My life in books

I follow a lot of authors who write both science fiction and fantasy series. New volumes in ongoing series read in 2012:


Tanya Huff, The Wild Ways

The second novel about the Gale family, whose women are strangely gifted and powerful and whose men - rare in a family of many sisters, aunties and nieces - are the embodiment of the Horned God. The full story of what and who the Gales are is slowly unfolding as Huff tells stories about its various members, and I'm sure there is more to come.


Lois McMaster Bujold, Lord Vorpatril's Alliance

Now that Miles Vorkosigan is settled into a title, important court function and family, Bujold has turned her attention to one of the people in Miles' inner circle. An improvement on Cryoburn, largely because the new focus lets Bujold play wild games with her characters again.


Elizabeth Moon, Echoes of Betrayal

This follow-up series to Moon's Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter series just keeps developing more and more twists and taking a wider scope with each volume. I'm thinking by the end that we will know a lot more about the history and future of this world, and that's a good thing.


Charles R. Saunders, The Trail of Bohu (Revised)

The third volume of Saunders' exceptional Imaro series was first published decades ago, and revised recently now that the new era of self-publishing has finally allowed him to complete the series. Although I had read the original version when it was first published, between revisions and the passage of time, thiswas very much a new book for me. And it sets up the coming confrontation between Imaro and his life-long enemies very well.


Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Burning Shadows

Somehow I never tire of the Count Saint Germain, warrior, healer, alchemist, vampire. This one is set in 5th century Hungary and Romania, where the Count faces the coming of the Huns.


Michelle Sagara, Cast in Silence
Michelle Sagara, Cast in Chaos
Michelle Sagara, Cast in Ruin

Finally almost caught up with Sagara West's Elantra Chronicles featuring Private Keylin Neya.


Todd McCaffrey, Dragongirl
Todd and Anne McCaffrey, Dragon’s Time
Todd McCaffrey, Sky Dragons

Fare thee well to Anne McCaffrey, creator of Pern and other worlds. I've been reading her work for most of my life, it seems, and while I have issues with her gender politics, still I can't ignore what a key figure she was in science fiction. And as Todd McCaffery cones into his own as inheritor of his mother's creations, I'm hoping to see more originality and more of the greater awareness of sexual and gender diversity and equality that he has been bringing to the series.


Kevin Hearne, Hexed
Kevin Hearne, Hammered
Kevin Hearne, Tricked
Kevin Hearne, Two Ravens and One Crow (novella)
Kevin Hearne, Trapped

Atticus O'Sullivan (born Siodhachan O Suileabhain), the 2000 year-old Druid with a sharp wit and enough magical power to take on a god or two, is one of the most enjoyable new characters I've encountered in some time. The Iron Druid Chronicles are fast-paced and truly funny. I hope Hearne has quite a few more brewing in the back of his mind.

There’s always been a lot that’s problematical about Anne McCaffrey’s Pern novels, the gender politics being one of the more prominent issues for me, and the quality of a number of her later books was, well, starting to get a little thin in my opinion, but nonetheless I’ve continued to buy and read each new Pern novel, including the ones that she has co-authored with her son Todd, and now the ones that he is writing on his own. Call it habit, call it nostalgia, but there it is.

Dragon’s Fire, Todd McCaffrey & Anne McCaffrey

This is a continuation of the story begun in Dragon’s Kin. These novels, set near the end of the Second Interval, seem to have been written at least in part for the purpose of giving origin and back stories to some elements of life on Pern that have become fully integrated in the society by the time of F’lar, Lessa and Master Robinton. Dragon’s Kin looked at the discovery of the unique abilities of watch-whers, and the life of miners on Pern – who learn to use watch-whers to sniff out gas pockets and locate trapped miners. Portions of Dragon’s Fire overlap the events of Dragon’s Kin from a different perspective, as the book continues with the exploration of life in the mining camps of Pern, and deals largely with the difficulties of mining the explosive firestone used by Dragonriders in fighting thread at this period in the history of Pern – in fact, it is during the events of this book that the shift is made to the less-volatile mineral used in the time if F’lar. The book also looks at some of the consequences of the Pernese custom of shunning – making outcaste and exlie – criminals and other “undesirables.”

Due to the youth of the key characters, it would appear that the series was intended as young adult reading. That’s fine – most of the Pern books feature young characters – but something about these two books just failed to grab me. I found the plots somewhat disjointed and perhaps unnecessarily complicated, and to be perfectly honest, I find it difficult to remember exactly what happened in the books, and to whom.


Dragonsblood, Todd McCaffery

Curiously enough, Todd McCaffrey’s foray into writing a Pern book without his mother’s collaboration was a far more enjoyable affair for me. It certainly helps that he appears to lack his mother’s difficulty in following the decisions she made about the sexuality of dragons and dragonriders to their logical conclusion – that the vast majority of male dragonriders, by necessity if not inclination, engage regularly in sex with other men and probably form strong emotional ties to those men. After all, male dragons come in three colours – bronze, brown and blue – and the female dragons in two colours – gold and green. For most of the history of Pern, women have only been gold dragon riders - and gold dragons are very few indeed - while men have been riding green dragons as well as all the other colours of dragons. And it is canon that the bond between dragon and rider means that when two dragons mate, so do their riders - and that these bonds can be intensely emotional as well as sexual. It’s always been there in the text, and sometimes even mentioned, but Todd McCaffrey actually seems comfortable enough with the concept to discuss it directly as part of who his characters are and what they do, and that’s a welcome change.

Set just prior to the beginning of the Third Turn (just a few years after the trilogy the McCaffreys are co-writing), Dragonsblood draws on some familiar tropes in the Pern universe – plague and how to deal with it in the absence of medical technology, finding lost records from the Landing, using the dragon’s time-travelling abilities to make possible something that otherwise could not be done – but it’s a pleasant if not particularly challenging read. And it gives us more information on the dragons, the fire-lizards and the whers.

I’m looking forward with some curiosity to Todd McCaffrey's next solo Pern offering.