My life in books

More Skolian space opera romance, by Catherine Asaro
Skyfall
Catch the Lightning

Two more volumes in the very long, and still interesting, saga of the Skolian empire and its powerful psion rulers, the Rhon telepaths of the Ruby Dynasty. Skyfall takes us back almost to the to the beginning of the time period in which the series to date, explaining just how the heir of the Ruby Dynasty, Roca Skolia, ends up marrying Elrinson Valdoria, a minor more-or-less feudal leader on an only recently re-discovered Raylicon colony, founded thousands of years ago during the first flowering of this interstellar empire.

Catch the Lightning, on the other hand, comes near the end of the series, and recounts the adventures of one of Roca and Elrinson’s grandchilden, Althor, as he becomes trapped by treachery in another dimension – where he too manages to find a Rhon telepath to fall in love with and marry, on an alternate Earth.

Formulaic by now, especially with respect to the romantic conventions, but still fun. Brain candy is a good thing to have during the holidays.

My excuse is that I had a week of relative down-time (work was slow) and I really wasn't feeling very well, and I wanted some light reading that was interesting and engaging but not intense or overly challenging. And I'd gone out and bought a number of books in this particular series based on my enjoyment of the first one. So I read seven more of Catherine Asaro's Skolian Empire books.

The sheer fun of a sprawling space opera continues, along with enough strange dynastic and family secrets, ancient artifacts from long-lost civilizations, political intrigue and adventuring to satisfy just about anyone who'e into that sort of thing.

Schism
The Final Key

These two books are set before the time period of Primary Inversion, and focus on first introducing us to Sauscony Lahaylia Valdoria Skolia and her very unusual family, and thenshowing us how Sauscony becomes the kick-ass warrior and Imperial Heir that we met in Primary Inversion.

The Radiant Seas

This book immediately follows the events of Primary Inversion and covers about 15 odd years in familial and political developments for the Skolia family and the Empire they head. It ends with a really big space war, which is of course a necessity in a space opera, sooner or later.

Ascendant Sun
Spherical Harmonic
The Quantum Rose
The Moon’s Shadow

All four books cover roughly the same time period, from the perspectives of, respectively, Sausony's brother Kelric, her aunt Dyhianna, her brother Havyrl and her son Jaibriol. I found it very cool the way the four books interlocked, each one telling a little more of the events in the year or so following The Radiant Seas as the invlove the family of Skolia, and the politics of the Skolian and Eubian empires, until in the final book of the quartet, all the lines pull together and you finally have the full story of what's going on.

One thing I will note that became annoying for me was the increasing emphasis put on some of the more annoying of romance tropes, including the ones about people meeting for just an instant and becoming totally obseesed with each other, and forced marriages turning into real love. Sure, with telepaths, you can, I suppose, get an instant grokking of eachother - but not all of the relationships that form in weeks or even days are between two telepaths. And sure, royal families have been forced into political marriages for as long as humans have had royal families - but that's not always the reason behind the forced marriges in this series. I found The Quantum Rose particularly disturbing on this count, and it is my least favoured of the series to date. The later books of this series are definitely not for someone who in not able to deal with such tropes as extensions of romantic or sexual fantasies that, one hopes, are not sought after in real life.

The space opera aspect of these books is, for me, far preferable to the romance aspect, which I am largely ignoring at this point.

So, mixed feelings. There are three more volumes in this series, and I do intend to read them all, and I'll probably check out Asaro's other series to see if the blend of sf and romance remains acceptable, but I really hope that whatever romance there is in them is a little more realistic and a little less Wuthering Heights.

A Monstrous Regiment of Women, Laurie R. King

This is the second of the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries to be published, and I enjoyed it quite as completely as I did the first.

In this novel, Russell, about to finish with university and just on the verge of reaching her majority and gaining control of her fortune, meets an old friend who has become involved with a charismatic woman preacher and social reformer, Margery Childe. Russell, who has taken degree in theology (and in chemistry, but that is much less relevant here) is at first interested in Childe's profoundly feminist but theologically naive interpretation of Scripture, but following an attempt on her friend's life, and the discovery of a series of deaths associated with Childe's organisation, the detective in her takes over.

The Russell/Holmes relationship heats up somewhat - well, quite a bit toward the end - and while I'm not entirely certain that I would have written that aspect of the story the same way the King did, still it worked for me. However, after reading this novel, which is the second in publication order, I read somewhere that O Jerusalem is actually the next novel in chronological order, so I must read that next. Possibly it will fill in the gaps that made a few notes in the advancing Russell/Holmes relation seem not quite in key.

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, by Laurie R. King

While I am not a rabid Holmesian, I have of course read, on several occasions, all the accounts of the Great Detective’s casework published by his companion, Dr. Watson (with the assistance of that kind gentleman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). As well, I have from time to time enjoyed pastiches written by others who, inspired by the astonishing feats of deduction of which the master was capable, have attempted to recreate the spirit of the true Holmes in some fictional guise.

Recently, in researching the author of a post-apocalyptic novel I read last year (Califia’s Daughters, by Leigh Richards), I discovered that Richards, under the name Laurie R. King, is responsible for the publication of a series of accounts of Holmes’ life after his announced retirement to Sussex Downs to keep bees. Suspicious, naturally, at the news that manuscripts revealing a hitherto unknown picture of Holmes’ life after his retirement had surfaced, I nonetheless was determined to apply myself to the first of these new accounts and see for myself, if I could, whether it was a hoax, a clever fiction, or, unlikely as it might seem, the truth.

And now, having read the first of these books, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, I must admit, I do not quite know what to make of it. The narrator of the supposed memoir, Mary Russell, is a young American girl, recently orphaned and heiress to an estate of some size, transplanted to the household of her nearest surviving relative in Sussex, there to remain under said relative’s care until she attains her majority. Her description of herself and her habits sets her apart from many other young persons of her situation and sex, suggesting that she is possessed of a not inconsiderable brilliance of mind combined with, to put it kindly, a significant degree of eccentricity.

As the memoir – if such it is – opens, Miss Russell quite literally stumbles across Holmes observing bees on the downs, and he, seemingly intrigued by her powers of intellect and observation – quite marked in a person so young – assumes the role of her mentor, and eventually begins to train her in his own erstwhile profession of private investigator. Eventually, Miss Russell becomes involved in his investigations – for while he is supposedly retired, it appears that the government of England still has need of Holmes on matters requiring great skill and delicacy, and his own natural curiosity prevails in other instances where a mystery is, as one might say, afoot. One also may read into the account intimations of a tenderer sentiment growing between the two, not unlike that which is known to have flourished for some time between Holmes and his companion Dr Watson.

The account is well-written, and whether fact or fantasy, it cannot be denied that the author has captured the essence of Holmes as he well might have been in the years following his withdrawal from London life. Further, the character of Miss Russell, while quite unusual, does leave the reader with a sense of her being a formidable young woman, and one who, like the detective’s quondam adversary Irene Adler, might pique the interest of a man not otherwise known for an inclination toward the fairer sex.

I know not if this is indeed a true account of Holmes’ later life, but I am resolved to continue reading the story of Mary Russell and her Sherlock Holmes, for it seems to me that, if this be not a true memoir, then it is nonetheless what could have been, and that, for me, is sufficient.

A long time ago, cynthia1960 recommended Pamela Aidan's “Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman” trilogy - a retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of Elizabeth Bennet's counterpart and eventual partner in life, the enigmatic Darcy. I have finally acquired and read the books, and am most grateful to cynthia1960 for the recommendation.

An Assembly Such as This
Duty and Desire
These Three Remain

Aidan writes in a style that is part pastiche of Austen's own writing and part the conventional style of modern writers of Regency romance - a little more modern than Austen herself, but not so modern as to jar the sensibilities of modern Austenites. She follows the events covered in Pride and Prejudice faithfully, but goes on to show us what is going on in Darcy's life (and to a lesser extent, the lives of his sister Georgiana, his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam, and of course the Bingleys) when Elizabeth isn't watching.

Austen was restricted in her own writing by the limitations placed on the behaviour of respectable women of her time and place. There is much that she could not write about because it was not something that women should know anything about. There was much that she had no direct experience of, particularly the way men talked and behaved among other men in a society in which men and women of her general social class in which men and women spent a great deal of time segregated by gender. Aidan can write what Austen could not write, and she has done so quite well.

Darcy runs a large estate and manages his financial interests, he hunts and fences and hangs out at his clubs. He gambles and talks politics and ventures into social engagements with the "faster set" that no respectable women, the kind that Jane Austen would write about, would ever have social dealings with. And we see him doing all of these things in between his encounters with Elizabeth Bennet.

The first book, An Assembly Such as This, is quite wonderful in all respects. It covers the period between the arrival of the Bingleys, with Darcy, at Netherfield, and ends with their departure after the Netherfield ball. Aidan shows us all of these events from Darcy's point of view, showing us a Darcy who is essentially a good man, but one who is in many ways quite rigid and overly concerned with propriety and social conventions. He is attracted to Elizabeth, but sees his attempts to converse with her as a kind of game, not unlike the fencing we will later see him to be most proficient at. And he is horrified at the thought that his good friend and protege Charles Bingley should lower himself to marry someone so out of his own social and financial orbit as Elizabeth's sister Jane.

Aidan's task in the second book, Duty and Desire, is to fill in the long stretch of time between the Netherfield ball, where Elizabeth and Darcy part on very poor terms, and their next encounter at Rosings. Because Austen gives us nothing of Darcy's life in this time period, other than the knowledge that he spends a small part of it persuading Bingley that Jane Bennet does not love him and that he should not pursue that connection, Aidan is on her own. Her choices made this book seem less appropriate - although still quite interesting - to me, as she decides to have Darcy, resisting his growing desire for Elizabeth, go off in search of a suitable wife to bring home to Pemberly and end up in a melodramatic plotline that blends many of the gothic elements that Austen satirised in Northanger Abbey with the Romantic fascination for Irish and Scottish folklore and weird doings. I found these elements out of place in a work based on Pride and Prejudice, although I acknowledge that they are very much a part of a common literary genre of Austen's time and would have enjoyed the story quite completely in a wholly original Regency setting.

These Three Remain brings us back, for the most part, to Austen's story about Elizabeth and Darcy, covering the meeting at Rosings and the disastrous proposal, the fortuitous encounter at Pemberly, the events that follow upon Lydia's fall from grace, the reconciliation of Bingley and Jane, the intervention of Lady Catherine and the final happy-ever-after ending. Aidan handles the character growth that brings Darcy from a proud and arrogant suitor to a man who know the true worth of people and things with some skill, although the use of the espionage subplot (and be honest now, what reader of Regency romances didn't see Dyfed's reveal coming all the way back in volume one?) seemed, again, un-Austenish.

Bottom line, though - fun to read, and full of good and interesting detail about the politics, social issues, and general habits, gossip, conventions and customs of Austen's time, with some wonderful tidbits tossed in, most particularly a reference to a new novel called Sense and Sensibility, about an impoverished widow and her three daughters, by an unknown author.