of his friends, and I love him dearly. Wikipedia says that there will be at least two more – long may they wave. I hope Jim Butcher writes Harry Dresden novels till both of them are old and grey (and for Harry that will take a long, long time).
(Oh my – I see that the audio novels are read by James Marsters. I Want. And I don’t do audio books.)
I had read a couple some time back, and have gotten my hands on more since. Not too long ago I started at the beginning and worked my way through to Dead Beat. There was a gap during which I went on eBay for the next two and had to wait a small eternity for Proven Guilty and White Night, during which time I started the Deryni series; I finally made it through most of that (as much as I choose to wade through right now) and went back to the new-to-me Dresdens. They impress me. The writing is compelling – not easy to put down, and wrenching when the book’s finished and there isn’t another one to pick up right away. It’s funny – sometimes laugh-out-loud funny (early in the first book, Fool Moon, there’s a glancing blow at LotR which was a lot funnier when I was in the throes of The Board Which etc., but which is still a thing of beauty); it’s moving – I care, a lot, what happens to Harry, and to his entire team, from Bob to Murphy (and probably especially Mouse). Butcher hit below the belt at one point in White Night, talking about pain, and it was just a little too relevant to my life as of late; I had to put it aside for a bit. (For the record, for anyone keeping score, I didn’t go to the NYRF.) And when I read the line about how you just don’t leave a friend in pain all alone, I had to close it and put it down; I know of several people I would love to send that to. Set out in six-inch high calligraphy. Framed. Anyway. It’s good stuff; Harry and his folk are good people. They’re real, rounded, unpredictable because they’re growing all the time, changing as events and circumstances change them. The writing is conversational, intelligent, deceptively deep. I love every page. Butcher has another series, more sword and sorcery (though there’s plenty of both in Chicago), and I’m looking forward to it.
Aha!! I’ve been kvetching because none of the books credit the cover artist. I hate that. I don’t understand that. What is the point of not giving the artist credit? Does he get paid less? Or more? Is it a lack of respect for the artist? Which is pretty funny considering that, especially in the fantasy genre, “you can’t judge a book by its cover” is often hooey – sure you can. If a book’s got a cover by Larry Elmore, odds are pretty good that it may be based on a role-playing or video game; if it isn’t it’s in a similar vein. If the cover’s by John Jude Palencar, you can probably expect something with a dark vein running through it, and I think it means the publisher has some respect for the manuscript. Frequently, if the cover isn’t something you want to be seen holding in public, the book is not one you want to try to explain to a ‘Dane. But I digress. On the Dresden Files page of Wikipedia, where I went for dates, the list of external links includes: Christian McGrath — Series cover artist. Woohoo! *click* Damn. As if I didn’t know already from the covers, he’s goooooood.
A second series which fits neatly into the same pigeonhole as the tales of Harry Dresden, and yet which is totally unique, is Patricia Briggs’s Mercedes Thompson books. Again, they predate Twilight; it’s like the Crimson Pirates at the NYRF, who were pirates before Pirates of the Caribbean made pirates cool. Where in the Dresden Files the vampires are mostly on the opposite side and the werewolves are secondary characters in the first several books, Mercedes (Mercy) Thompson was raised by werewolves, is (possibly) in love with two alpha males, and has a good friend who is, improbably, a vampire. Again, it’s first person – but Mercy is an auto mechanic in the Tri-Cities of Washington (state), who just happens to be able to turn, at will, into a coyote. She would get along very well with Harry, I think, or they would kill each other – one of those. I’ve loved Patricia Briggs’s work for a while now, since picking up Hob’s Bargain; she has, like Butcher, such a deceptively light touch that you don’t necessarily realize how deep the writing’s gone into you until later. Like Harry and co., Mercy and her “family” have come to mean a lot to me. Like the Dresden Files, the books are beautifully written, funny and painful and moving by turns. The characters are real and imperfect, and grow and change. They’re certainly not carbon copies of Jim Butcher’s work; they feel similar mainly because of the intimate first-person narration, the excellence of the writing, the passion of the characters, and the basic rules of the two unique universes. I love Briggs. I love these books.
And then there’s T.A. Pratt, and her series about Marla someone – Mason? Every now and then I take a chance at Books & Company, the nearest used bookstore. It paid off, in a big way, with Kate Ross years ago: I saw four books that looked intriguing by an author I didn’t know, and debated whether I should pick up all four at once, or take one, try it, and risk the others not being there when I went back. I took all four, and was very glad I did. Well, lately, the gamble hasn’t paid off so well. I saw four books by Pratt waiting to be shelved, and fell for the covers, by Dan Dos Santos. They’re beautiful, especially the one for Poison Sleep. Pity the books aren’t. (Which just goes to prove – you can’t ALWAYS tell a book by its cover…) I finished White Night this morning, and picked up Pratt’s Blood Engines in hopes of keeping in the same subgenre – 21st century-set alternate here-and-now urban fantasy. Well, that’s what these are, I suppose, but there all resemblance to either Harry Dresden or Mercy Thompson ends. I only made it a couple of chapters, and had to stop. First to raise flags was the language. I’ve read all sorts of books; I saw Pulp Fiction; I have been known to swear like the proverbial sailor when I feel it’s warranted. There’s swearing in the Dresden books, and in plenty of others that I love. But there’s a quote out there somewhere about swearing being a sign of a limited imagination, and in this case it feels true. On the first page the writer tosses out something about piss (a vulgarity more than a curse), and she used the word at least a couple more times in just the few pages I read. Really? That’s necessary? “Urine” too many letters for you? Bodily functions apparently are uppermost in the writer’s mind, because they take a prominent place in the writing, in pungent Anglo-Saxon.
Worse, though, much worse, is the rapid descent from the heights of Harry Dresden’s chivalry I suffered when I ventured into this … stuff. Marla (not a name I liked, happily – I knew a Marla once) and sidekick – mostly unidentified, his actual position in her evident organization undefined as of when I quit – venture into a shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Now, by the time they set foot in the place, the female character has already shown herself to be callous, arrogant, and deeply egocentric, and has – probably loudly, and certainly crankily – expressed several shades of distaste for San Francisco for the simple fact that it is not under her control. Also, she apparently has a gift for divination using animal entrails (haruspicy, I think), and wonders where she can get hold of a live chicken or cat. Charmed, I’m sure. I’m not a cat-lover. I raised an eyebrow. I kept going. One reason she needs an accurate divination is that she’s looking for someone and/or something to help her protect herself from someone making a power play back home. And she ponders how she would have killed the rival years ago, but something (not conscience or morals) stopped her. So, into the shop, where they meet what appears to be a fairly stereotypical elderly Chinese man and his young female apprentice. Except that the old man whispers to the sidekick that he’s actually the apprentice, and the old man has forced a body switch – he took hers, and will kill her (in his) if he finds out she told anyone. The book then spends a little time talking about how evil and terrible a thing this is. And then Marla and friend exit the place. They don’t care. They’re busy. Mm, yeah – neither do I, and so am I.
The story-telling annoyed me. It felt like a couple of chapters of plot exposition had been left out. Who is this woman? What does she mean she “runs” that city, and where is it supposed to be? Who is the man with her, and the one left home supposedly dealing with or sleeping with the enemy, why is the other person an enemy (well, really, why not?), and – most importantly – why should I care about any of it? These books are third-person narration, and I’m glad, because I emphatically would not want to be inside this character’s head; I’m grateful to have been spared that. I (obviously) took a violent aversion to that first book – I can’t wait to get them out of the house and back to Books & Co.
Happily, another chance I took (though not to the same level of commitment) at B&C was well worth it. Charlaine Harris is someone I’ve heard of here and there, and never read till today. I picked up the first book of one of her series (she seems to have several, which – yay) a little while ago (shelved in Mystery, these), and turned to it when that other thing went bad. I’m nearly finished with Grave Sight, and I will need to get somewhere for all the rest of the books, soon. No vampires here, nor were-anything (though they feature prominently in her other books, I think); Harper Connelly was struck by lightning when she was in her teens, and ever since, in addition to headaches and weakness in her right leg, she can sense the dead nearby. She has created a career out of using this sense, and it leads her into some strange – and dangerous – places… I’ll give the book and its sequels more time when it isn’t a Sunday at midnight, but suffice to say I’m very grateful to Ms. Harris. I had a very bad taste in my head, and it was a true pleasure washing it away in the company of Harper and her brother. First-person narrative, unabashedly revealing, good characters … *phew* She’s prolific, I’m glad to see. I hope the rest stack up.
(Hey! I didn’t know the series on HBO (True Blood) was based on the Sookie Stackhouse books! Cool. And Anna Paquin. Also cool. Something to look forward to (on dvd).)
Now, why couldn’t I have bought four of this series instead?
In looking up the word for divination-by-guts, I came across something called onychomancy: divination from how sunlight is reflected off fingernails. Huh. Intrigued, I Goodsearched, and wound up back on Wikipedia, and it’s even more fascinating: “It consists of watching the reflection of sunlight on the oiled fingernails of an unpolluted boy, then interpreting the symbols that appear.” Seriously? I want so badly to incorporate this into something I write. It won’t fit into anything I write. I want to write something just so that I can have someone practice it.
09.18.09
Not faire…
I should have resisted, and didn’t. Hey, the fact that I’m able to pun, even badly, is an indicator I’m feeling a little better than I was.
The facts are these.
I’m a rennie. A wench (official and card-carrying. Literally.) A ren-rat wanna-be. I would live at the faire if I could. I am 39.5% FaireFolk pure on the Renaissance Faire purity test. I’m rennie enough to know that in the world of rennies I’m not really a real rennie. (*pause to add NYRF to favorites list*)
I’ve been going to the New York Renaissance Faire since 1991. I went with the same person steadily from 1991 through, I believe, 2002 (3?), at which time things went agley. I missed a couple of years, including, to my chagrin, the 25th anniversary year, but then four years back got together a local(ish) group from The Site Which Shall Be nameless to go, and I got them addicted. It wasn’t all joy and light; it was a good-sized group, and that was the day that would have confirmed for me if I hadn’t already known that I will never be a leader. It was a little – no, a lot – like herding cats. They asked me where they should go next; I suggested something I wanted to see which might be starting in twenty minutes or so, good time to go get a seat; they agreed with enthusiasm; a moment later one or more would be playing a game or shopping or lingering to watch a different performance, and then it was too late for that performance, so they asked where next, and we went through the whole cycle again. I kept being reminded of a Frasier episode in which Niles is stuck with the trophy whippet Maris bought, a stolid little thing that ignored him utterly. “Come back, Girl. Come back here this instant! Okay…” Also, at one point one group of us searched for the separated rest of us for about an hour. That was … no fun at all.
Still, it was nice to be back, and it was nice to be there with people I thought were friends. We went the next year, too, and except for the Walkie Talkie Incident (one of the group seeming to not realize that that was a Live Performance going on eight feet in front of her, and those were interested spectators two feet in front of her, while she responded to the astonishingly loud beeping of her walkie, and did so in a louder-than-normal speaking voice… I was mortified. It was approaching the height of poor behavior. And I still don’t know what I could possibly have said about it – at first I was too outraged to say anything reliably civil, and after catching my breath never could thing of what to say to a friend’s wife who behaved dreadfully) it was a good time.
Then two years ago things went drastically agley with The Site Which Shall Be nameless and with the Northeast Group … part of which latter agleyness was that, summer of ‘06, I never heard a word about planning a faire gathering (aka moot) until one Friday at work I opened an email that said “I’ll pick you up at six tomorrow morning!” Not “should I” or “how about” or “we haven’t talked about it but” or even “we planned all this before your evident complete loss of short-term memory”. Now, first of all, what? Secondly, I don’t do six a.m. pickups. Not even for faire. A six a.m. pickup means I’ve been up since in the fives, and on a Saturday? No. Five-something a.m. on a Saturday on eighteen hours’ notice? Hell no. Why, I queried, was this the first I was hearing about it? Oh, well, hadn’t I been checking the Moots board on The Site Which Shall Be nameless (TSWSBn)? Which is not something I did even when I was a regular on the boards – and especially not then, as I had either officially or all-but left the boards. If this had been the first time they’d done it to me it wouldn’t have been so bad, but it wasn’t – I was left out of a viewing of the LotR trilogy on a big screen in Rhode Island because it was tax season and I worked (woe is, or was, me) for an accounting firm, and didn’t have time to breathe much less visit TSWSBn’s more beaten-pathless areas. Both were situations when a single one-line email – “hey, go check out the Moot board” – would have made all the difference in the world. So I was a bit unhappy when I got that email, and needless to say I didn’t go to Faire with them that year. Things did not improve with the group, though I tried. God, how I tried. Stupid. (The above was not, by any stretch of the imagination, all.)
Last year I didn’t get there at all (did I? No – I haven’t been since I cut my hair), since the one time my brother took me (with his wife and the two Kids) was his token pat on the head, and the one time my sister took me (and Kid) was The Hottest Day Ever In Faire History. And then I got us lost on the way home and we ended up in Yonkers. Sorry. And no one else I know has the least bit of interest.
This year, for the hell of it and because in a fit of wild optimism I bought a pair of tickets when they went on their more-than-half-price sale in December, I sent an email around the office to see if anyone would be interested in going. Long story short, two friends from work, their significant others (it’s the 21st century – can’t we please have a better phrase than that?), and I are set to head off to Tuxedo, NY, on Saturday the 19th, possibly with a stop for breakfast at my beloved Orange Top Diner, where I’ve gone for breakfast about 89% of my trips to the Faire. (Great coffee. And some of the waitresses have been there since we started going in the 90’s.) I should be excited. I should be making a shopping list. I should be a-twitter (NOT that kind of twitter). I’m not – at least, not the good kind of excited and a-twitter. Because, you see, a week ago tonight, while emailing back and forth with Kat about going, I thought of the Northeast group, and wondered… And I did a little spy-work on TSWSBn. Unlike the old boards, the new ones have a nifty search engine, and I searched – and though it took a while I found “Can’t wait to see you on the 19th!” I don’t remember what I said. It wasn’t a joyful noise unto the Lord. It was more of a “You hate me THAT much???” unto the Lord.
So here I am, looking at a return to my favorite place after too long away. Granted, a large part of why I loved the place so very much is gone: so many of the acts and actors that were there for a long time left. The Justins, Justin Lewis and Justin Ray Thompson, who alternated playing Robin Hood for several years and whom I adored, both married and gave up jousting and moved away. Three Pints Shy, the marvellous band which includes another crush of mine (or two), was only there one weekend this year, and that’s not this weekend. Dolly’s gone; the Bard O’Neill has been gone a while; I don’t think Coeur de Lion have been about in years. And no more Wyrd Sisters. They use wireless microphones for the joust (!!). And, worst of all, the Pub Sing, the truly glorious singalong at the end of each night, has been turned into a sampler of Faire Bands’ Greatest Hits. I loved it the way it was, more than just about anything, and it’s not remotely that any more, which is terribly sad. Also sad: the garb doesn’t fit any more… And I can’t get a braid any more.
BUT! It is still Faire. And the Crimson Pirates are still there, and the Kilcoynes may even be back in. Lochanside is still there. Chris deTroy is still a part of it. All good. It’s still the place that resonates with nearly every verse of “Come by the Hills”. And change isn’t always bad – I might love the new actors (which would of course turn into more bad if they don’t stick around). My friends are telling me to go and enjoy it, don’t let Them ruin another year for me, acknowledge them when (and it is when, not if) I see them – and get on with it.
I guess I’m not as strong as they think I am, or as they want me to be. Because I not only introduced the NE group to the Faire, I brought them to the Orange Top. I’m about as sure as I can be that they’ll be there Saturday, too. So – what? Do we go to Friendly’s? Eat at the Faire? Or go to the Orange Top – and … then what?? Give a chilly nod? Ignore them? Cry into my eggs? (That’s more likely than I’d like to admit.) I don’t know how to handle it, any of it; I don’t know how they will react. They give the illusion that they have no earthly idea what they ever did to put me out – which is bollocks, since if this blog and Walk in the Dust show anything I think they show I can express myself, and I expressed myself in emails at the time … They should know. Understanding’s a whole ‘nother bucket of mead. Now, even if we don’t go to the diner, we’ll see them at the Faire. It’s 40 acres – not that big, really, and there will be, at a guess, 12-15 of them. And even if we don’t run into them, I will be looking over my shoulders every moment waiting for them to hove into view. I will feel like a rabbit in a fox’s den. (I’m already starting to.) I don’t know if John will make a beeline across the diner or faire grounds, as applicable, and latch on to me, or whether he or all the rest of them will ignore me. And I don’t know how I’ll feel if they do ignore me. Relieved, yes, but, illogically, pissed. I don’t know. I do know that I have a semi-paranoid horror based on past experience of being discussed – in general, and specifically by these people in this situation. Part of me wanted to email one or two and make them as miserable as the day approaches as I am. Most of me wants to just not go, while there is a small part digging her heels in and saying things like “You can’t let them do this to you! Again!” They already have. “You can’t let them ruin another year’s Faire!” They already have. “You can’t roll over and let them have the day without even trying to deal with it!” Why the hell not? Looked at one way, my staying home is altruistic: I don’t know, but there’s the possibility that my being there will have a similar effect on them as it will on me. (For one thing, I have no idea how they’ve explained my vanishment to their kids. And there are a slew of kids, most if not all of whom I’ve met and liked, and who seemed to like me, and most of whom are old enough to remember me, and, maybe, if they care, wonder where I went.) So if I cede them the floor, I’ll avoid a possible conflict, or at least possible angst on more than my own part.
I go back and forth between “I’m going” and “Hell no”. If I go it will be purely out of obligation. That’s the saddest change of all.
09.16.09
More Deryni
Moving on through Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni series(es); I finished the Chronicles, and didn’t really change my opinions. I still never warmed up to the story or the characters. I continued to find myself pretty disturbed by the casual mental force used by the Deryni. Someone in the way? Put him to sleep and erase his memories. And this from the good guys. I can’t imagine why humans would be afraid of Deryni. Really.
Onward to the stories of Camber. I was wondering how all of the Deryni skills would be handled in a time when the characters were supposed to be more highly trained. Which is … much the same. There’s perhaps a little more restraint – but still, if someone’s in the way, put him to sleep (apologetically, though!) and wipe his memories. I find it hilarious that half the characters are clergy, and deeply pious, but they rarely bat an eyelash at the huge deceptions they practice and the monstrous advantage they take of – just about everyone. Oh, all in a good cause, of course – but that’s always the excuse, isn’t it? There doesn’t seem to be a real firm line drawn anywhere, except (for some) actually killing… Lying, taking on others’ lives, more lying, mental manipulation of all kinds, etc. – all fair. It’s so much more interesting when a character finds a way out of a situation which a) isn’t the same thing as has been done in the writer’s books eleventy-one times before, b) doesn’t violate an innocent person, and c) takes cleverness rather than sheer brute mental force.
It’s also all so relentlessly grim. Even in the first book, when the king did start showing classic signs of Bad Fantasy Monarch, terrible things happened, and it snowballed. Which, sadly, is the point of the series: the plight of the Deryni growing worse and worse. But good grief, madame. Early on there’s a prolonged incident of a Healer doing things I wouldn’t think were appropriate for anyone and especially not a Healer to do, including slipping mickeys and a bash to a man’s solar plexus, followed by, you guessed it, a heaping helping of memory manipulation. We go on from there to lots and lots more manipulation, the severing of a hand in vivid technicolor, some more drawings and quarterings (so many I don’t even remember how many), and … so on. It’s proven early on that being a fairly major protagonist doesn’t guarantee longevity, and in fact the cast of characters we start out with at the relatively happy beginning of Camber of Culdi has, by the point where I am at the beginning of The Harrowing of Gwynedd (the fourth book of the sequence), been literally decimated. At least. My favorite character died senselessly – that’s always fun. And now that, er, a certain character is dead (well, mostly dead), what heart there was has gone out of the story. And the scenes of pure brutality – which are usually described firsthand and then recounted at least once, in case the reader forgot any grisly details – just hammer on and on with the horrible details. Kurtz’s background as a historian is obvious throughout in her deep detail – and unfortunately that holds true in graphic scenes of torture and murder. Yay. As I said, the point I’ve reached in HofG has one character having lost 1) father (twice), 2) brother, 3) husband, 4) oldest son, 5) uncounted friends. Oh, also, home and property. The latter several things happen in rapid succession. It’s bloody harsh: she senses the death of her husband (’cause they’re Deryni) while fleeing with several small children and guards to retrieve her oldest son and get to safety… but they’re too late for the boy, and then some: they arrive at the keep where he was staying with family to find slaughter, rape, pillaging, crucifixion, arson, and impaling. Some of which was done to children. One of whom is the oldest son. And in the stress of all of this, she – who happens to be eight months pregnant – goes into labor, then nearly kills herself a couple of days later by riding hard to escape pursuit (is that even really possible?). And then within days her father and another dear friend are killed. Fun, fun, fun. The thing is, I should have at least shed a tear at some point in there. I always cry. I was horrified, but never even a little choked up.
I think I mentioned another problem I have with Kurtz’s style: her strange habit of looking elsewhere at fairly major moments. This continues here as well. Not that I want every single event to be presented in hyper-realistic full-sensory minutiae – but some events are, and for other really quite momentous instants there’s perhaps a second-hand recounting at a meeting a while after. While many of the deaths are lingered over almost lovingly, there are a good couple which got a paragraph or two. Or less. With the depth with which she covers so many small moments, I find it an even greater shock to turn a page and find a death, a marriage, a promotion, or some such has occurred and I wasn’t invited.
Now, I don’t require a happy ending in my reading, but I would rather like at least a faint glimmer of hope in the fog somewhere – and given that the first series takes place three hundred years in the future of this one I know there isn’t much hope. It’s all quite dire. Even without remembering a moment from when I must have read it long ago, I know it’s only going to get worse. I know, roughly, what happens to the young king and his two younger brothers (helped along by someone’s vision of the future – which was a little annoying in and of itself, as the man who had the vision wasn’t prone to them, and never had another), and when. Well, one upcoming book is called King Javan’s Year. Um – spoiler much? I’ll keep going, at least to the end of the book; I don’t believe I have any of the rest of the main books of the series, and I won’t make much of an effort right now to seek them out. And it will probably be about twenty years before I attempt a reread again. Again, good writing, good dialogue, good characters which I genuinely want to like, good ideas… but something lacking. Pity.
09.08.09
Deryni
Following the pattern I’ve established (intermittently) of rereading books I read about and loved twenty years ago and haven’t read since, I picked up Chronicles of the Deryni a couple of weeks ago or so. Katherine Kurtz created a world based on dreams she had, I read once, that she believes were channeled actual historical tales from a land far far away or long long ago or whathaveyou. In the initial trilogy, we have King Brion out hunting when he is suddenly seized with a heart attack – or something; murder, actually – and far too soon Brion’s son Kelson, at the age of 14, is king of Gwynedd.
It’s a good story. Gwynedd is a land which has been ruled by humans for about 300 years, since the Interregnum was brought to an end: the period in which invading Deryni reigned. Whether Deryni (basically people with added powers: mind reading, the ability to detect lies, telekinesis, magical duels, the ability to influence and enthrall: basically, they’re Jedi) existed in Gwynedd before the Festil invasion is unclear; the invaders are Deryni, they favor Deryni, but whether all the Deryni there eventually are in this country came with them … anyway. 300 odd years ago things were going along just fine under the human Haldane rule, when the Deryni Festils swooped in and slaughtered (most of) the Haldanes and took the throne; they did ok for less than 80 years, then got greedy and nasty and were themselves deposed in favor of the Haldanes again. And despite the fact that there were “good” Deryni backing the restoration, Deryni shortly became the targets of a purge, reactionary to the abuses suffered by plain old humans under the Festil rule, and were nearly wiped out. Kelson’s story takes place in a time when Deryni are just starting to get a fingernail hold back into acceptance, and that makes his job that much harder, as his mother, as it turns out, not only hates and fears Deryni but is Deryni…
I don’t know why I don’t love these books more. I did when I was younger, certainly – to the extent that the concept of looking backward from a period of having lost everything to the mundanes to a period when those with “power” ruled is the backbone of my writing. Oh, possibly, dear. The similarities aren’t as strong as I was starting to fear, starting this reread, but between Deryni Chronicles and the AIVAS in the Pern books the seeds were sown for a post-race-specific-apocalyptic tale, followed by stories from the time of the apocalypse… I’ll need to be careful to avoid closer parallels than that, but I think I’m all right.
As I was saying – I don’t know why I don’t adore these books. The writing is usually impeccable. KK is a historian, and deeply enmeshed in the SCA, and her detail work is (as far as I, a comparative ignoramus, can tell), dead on. She embeds deep knowledge about the Catholic church, the Bible, and religious life, arms and armor and use thereof, and medieval ways and means in general to give her work a more solid grounding in reality than almost any I can think of. She uses dialect well but sparingly (as it should be), and in fact her dialogue is generally really very natural and … good; she rarely blips my pet peeve radar by anachronistic phrasing; the characters are Good Guys without quite being paragons of aggravating virtue, and they have disparate personalities – Kelson worked as a youth and Duncan as a rather worldly priest and so on. Yet terrible things happen and I don’t cry; wonderful things happen and I don’t get all misty; I’m left untouched by the events of the story. Which is a great shame. I keep thinking as I’m reading on through the series what a great total concept this is, what great storytelling, what great detail and breadth of knowledge and … I can pick it up and put it down with great ease. That shouldn’t be. The only thing I can think of to account for it is a slight chill in the narration. There’s third person omniscient narration, and there’s third person omniscient narration; this particular 3PON is, I feel, strangely distant in tone, very much third-person objective. Too objective. It’s impersonal. That’s it, I think: the feel is that the storyteller – as opposed to the writer, I guess – is utterly unbiased and detached from the events being described, and this makes it hard to warm up to the characters or to react strongly to events. Another factor in this is the off-handed way some information is disclosed. A major character’s marriage and the birth of his first child happened off-stage; it went from his being on fire for the woman for chapters and chapters to … no mention of her at all for chapters and chapters. For a good part of Deryni Checkmate, a woman is very pregnant, and then suddenly there’s no more mention of her or the baby for a while – until she and the baby appear in the background. The characters are far too focused on what’s in front of their noses – I’ll come back to that.
When I have time and exemplars handy I should take a look here at snippets from, say, Guy Kay or Kate Ross and compare them to Katherine Kurtz, especially if I can find sort of similar events being described. I fell idiotically in love with Kate Ross’s Julian Kestrel, and Guy Kay’s books are not ones I can pick up and put down easily. I’ve said it before: GGK requires a sort of mental calisthenics before I can crack one open. I’m passionate about GGK’s books. He makes me feel – does he ever. KK’s… I’m politely interested. Again, it’s a great pity; these are good books, but not great ones, books I’m enjoying reading but which I wouldn’t think to recommend to anyone or rush back to reread.
I think another factor in all of this is a strong questioning of characters’ actions, e.g. Seriously? They think nothing of pinning that man down and wiping his memory of what he’s seen and heard? And that man? And that one? And … on and on. I was brought up on Star Trek as my primary educational source regarding mind-to-mind contact. It’s rude, to say the least, to mess with someone’s mind without their consent. Actually, in I think every single other world I’ve read about that had people able to do it, it’s rape. But Morgan and Duncan – and others as well including Kelson when he gets stronger, but especially the dynamic duo of cousins there – traipse hither and yon blanking this man’s memory and “convincing” that one to do something and then forget it, willy nilly. Literally, will-he nill-he… Nobody’s safe, for they care for none – even friends are subject to occasional messings-with, though those sometimes come with apologies, either before or after. It’s troubling for me to read about the almost constant messing about with people’s thoughts and memories and wills. It’s troubling to read about them forcing their way here and pushing through there. These are supposed to be the good guys. When the bad guys do it I am expected to stand back with my hands on my hips and “tsk, for shame” – but hey, Morgan and Duncan couldn’t possibly make any errors! They have the Right of the Right to do what they will – all for a good cause, of course. Or, you know, to avoid a little trouble here and there.
Another good example of being bumped out of the story by a “he did what?” moment goes back to the misplaced focus thing (ironic with all the hypnosis and centering and such). A major character has what appears to be a stroke. Morgan, who has rediscovered the gift of healing, rushes to his bedside. Oh dear, he has wasted away, what a shame, we’ll miss him, now I need to be off on this other Very Important Errand, bye now. Which – it was an Important Errand, but – - sweetie? Did you forget something? Get your tight buns back to that bedside and lay on of hands! My mouth literally dropped open when he zoomed off that fast – “But – but – if he just – he’d be able to – and – Hey!” If he had done a little of that unlicensed poking about in this case, a lot of pain and suffering would have been avoided. Not even “could have” – would have. But off he went, with no more thought of trying to fix a man who *was his friend* than of trying to become an astronaut, and it’s not till chapters and weeks later (when it’s too late for some things) that he does that poking about. At which time I muttered things like “See?? See???”
One thing that’s both good and bad is – well, I see in the jacket notes that KK is a trained hypnotist. This is really a terrific foundation for Deryni magic – it’s solid. It’s smart. But … problem is, now that I’ve read that she’s thoroughly conversant in hypnotism I can’t help rolling my eyes a little when someone starts drawing a repetitive pattern in the sand or tossing off standard stock hypnotist phrases.
I finished what I have of the later-occurring Kelson novels (The Chronicles of the Deryni and The Histories of King Kelson; one of these days I want King Kelson’s Bride, I suppose, but I’m not in a great rush), and moved on to the Camber books. I’m looking forward to seeing how different the attitudes are here, how different trained, skilled, civilized Deryni are. I am about six chapters in on Camber of Culdi… What we have so far is: a young, apparently arrogant Deryni king (Imre); an elder statesman, also Deryni, who disapproves of said king’s policies as a prince and attitude as a king enough to leave court (Camber); the statesman’s son, a friend and counselor to the king (Cathan). Camber’s exact reasons for leaving are not really given; his “official” excuse is that he was getting on in years and wanted to spend time with his family. The real reasons – well, how bad was it? He’s purported to be one of the finest minds of his day, and was a loyal and steadfast guide and prop to a couple of kings – what was it exactly about Imre that made him leave? Why not stay and try to check the behavior he found objectionable? I’m using Kelson and Morgan and Conall as a comparison; Conall was pretty much a bad seed and wouldn’t have accepted guidance from such as Morgan, but I was still a little surprised at how quickly Morgan just backed away. Conall had no one to truly take his place as right hand, except perhaps for Arilan – and I don’t think he would have allowed Arilan in to a degree it would have been helpful. If I had written it Morgan probably would felt it necessary, in honor, to humbly offer his services to the new king/regent. Perhaps he didn’t want to incur a rebuff that would make it impossible to be useful later – but none of this was said. He just didn’t like Conall, had better things to do in looking for Kelson, and left without asking if he was wanted. Here, I would like to see the question addressed: mightn’t things have been different with an older and wiser man on hand for guidance? Cathan’s good (iirc), but he doesn’t have Camber’s experience.
Cathan’s presence at court raises no ill feelings between them, so while Camber does not want to be there himself, he seems to have no objections to his son taking on the role, although the son seems to be cut of much the same cloth as the father. I would think that if there had been Neroesque excesses in the court Camber would be quietly agitating to sever Cathan’s relationship to it, for the sake of Cathan’s family if nothing else, assuming Cathan was willing to stay and endure. Imre, the king, levied a massive tax against everybody, Deryni and human alike, to fund the construction of a snazzy new capital; his justifications aren’t given, but neither is any reason why a new capital is a terrible idea. A king is entitled to levy taxes (she said as devil’s advocate), and his people never like it; but what if the old capital is getting rundown, or overrun, or cramped, or simply has too much of the past Haldane rule about it? A king is entitled to make himself a new capital, if there are reasons for it. And hey, he’s the king – sometimes when there aren’t reasons for it.
Add to this a murder in a remotish village, the killing of a Deryni possibly because he was Deryni. Not good. That’s something that would need to be punished, no matter what. Rumors of a child being molested by the victim mitigate a little – but that would be cause to have the man dragged into a court of law, for legal punishment, or if vigilante action was to be taken I would expect the man to disappear one night. But the method of the murder wasn’t a simple stabbing in a dark alley, or even a little friendly torture session by the child’s family. This victim was hanged, drawn, and quartered. That’s … unusual. That’s a statement. I looked it up: in England it was purely a method of execution used in cases of high treason until its abolishment in 1814. It isn’t something one man could accomplish. This had to be at least five, I would think: they were likely not Deryni, while their victim was, so without the disabling drug merasha being involved simply capturing the man would take a few people. And even with merasha I can’t but think the logistics of this kind of killing would take five or six. Lookouts, cleanup, four horses to be managed and … washed after (unless horses weren’t used, though I thought they always were – apparently sometimes criminals were just cut apart); then, of course, the fun of distributing the body parts (and was there some message in that here? Isn’t there, usually? The four corners of the kingdom or some such? “Ho, there, messenger, what burden do you bear?” “Why, my errand is to deliver the left – wait, the right – let me check – the left leg of a traitor to the furthest southwestern corner of the land! Wanna see?”) There is unrest that Imre has had fifty hostages taken and will begin killing them unless and until the killers come forward. Which, given a medieval setting and the fact that the victim was a lord (never mind Deryni), is not all that unreasonable. They’ve tried to find the killers by the usual method, which in the then and there includes truth-reading anyone they can get their hands on, and found nothing. This isn’t the kind of thing that can be allowed to go unrecognized; in fact, I’m pretty sure upright medieval kings did much the same thing (she said, without any evidence whatsoever). Although, of course, those probably responsible are probably already resigned to the fact that their own lives are forfeit when they are discovered, and may sorrowfully write off the fifty as unavoidable (if unwitting and unwilling) sacrifices for the cause.
To the point I’d reached when I started writing this, he sounds like not a great king; possibly a very selfish king; not a king whose first interest is his people. Which does not mean he should be taken down in a coup. (As of chapter six he’s done some more heinous things… But I can’t help thinking of Nero and wondering – yes, but how is he as an overall ruler?)
Into this stew drops Rhys’s situation: an elderly patient who has come to be a friend confides to him on his deathbed that he is the last remaining member of the Haldanes, the royal family which was brutally ousted by the Deryni Festils almost 80 years ago. He’s dying, but he has a grandson, a legitimate heir to the old royal line. Do with that what you will. Rhys, a hitherto purposefully nonpolitical being, is thrown into a quandary: here he has potential dynamite. Somewhere, all unbeknownst to himself or anyone else but, briefly, Rhys (and then only Rhys and Joram), there is a forty-year-old monk with Haldane blood running in his veins. The next part of the test is a multi-part question: a) Is he still alive and can he be found? b) If he is found, should he be told anything other than that his grandfather is gone? c) If he is found, should any action be taken to restore him to the throne?
This last one is multi-part in itself: 1) Is he fit to rule, and who will be the judge of that? 2) Does he want to rule, and does it matter? If they decide to do this (which of course they will or there wouldn’t be a book) will they put him on the throne kicking and screaming if necessary, get him a wife (horrors!) and put him in a position (so to speak) where he has to get an heir? And how would that make him a better king than what they have? 3) What kind of solid justification is there for ousting the current, legally anointed, king – for committing all sorts of high treason and surely costing the lives of thousands in battle at least, and at worst thousands in battle plus the lives and families’ lives of every one of the people involved, and possibly of the inhabitants of the monastery where the uncrowned king lived all those years? (In 17th century England, during the Civil War, a Parliamentarian general said “We may beat the king 99 times, and yet he will be king still. If he beats us but once, we shall be hanged”.) His being selfish, greedy, and a bit of a spoiled brat tyrant, which is all that has been seen so far, is NOT justification for any good man to consider high treason. To the point I’d reached when I started writing this, he sounds like not a great king; possibly a very selfish king; not a king whose first interest is his people. Which does not mean he should be taken down in a coup. As of chapter six he’s done some more heinous things… But I can’t help thinking of Nero and wondering – yes, but how is he as an overall ruler? And … yes, but from what is said, as of when the quest for the uncrowned king started, Imre hadn’t committed any heinous acts… I think I’d be a lot happier if there had been more evidence of Imre being a bad king before that discussion. While I am glad that this bad king hasn’t (so far) followed the pattern so often seen in fantasy of the inhumanly evil, wicked, and unspeakably depraved bad king, I seem to recall that may come (incest, isn’t it?), it almost requires that for even considering a coup to be justified. There needs to be something more than “Father, we know your real reasons for leaving the court” that would excuse a character painted not as just a good man but the best of men sitting there with his son, daughter, and son-in-law-to-be discussing regicide. (Well, no one’s actually said “We need to kill the king” yet – but they’re looking for his legitimate replacement, and Imre’s going nowhere alive. The only place for a former king is in the grave – see The Quest for Saint Camber.) They were kind of light-hearted about the whole thing, too.
AND they didn’t even ward the room. Now, there’s no real reason they would have had to expect eavesdropping – but it seems like an unnecessary risk to me. What if there had been a servant or guest passing by who happened to overhear something about a discovered Haldane heir, and stood to listen (as who wouldn’t)? That could have been ugly.
All this aside – what a great idea for a High Adventure fantasy story. I love it: the ordinary man (somewhat) going about his ordinary business, tending to a patient who’s become a good, trusted and trusting friend and who is now succumbing to old age, and out of the blue having a huge (ginormous) secret dropped into his lap… and his life changes forever. It’s tempting to explore different avenues that the story could go down, what if’s and what about’s… and that, my children, is why it’s taken me half my life to bring my own book to even the point it’s reached. I’m far too good at haring off down new paths and alleyways.
This is a very interesting reread. Again, it’s going to be interesting wandering the past of the books I’ve just been reading – and it’s also interesting to see what I remember from all those years ago. The Chronicles rang bells on a regular basis; the Histories very strangely did not, to the point where I’m wondering if I ever did read them back when. I know I read the Camber books… and I also know I took a scunner against KK at some point, though I don’t know why. (Might have been that dream thing… which I will be big enough to admit carries a whiff of jealousy. Why does *she* get to be privy to transmissions from another world? *pout*)
