Books this last little while
Mostly a very good crop this last couple of weeks.



Anthony Trollope Mr Scarborough's Family. This is a late Trollope and not his best. It's hard to read because it's working on a very odd assumption about legitimacy -- that an illegitimate person is "nobody" -- which is very hard to be in any sympathy with at all. It's also contrived, in a way Trollope generally isn't. But even so there are some lovely moments in it.

Angelica Gorodischer, Ursula Le Guin (trans) Kalpa Imperial. This was given to me at Worldcon by Kelly Link. It's deeply weird, and also brilliant, but it isn't a novel. I can see why Le Guin wanted to translate it, because it's the same kind of object as Always Coming Home only much better. KI is a series of stories about an imaginary empire, some of them absolutely brilliant, and all of them told in a wonderful and peculiar way. Nothing happens -- well, lots of things happen, but there's no overall arc of story. The summary of this book would be "there's this empire, see." It could have had a plot, and until about two-thirds of the way through I was expecting it to have one, but it didn't. The story I loved the most was the one about the city that was at times the capital and at other times almost forgotten. KI is wonderful and bizarre and not like anything else, and if you're ever in the mood for something like that, it's a very good example of it.

Ruth Rendell Going Wrong. Technically a re-read, but all I remembered about it was that it was scary. I was right about that, it was. This is the story of an obsessive love and two awful people. It's absolutely brilliantly told. I wouldn't classify it as either a murder story or a detective story, this is one of the ones where she absolutely transcends what she's supposed to be doing. It's scary, compelling, and a wonderful use of first-person unpleasant.

Theodora Goss This Rose Has Twelve Petals and other stories, chapbook, given to me at Worldcon by Kelly Link. I'd never have bought it -- I'd never have bought any of these things, probably, but this was terrific. It's a collection of stories and poems Goss has a wonderful control of language that reminds me a little of Sarah Monette. The title story is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty and it's just perfect, every word right, and every image too. I just wanted to walk around the structure of it saying "Wow".

L.M. Montgomery The Alpine Path. This is a very saccharine autobiographical article originally published in magazines but later as a book. I couldn't in conscience recommend it, but I wanted to read it. I'd like to read an honest biography of Montgomery, I wonder if there is one?

Ken MacLeod Newton's Wake. Well I thought it was brilliant. You know how in every Ken MacLeod novel there are millions of post-humans massacred to achieve a happy ending? In this one, that happens before the beginning, and the story is set during the aftermath. I liked it a great deal, and there's a scene early on in this novel which made me laugh so much I had to stop reading. It isn't as deep as the Fall Revolution books, (but then again what is?) and I loathed the Scots dialogue, but if you want interesting SFnal SF wiht thoughts about the second-order implications of everything, you can't beat this.

Barbara Vine The Blood Doctor. First re-read. Another un-putdownable Rendell. I wish I could figure out how she does it.

Laurie J. Marks Fire Logic. This is something else Kelly Link gave me at Worldcon. I didn't think I wanted to read it, but she was right. This is a very good example of what I mean when I say that all fantasy looks the same, and none of it looks like something I want to read. The cover of this one shows a woman with a sword, and, well, sigh.

The story is medium scale, about a country. There's magic, very interestingly done elemental magic. The different cultures are well done, the history feels like history, and I very much like the solution to the problem. It also finishes at the end, miraculously for fantasy. There are odd things about the balance of the story and the characters, which I think are likely first novel things, but on the whole I thought it was very impressive and I'm glad I read it.