My life in books

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.

The Spirit Stone, Katharine Kerr

Kerr’s long and complex Deverry sequence continues to move toward its conclusion, as the many-braided lives of this long series of novels spanning hundreds of years of history in the fantasy world of Deverry are woven together in yet another generation.

Nevyn has finally moved on to another life, and in this new life, he greets again the soul who was his love in centuries past, and his student Jill in her last life. Rori, whose life has been woven with theirs again and again, is still trapped in dragon form, and the Horse Kin, still caught up in the worship of the would-be goddess Alshanda (despite her defeat in previous volumes), continue to threaten elvenkind and humans alike. The threads are still multiplying, and while one can begin to see the overall shape the final stretch of the tapestry must take, the allure is in the details, and they remain a much anticipated mystery.

It’s getting very hard to wait for the final two volumes to come out.

Dragon Harper, Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffery.

Anne McCaffery and her son Todd McCaffrey have collaborated on another Pern novel, continuing the story of aspiring harper Kindan, who has already been involved in bringing the special abilities of watchwhers to the attention of those who need them and giving the weyrs of Pern access to a much safer form of firestone for the dragons to use in fighting thread.

Now Kindan is up against something he can’t solve, but can only fight to survive – a deadly planet-wide influenza epidemic, which the authors have based on the historical Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918.

It’s a light and undemanding read, and is probably of interest primarily to those who just can’t kick the Pern habit, like me. It covers well-trodden ground – we’ve seen a lot of plague among both dragons and humans in the Pern books over the years. Not that it’s unrealistic for a people to experience multiple plagues over the course of several thousand years, but if you’re going to create a series of books about what’s most interesting in the long history of a lost human colony, a detailed exploration of one plague is probably enough (OK, two if you want to have both human and dragon plagues, but that’s the limit unless you put some clear and strong differences into the stories). I hope that if either or both McCafferys continue to write about Pern, they’ll explore more new ground, rather than going back to some of the same plots over and over again.

The Phoenix Unchained, Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory


The Phoenix Unchained is the first volume of The Enduring Flame trilogy, which takes place in the world of Lackey and Mallory's earlier Obsidian Trilogy (The Outstretched Shadow, To Light a Candle, When Darkness Falls), only it's 1,000 years later, and no one remembers that the forces of Dark were only defeated, not destroyed forever, and everyone (well, at least everyone human) has forgotten that the dark was in the end defeated by a combination of ritual or high magic and wild magic. Which is sort of where we were at the beginning of the first trilogy, except that then, no one in the human lands remembered the existence of wild magic, and now, it's high magic that's been forgotten.

Enter the obligatory young person with a destiny. Although in this case, it's actually two young persons with a destiny, Tiercel and Harrier, best friends who have grown up together and seem to have their lives perfectly planned out for them until Tiercel rediscovers high magic and naturally, they're off on a journey to find out What It All Means. Unicorns,elves and dragons ensue, of course.

Based on the first volume, I expect this trilogy to be just as amusing to read as the last one was.

Fortune’s Fool, Mercedes Lackey

In this, the third of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, Lackey draws on Russian, Arabian and Japanese folklore for another delightful retelling of old tales with a new and somewhat subversive twist. Several old friends reappear, including the dragons from volume two.

This time, there are two protagonists – Ekaterina (Katya) the seventh daughter of the King of the Sea, and Sasha, the seventh son of the King of Belarus. This being a faerie land, and Tradition being what it is, both the seventh daughter and the seventh son have unusual powers, which their respective parents have put to great use. Katya, like all underwater people, has magical power, and she also has the much rarer ability to transform instantaneously from water-breather to air-breather, and she is quite happy putting her talents to use as her father’s eyes and ears – observer, spy, and agent – both at home and in other kingdoms. Sasha, meanwhile is not only the seventh son, but a Fortune Fool and one born with the gift of influencing the workings of Tradition through his music. His job in his father’s court is to play the fool while subtly easing tensions and manipulating people and events in to bring about good fortune; outside the court, he uses his abilities to manipulate Tradition itself so that the country experiences the best possible consequences of those kinds of situations that can call Tradition into play.

Because this is, after all, a faerie tale (to say nothing of a series written for a SFF imprint of a publisher specialising in romance novels), Sasha and Katya meet one day during the performance of their respective duties, and end up, after various trials and tribulations, happily in love (that’s hardly a spoiler, I think). What is fun is how they get through those trials and tribulations. Sasha is not your typical hero – rather, he’s a truly good man who gets out of trouble by being polite, thoughtful, honest, observant, honourable and diplomatic; three cheers for a hero who doesn’t suffer from testosterone poisoning! Meanwhile, Katya is quite capable of defending herself in tight quarters, and even though the major plotline takes the form of the all-too-familiar “evil creature kidnaps beautiful maidens and hero leads the mission to rescue them” trope, these maidens are well on their way to extricating themselves by the time the rescue party arrives, and the final confrontation requires the efforts of both captives and rescuers to succeed.

It’s light and fluffy, to be sure, but Fortune’s Fool, like the earlier volumes in the series, playfully challenges the conventions of the faerie tales I knew as a child, and that’s a good thing.

It’s always interesting to me when an author does something new or unexpected with material from oral traditions – fairy tales and the like, and that’s very much what is happening in Mercedes Lackey’s series of novels set in The Hundred Kingdoms. She’s written three books (so far – I don’t know if she intends to write more) in this series, and I’ve recently gotten around to reading the first two:

The Fairy Godmother
One Good Knight

The overall conceit is that in her world of The Hundred Kingdoms, what we consider to be the conventions of fairy tales are actually a powerful force known as The Tradition, which shapes the lives of people to conform to the conventions of fairy tales – sometimes to their benefit, but often to their detriment. Acting as a balance against the untrammelled consequences of Tradition gone wild are Sorcerers, Sorceresses, and above all, Fairy Godmothers, whose job it is to watch out for situations where The Tradition is making a mess of things, and nudge things around a bit (OK, sometimes a lot) so that the power of The Tradition flows along paths that result in at least a better result for the people involved, if not the best possible result.

For instance, how do you manipulate the Tradition of Rapunzel so that dozens of young princes aren’t drawn to her tower to be maimed or killed trying to rescue her, before the prince whose destiny it is to save her finally shows up? How do you manage to avert the Tradition that a maiden saved from a horrible fate by a young knight must end up madly in love with him? And so on.

These books are very witty, even gently satirical concerning the relationships between genders, classes, and races (humans, elves, dragons and so on), and make brilliant use of the range, variety, and interrelationships of folklore motifs – in fact, an afficionado of oral tradition may well feel as though she’s wandering through an animated adaptation of Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk Literature. At the same time, I found the conceit an interesting comment on the ways in which perceptions, expectations, choices and actions are moulded and driven by social and cultural conventions. It’s not easy to challenge the weight of tradition in any world, and Lackey’s magical Tradition is a metaphor, I think, for just how difficult it is to change ideas about such things as the natural roles of men and women in society, and how, when one does try, the result is rarely a clean break with the past, but rather, an accommodation with the past that moves change forward one step at a time.

Fun reading, but with a hidden kick – a bit of a change for Lackey, who’s not always this subtle in her social messages.

The Tale of the Five, by Diane Duane:
The Door into Fire
The Door into Shadow
The Door into Sunset

Of all of Diane Duane’s marvellous books, Door into Fire, the first volume of Duane’s Tale of the Five, is dearest to my heart. You see, back in 1979, when it was published, I was a young queer geek who had never before read anything in her genre of choice that had, not just a queer protagonist, but one who was openly in a committed, long-term (and polyamorous!) relationship with his male lover, who lived in a world where what hadn’t yet come to be called alternative sexualities here on Earth were an accepted part of life, welcomed and cherished and supported. Heterosexuality was not privileged in this world. And I was rocked to my soul with the feeling of joy and rightness Duane’s story gave me.

Oh, I’d read books that had queers in them before. They were quietly getting on with their lives in Samuel Delany’s work, and coming out, sometimes quite fiercely, in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s books, and had even popped up in a few short stories here and there, by people like Sturgeon and Farmer who liked to press all sorts of buttons anyway. And outside of genre fiction, what queer girl worth her salt hadn’t real that terrifying book of Radclyffe Hall’s, or scrounged up some lesbian pulps by Ann Banion? But I’d never read a book about a place where queer people were just like everyone else, and could be themselves, and be in love, just as happily (or not, but not because of their orientation) as anyone else. They could be heroes, and their tales could end with them living happily, and in love.

And in addition to all of that, Door into Fire and its sequels are great heroic fantasy, too, with an overarching theme that they share with Duane’s remarkable Young Wizards series, a subtle and ultimately more realistic variation on the classic battle between good and evil in which love is engaged in a long defence against despair, the fear of death and the nothingness of entropy.

I’ve heard rumours from time to time that Duane has, or had, plans to write a fourth volume, which would of course be wonderful, although the Tale has reached a comfortable resting point – complete with the genre’s best wedding ever, and I mean it – at the end of the third volume, The Door into Sunset.

But whether she does or not, the three volumes that exist now were, and are, an important part of my becoming who I am, and each time I re-read them (which I do, every handful of years) I am once again caught up in the tale of the Five: Herewiss S'Hearn, heir to Brightwood and potentially, first man in centuries to wield the Blue Flame; his loved Freelorn, uncrowned king-in-exile whose quest is to remove the usurper from the throne of Darthen; Sunspark, the fire elemental who comes to love him; Segnbora, a Rodmistress in search of her own fire; and the dragon Hasai, who, with Segnbora, must defy all the traditions of his people in order to save them.

More volumes from series that I've been reading and enjoying.


Water Logic, Laurie Marks

Laurie Marks' Elemental Logic series is a tour de force. In the first book of the series, Fire Logic, Marks introduced us to the land and people of Shaftal, where one's character is defined by one's element, and where some children are born with such a strong elemental nature that they can wield the magic that is inherent in the nature of their element - earth blood means healing; water means time and space; air means truth-seeing; and fire means prescience and passion. Shaftal has been invaded by a people coming from across the eastern sea, the leader (G'deon) of the Shaftali people has died, naming as heir an unacceptable Earth blood named Karis, child of a Shaftali sex worker and a Sainite invader, and the Sainites are moving swiftly to destroy the magic and culture of the Shaftali.

The series follows the paths of a loosely defined family that gathers about the rejected G'deon Karis and their struggles to end the invasion, bring peace and - for what else can an earth blood do? - heal the wounds of war and empire on both sides, in both peoples.

In addition to all the other stuff that I love about complex worldbuilding and strong, well-drawn characters and great writing, part of what thrills me about these books is the rejection of gender norms. In Shaftal, people don't act in a certain way or enter a certain profession because they are male or female, they do so because it is in their element to do so. Marks uses the concept of elemental natures to show us how arbitrary is our belief that gender is the most important defining characteristic of personality - the one thing that one has to know about another human being. What follows from this lack of gender norms is a completely different way of defining sexual relationships and families - since male and female are not particularly relevant, there is no real distinction between people who are in a relationship others of the same sex and people who are in relationships with people of another sex. Families form based on love and the desire to share lives, not exclusively around sexual relationships, and can involve a number of adults who relate with each other on many levels, and their children.

In this series, Marks has also attempted to write each book in a style that is suited to her definition of one of the four elements. This has, I think, led some people to like some but not all of the books, because the styles are different in each book, but in my opinion, this is one of the things that has made this series so very special.


Aerie, Mercedes Lackey

This wraps up the Dragon Jousters series quite nicely, pulling together most if not all of the loose plot threads while providing one last enemy - the Nameless Ones, whose powers may have been behind the rule of the Magi over the twin lands of Alta and Tia. Kiron finds love, the united lands find peace, prosperity and leadership, the new community of dragon riders find a home and a function for themselves that doesn't involve killing each other, and all's well that ends well... unless Lackey decides to play in this particular universe some more, which is certainly possible.


First Rider’s Call, Kristen Britain

In the sequel to Green rider, the stakes are raised as the ancient evils awakened in the first book grow more powerful and begin to call up old allies and Karigan G'ladheon finds she can no longer resist the powerful call to commit herself to a life as a Green Rider. As the enemies of the kingdom - human and inhuman, within and without - gather their strength and lay their plans, Karigan begins to discover why she is so important to the coming fight, and in the process uncovers much that had been long forgotten about the early days of the kingdom and the founding of the Green Riders. A good sequel that builds well on what came before and promises a satisfying climax to come.


Tides of Darkness, Judith Tarr

The last of the Avaryan Resplendent trilogy, this book takes Mirain's descendants into the far-flung corners of the universe to combat the growing evil that threatens all the worlds and the magical gateways between them. While most of the action in this novel takes place on distant planets among peoples we have not met before, the slow realisation that this threat the seem to come from so far away is really the other side of everything we have come to love about the world of Avaryan brings everything full circle, as everyone, including the immortal Mirain, finds the long road home. While I found the second of the trilogies, Avaryan Resplendent, less compelling than the first, Avaryan Rising, Judith Tarr at less than her best is still much better than a lot of the fantasy that's out there.

I have been reading a lot of novels in series lately. I like series. I love plots that go on for volumes and volumes and characters that grow and change and themes that are developed layer upon layer.

Lately, I have begun reading, or completed reading, or read a few more books in the middle of, the following series. All of these series, obviously, are ones that I have or am enjoying highly, because if I weren't, why on earth would I have read more than the first volume?


The Miles Korkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Brothers in Arms
Mirror Dance

What is there not to love about a runty little hero with a brittle bone disability, a brilliant mind and a gift for profound deviousness and intrigue who's trying to face down a birth culture in which physical prowess and manliness is everything, while making a name for himself as a mercenary captain and concealing his mission as an interstellar intelligence agent?

I read the first novels in this series a long time ago, when they first came out, and then a couple of years back, when I happened to notice just how many more of them Bujold had written, I re-read the older ones and am now in the process of reading the neweer ones. Bujold's is smart, and often funny milsf adventure with some very nice exploration of both gender politics and disability issues, and some very nice political intrigue.


The Diana Tregarde Mysteries, by Mercedes Lackey
Children of the Night
Jinx High

Completing my re-read of this urban fantasy series, which alas has only three volumes. Diana Teegarde is a Guardian, a person who is gifted with strong supernatural and/or psychic gifts and the ability to perform magic, and has accepted the responsibility to use these gifts to oppose those - both human and inhuman - who would use such powers for evil.

As with many of Lackey's novels, there's a distinct pagan-friendly and queer-positive vibe, a strong female protagonist, children at risk and some clearly defined heroes and villians.


The Jenny Casey trilogy by Elizabeth Bear
Hammered
Scardown
Worldwired

Ok, if you like hard sf, strong female protagonists, cyberpunk (although Bear has argued that it is actually post-cyberpunk), geopolitical sf, or just plain good writing with great characters and complex, action-filled plots about important human issues, go read Bear's novels about Master Warrant Officer Genevieve Casey. If you want some details first, you can find them at Elizabeth Bear's website.

I was enthralled by these books - quite literally, I read them one after another over the course of about two days. Compelling, thought-provoking, and exciting reading.


The Dragon Temple Trilogy, by Janine Cross
Touched by Venom
Shadowed by Wings
Forged by Fire

These are not easy books to read. I'll give you that warning right now. Over the course of these three novels, the young female protagonist - who is only a child when the books begin - experiences just about every kind of abuse you can imagine, as a child, as a female, as a slave, as a political prisoner, as a gender rebel, as a racial minority, as a member of an oppressed socio-economic class, as an addict, as an enforced victim/participant of a religious cult, as a recruit in a brutal quasi-military training program, and probably as several more identities that are traditionally targets of institutionalised as well as individual abuse that I hadn't noticed.

Some people have dismissed these works as violent pornography, others have seen them as a deeply disturbing dystopia with a profound feminist and anti-oppression stance. I'm defintely in the latter camp on this - sometimes it's important to remember just how bad things not just can be, but are for people who are not privileged (as I imagine many of the readers of this blog are, at least in some ways).

There is a great review by Liz Henry up at Strange Horizons that not only looks at the first book in the series from a feminist and anti-oppression perspective, but also examines the vastly divergeant opinions people have voiced about the book.


The Company Novels, by Kage Baker
Sky Coyote
Mendoza in Hollywood
The Graveyard Game

I read the first volume in the series, In the Garden of Iden, earlier this year, and was very much intrigued with the set-up - time-travelling for profit, with entreprenuers from the future conscripting orphans throughout history to become immortal collectors of vanished artworks, cultural histories, extinct specimens, and all sort of other things worth saving - if someone is going to profit by it. It was claer from the very first that there were some unanswered questions about the whole enterprise, and as the series has continued, that's proving to be even truer than I'd expected.

The key continuing characters - Mendoza, saved from the Spanish Inquisition as a child, and Joseph, her recruiter, himself rescued from a massacre of his family group in 20,000 BCE by Budu, an even older Immortal of whom much is heard but little is seen in the books I have read so far - find themselves and their associates withing the Company increasing confronted by mysteries about who really runs the Company, the source of the technology that made both time travel and their own immortality possible, the real motives of the increasing large number of factions associated with the Company, its operatives and controllers, the growing number of disapperaing immortals, and most mysterious of all, what happens after 2355 - the year in which all communications from the future to the operatives and immortals stationed all throughout human history (and pre-history) cease.

Political intrigue on a truly grand scale. I'm loving this series.

And this is at least in part why i'm reading boy genius Christopher Paolini's saga about dragons and elves and dwarves and evil overlords and secret pasts and just about every other well-known and frequently-used trope in the fantasy business. (But no unicorns, at least not yet!)

I read Eragon when it first came out, thanks to my partner's mother, who does not really have a clear sense of what I enjoy reading but on very rare occasions does manage to give me something that I find readable.

I think the main things in the first book that kept me interested were Angela the herbalist, who is one of those fairly standard aburpt, gruff and cryptic pronouncement characters, but it's much more fun when they're women, and Saphira the dragon, becasue not a lot of people write female dragons, especially as main characters.

So I just finished the second book in the series, Eldest.

The loading on of overly-familiar tropes, from the "I am your father, Luke" moment to the "what do you mean, you're the heir to the throne?" moment, continues unabated. But one thing I will say about young master Paolini (I suppose I should let go of that - he's now of an age with many other writers just beginning their careers) is that he doesn't mind surrounding his boy-hero with powerful women and letting them actually do important stuff that sometimes even involves them telling him what to do becasue they know more, or are in positions of power. This is a book that passes the Bechdel Test.

And there's this scene where Saphira gets drunk that is just wonderful, because, how often does somebody write about a drunken dragon?