(no subject)

Cast in Secret by Michelle Sagara (who also writes as Michelle West)

Cast in Secret is the third volume in Sagara West’s Chronicles of Elantra, featuring police officer and healer Kaylin Neva as she forges alliances with yet another of the many different peoples who inhabit the capital city – the telepathic Tha’alani – and learns more about her own mysterious abilities.

I’ve become quite a fan of the series – it has a strong but conflicted female hero, a complicated political background, well-developed non-human cultures, in short, lots of the things that turn me on in my SFF reading. And so far, the ominously predictable love triangle has not yet manifested (very surprising for a Harlequin imprint book, but more power to Sagara if she's found a way to avoid the obligatory annoyingly obvious romance plotline that detracted from some of the other Luna fantasy novels I've read), so I'm quite happy to keep reading.

Fortunately, the series is a hit with its publishers and Kaylin’s adventures are assured to continue for some time to come.

(no subject)

The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh

C.J. Cherryh is known primarily as a long form writer – in a long career of writing mainly well-regarded novels, she has only published enough short fiction to fill one, admittedly thick, volume – and fully a third of those are related short stories from a themed short story collection originally published in 1981 as Sunfall, set in the cities of an unimaginably old Earth, where only those who cannot bear to leave their planetary home remain. The remaining stories bear publication dates ranging from 1979 to 2004 – occasional pieces scattered throughout the working life of a major writer of SFF, all different, and all interesting. It’s a good collection to own.

The Book of Negroes

The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill
(published as Someone Knows My Name in the USA, Australia and New Zealand)

I cannot give high enough praise to Canadian author Lawrence Hill’s brilliant and multiple award-winning novel about the journey of one woman, Aminata Diallo, from her childhood as the intelligent and inquisitive daughter of a merchant father and a midwife mother in a small village in West Africa, to her old age as a freed slave invited to London by abolitionists who hope that her account of her life will sway Parliament to end trafficking in human lives.

Aminata Diallo is an unforgettable character. Her life encompasses the range of the experiences of slavery in North America, without once stretching credibility. The rich detail of every stage of Diallo’s life speaks of exhaustive research. The narrative rings with emotional truth.

The Book of Negroes is real – a document drawn up by the British during the last days of the American Revolution, listing the names and personal information of 3,000 Black Loyalist slaves and former slaves who rendered service to the British during the Revolution and who were transported to Nova Scotia as a “reward.” There, despite some initial assistance in establishing several Black settlements, they faced a pattern of official indifference and active racism from other settlers. Eventually, over a thousand of the Black Loyalists returned to Africa, where they founded Freetown, in what is now Sierra Leone.

Hill makes his indomitable Aminata Diallo a part of this story. Taken into slavery, she survives the Middle Passage to be sold to the owner of an indigo plantation. The story of how Aminata – or Mina Dee as she comes to be known - survives the brutality, deprivation and indignity of plantation and great personal loss of husband and children to become one of the Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia, and then one of the founders of Freetown, is a compelling and deeply moving story, and a testament to the courage and endurance of the real men, women and children whose names can still be found in the Book of Negroes.

Have I mentioned that I like vampires?

Saint-Germain: Memoirs – Tales of the Vampire Saint Germain by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Saint-Germain: Memoirs is a collection of shorter fiction – two short stories, two novelettes and a novella – presenting incidents in the long life of Yarbro’s immortal hero-vampire. Like her first short story collection of featuring the vampire, The Saint-Germain Chronicles, the stories here cover a wide span of years, from ancient Greece to modern times. In fact, it is only in these two collections – at least so far – that we have any glimpse of how a 4,000 year old vampire copes in the present day, which is one of the things that make these collections particularly enjoyable. At least to me, seeing Saint-Germain in modern times brings the vampire closer to the reader and opens up the sense of wonder, the possibility of great mysteries hiding in the mundane world we all think we know.

My favourite pieces are the two short stories – both deal with encounters between Saint-Germain and women who stand up for themselves. While most of the Saint-Germain narratives involve complex relationships with interesting women, the stories that interest me the most are those in which Saint-Germain becomes involved with women who began from a position of inner strength, regardless of their circumstances and whatever situations bring them into the vampire’s path. In the first story of this collection, Saint-Germain’s path briefly crosses that of one of the most well-known “shrews” of ancient history, Xanthippe, wife of Socrates. And in the final tale, Saint-Germain matches wits with an ambitious reporter in modern-day Vancouver.

The remaining three pieces in the collection are interesting as well, giving the reader glimpses into three different times and places – one already familiar from one of the novels – in the unlife of Saint-Germain

All in all, a pleasant visit with my favourite vampire.