Eating Muffins in an Agitated Manner

Historicals

Posted by Sari

As I was temporarily widowed on new year's eve because Jukka worked the whole night through, and couldn't  really leave the apartment as I have a wee puppy dog and an adult dog scared of fireworks at home, I thought I'd gobble together something on books I read last year. I ended up reading somewhere around forty books which is actually more than last year, so hurray! On the other hand, I managed to write about only very few of them, so boo!!!  To rectify the situation, here are a few:

All the historicals I managed to read this year are mysteries, written by a woman and take place in late 18th or early 19th century. It is all quite unintended, but not really surprising. I have always had a soft spot for regencies, and historical mysteries are my favourite comfort reading.

Rebecca Jenkins: Duke's Agent
This is a historical mystery set in county Durham during the Regency era. Our hero, the retired army officer Raif, arrives to small town of Woolbridge to be the agent for non-resident Duke of Penrith. He is viewed by suspicion by the locals, is attacked, accused of murder and stumbles upon financial irregularities in his predecessors accounts. Duke's Agent is interesting in that it has some romance and mystery tropes familiar from regency romances, but its milieu and cast of characters is a bit off the beaten path. The management of great estates and Raif's problems with local elite and his duke's tenants are the most interesting part of the novel. The murder/mystery plot didn't really hold my interest, and Raif himself was just a bit too generic for a hero.

Anna Dean: A Moment of Silence
Another historical mystery from the beginning of the 19th-century, this is a bit more familiar affair. Our detective, Miss Dido Kent tries to unravel strange occurrences in a country house where she is staying to witness the engagement of his niece to the only son and heir of Sir Edgar Montague. Things get quite knotty when the fiance disappears and a body of a woman is found in the shrubbery. I found A Moment of Silence quite entertaining and fun, it was a Christie country house mystery moved back in time to 1805, and as such it works quite well. The mystery plot is unraveled quite satisfactorily, and Dido both has a great name and is a a fitting if a little too Miss Marpleish detective. I think I will pick up the next installments to the series at some point, when I want some fluff to go with a hammock and/or red wine and chocolates.

Tracy Grant: Secrets of a Lady
Tracy Grant blogs at  http://historyhoydens.blogspot.com/, and as I have enjoyed her take on historical romance over there, I have also been looking for her historical novels. The Secrets of a Lady is a beginning of a series of a romance/mystery series set  – you knew it – during the Regency, but interestingly the protagonists are already married with children when the novel opens. Mélanie and Charles Fraser are toast of London when tragedy strikes and their son is kidnapped. As both of them are competent and experienced people (they met on the continent during Wellington's Spanish campaign), they look for they boy themselves instead relying solely in authorities. During the case Mélanie has to reveal things from hist past to Charles that could end their happy marriage. Again, like with The Duke's Agent, I liked the premise a lot. It is nice to see an established, equal partnership between the protagonists at the centre of a historical romance/mystery instead of the usual boy meets girl thing. The plot seems to be a bit subservient both to the entertaining but very dramatic back story, and the tensions Mélanie's secret causes. However, that is counterbalanced by the nice depiction of the milieus of regency London. I think this is a series which actually might get better further it gets.

Barbara Hamilton: The Ninth Daughter
Fantasy author Barbara Hambly has written historical mysteries under the name of Barbara Hamilton. The Ninth Daughter is a first in series where Abigail Adams, wife of the later president John Adams solves crimes in colonial Boston. In this one, Abigail finds a dead woman in the rooms of her friend, the said friend missing. The murder might have something to do with the revolutionaries, and John Adams ends up as a suspect. As political tensions rise on the eve of Boston Tea party,  and Abigail must find her missing friend and exonerate her husband. I am a fan of the Founding Fathers, American Revolution and John and Abigail Adams, so this was one of those must-have books. It could have been a terrible disappointment, but luckily this was not the case. The novel was well plotted, the historical Boston nicely depicted, and the characters were not caricatures of themselves. In the light of Abigail's and John's famously companionable and by the day's standards equal marriage, it is nice that themes of women's autonomy were addressed in the plot. Again, a series I am going to continue reading.

 

Suzanne Collins: Hunger Games, Catching Fire

Posted by Sari

Collins' best-selling series tells about post-apocalyptic America, divided into twelve districts of different status and affluence, and controlled by sinister government in Capitol. Every year, each district will send two teenagers as tributes to compete in Hunger Games, a reality TV-show where they have to kill each other, and winner gets fabulous prizes in addition to keeping his or her life. Our heroine Katniss is from the poorest district and the first novel follows her efforts to survive the games. She and a fellow tribute Peeta act out a romance to get support from the viewers and ultimately refuse to kill each other preferring to suicide. Capitol lets them live and announces them both as winners. In the second novel Katniss' actions are fermenting rebellion, and to neutralise this capitol arranges a sort of ”all star” Hunger Games where previous winners have to fight each other, including Katniss and Peeta.

I have really mixed feelings about the series so far – I have not read the third novel Mockingjay. I liked the first book a lot and was very pleased that WSOY decided to buy the rights. I thought it was passionate and clever and interesting look at how the “non-scripted” reality shows have changed our engagement with entertainment, and how people pushed to the limit might react. I liked Katniss as a protagonist, she was no passive victim but clearly aware of the ways she could manipulate the bad situation. The world was a bit sketchy, but as I read the novel more on the level of metaphor, that did not bother me.

The second book was a big disappointment. I thought the plot was not as coherent as in the first novel, I did not like the repetition brought by yet another go at the Games, and I thought he romantic entanglements between Katniss angsting over her two boyfriends was boring beyond words. But most of all, I found that Katniss had apparently had a lobotomy between the two novels. As the books are written in first person, Collins has to give us all information through her eyes and at the same time keep her ignorant of what is happening. The result is that Katniss seems to be thicker than the big print edition of complete works of Charles Dickens, and just wanders through the novel without any idea what is going on around her. She has much less agency in this book, and that really turned me off. I will read the last book because I care enough of to find out what happens, but it better be a real page turner to redeem the series after Catching Fire.

 

 

Sebald: Austerlitz

Posted by Sari

Austerlitz is the last novel of W.G. Sebald, a German author and academic who lived most of his adult life in England and was killed in a traffic accident in 2001. Austerlitz knocked a book out of my list of 32, first time this happened since I drew the list up four years a go.

Austerlitz is a strange narrative. It is a story of how its nameless narrator meets in Antwerp one Joseph Austerlitz, and keeps meeting him on and off through years. During their meetings Austerlitz and the narrator discuss about architecture, history, culture and ultimately Austerlitz's quest to find his own past.

Sebald writes in long sentences without chapters or paragraphs. I was expecting that getting into the rhythm of the text would be a chore like it is for me with Proust or later James, but somehow Sebalds narration rolled almost hypnotically from page to page interrupted only by the blurry and enigmatic photographs. It was easy to slip into the narrative even in a bus or a restaurant, slow one's heart to beat to synch with the novel.

As a historian, the themes of memory and history are naturally something I easily gravitate to, but in this case those were almost incidental. Though Sebald's vision is in itself revelatory, it is the way he echoes the themes of repression and memory in the structure and language of the book that leaves me almost speechless. In word and picture he talks from the beginning to the end about holocaust without really mentioning it : ”...I came on a glorious early summer's day to the city of Antwerp, known to me previously only by name. Even on my arrival, as the train rolled slowly over the viaduct with its curious pointed turrets on both sides and into the dark station concourse, I had begun to feel unwell, and this sense of indisposition persisted for the whole of my visit to Belgium on that occasion. I still remember the uncertainty of my footsteps as I walked all round the inner city, down Jeruzalemstraat, Nachtegaalstraat, Pelikaanstraat, Paradijsstraat, Immerseelstraat and many other streets and alleyways...” His metaphors, images, digressions and words criss-cross and connect through history making the past, ours and Austerlitz's into integral part of the present.

Through fortresses, libraries and railway stations, tree-roots and burial grounds Sebald gently hammers his passionate but unsentimental meditation on 20^thcentury Europe to the consciousness of his readers, reminding us of our shared history, and the need to remember. Do yourself a favour and read Austerlitz. It might change the way you look at literature.

Patrick Rothfuss: The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man's Fear

Posted by Sari

Patrick Rothfuss: Name of the Wind, Wise Man's Fear

When I was younger I used to love big fantasy series. Thousands and thousands of pages of adventures and worldbuilding. There was no bad there. LotR was and is the defining novel of my life, and after that I read everything I got hold of from Donaldson, Modesitt and Eddings to to Feist, Tad Williams and Hobb.

Then I sort of went off the format. I tried some really awful ones, like Brooks and Jordan, and some really well recieved ones, like Martin and Erikson, but nothing really took. Name of the Wind had been waiting on the shelves for a year or two, and I don't suppose I would have gotten around to reading it without Tähtifantasia Award. It was a 2011 nominee and as a member of the shadow-panel of the award at Finncon, I was forced to tackle the daunting tome.

And I was pleasantly surprised. Name of the Wind, and especially the sequel, Wise Man's Fear have their share of problems but for a first time in years, I really got into the groove, and ended up ordering part two when I was only half way through part one. Kingkiller Chronicles is the story of Kvothe, whom we meet at the beginning as a humble innkeeper Kote, telling his life story to a travelling chronicler. Though Kvothe is still young, he is already a legend, who – according to the blurb on the back – has stolen princesses back from the sleeping borrow kings, burned down the town of Trebon, spent the night with Felurian and left with his sanity and life intact, has been expelled from the university at a younger age than most people are allowed in, tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during the day, talked with Gods, loved women and written songs that make the minstrels weep. Busy life, one might say.

A hypercompetent protagonists growing up and having adventures is the meat and potatoes of fat fantasy. Nothing new, exciting or different here. The hook is that Rothfuss does what he does very, very well. His worldbuilding is interesting, he unravels his plot little by little, thus making the reader wanting more, and there are a lot of hints (and hopefully also red herrings) to keep the reader engaged. As far as the protagonist goes (as my favourite character in all fiction is that king and emperor of hypercompetents, Crawford of Lymond) I have no problem with Kvothe being good at everyting at the age fo seventeen. Besides, there are ecxellent character details, like the way Kvothe handles money (he is always short of it and thus much of his life revolves around getting some), or the way it is apparent that teenagers, even hypercompetent ones, are morons at times.

But as I said there are problems. Traditional fantasy like this is supposed to run for hundreds and hundreds of pages, but the level of detail here is daunting. Kvothe's first year at the magical university takes about three hundred pages, and Wise Man's Fear has a hundred page training montage. I know this is all about the growth and education of the hero, but come on! In the novels there are episodes of Arsenal level boredom where nothing happens. Also, is there any reasonable way to bring the story to the end in the next volume without the whole feeling unbalanced? Two thousand pages on and our protagonist is still seventeen(ish) – depending how you count the time he spent in the fearie.

Kingkiller Chronicles are page-turners because you really, really want to know what happens next: who is Denna's mysterious patron? Who is Denna, for that matter? How does the moon figure into anything? Where did Kvothe pick up Bast? Who is this king he is supposed to kill? Or is he? And what is the real deal with the Chandrian? Lets hope it does not take Pat another four years to tell us.

Lukemisen satoa

Posted by Sari

Tässä olisi kevään ja kesän aikana luettujen kirjojen pino. Muutamasta niistä ja parista kuvasta puuttuvasta on mielipiteitä nakuteltukin, ensimmäinen niistä alla.

Mutta mistäpä sitä kirjoittamaan seuraavaksi? Olisiko kellään palavaa halua saada lukea äärimmäisen mielenkiintoisen näkemykseni jostain kuvan opuksesta? Itse ei nyt keksi mistä nappaisi kiinni.

Vaan itse asiaan, eli yhteen vuoden kotimaisista esikoisista:

Saara Henriksson: Moby Doll

Aina aika-ajoin tartun kokeilumielessä johonkin suomalaiseen romaaniin testatakseni josko nimenomainen kappale onnistuisi osoittamaan että ehkäpä sittenkin minä ja kotimainen kirjallisuus joskus kohtaisimme onnelisten tähtien alla. Usein käsiin päätyvät romaanit ovat tavalla tai toisella spekulatiivisia kun siihen suuntaan kirjallisuusmakuni gravitoituu. Niistä kirjoittaminen on usein hiukan hankalaa koska piirit ovat pienet, ja usein kirjoittaja on ainakin hyvänpäiväntuttu. Niin tälläkin kertraa, Saaraan olen törmännyt ja muutaman sanan aina vaihtanut erilaisissa hörhöjen kokoontumisajoissa. Eli caveat lector: tämän kirjoittaja tuntee a) kirjailijan ja b) syvää ennakkoluuloa suomalaista proosafiktiota kohtaan.

Moby Doll kertoo Jennystä, Jockesta ja valaasta. Jenny on lopputyötään ryhävalaan laulun ympärille ymppäävä sibeliusakatemialainen, Jocke puolestaan Jennyn ex, ympäristöministeriön valastyöryhmään puolivahingossa itsensä läntännyt virkamies Valas on kostaja. Kirja huipentuu Norjan pohjoisilla vesillä kun aalloilla keikkuvat valaanpyytialus, ympäristöradikaalit ja valastutkijat kohtaavat syvyyksistä nousevan ikivanhan valaan.

Moby Dollissa on paljon mistä pidin. Kieli kun kuvaavaa mutta konstailematonta, luonnon ja ihmisen välisen suhteen kuvaus mukavan monisyistä ja valastietous oli upotettu ihan onnistuneesti narratiiviin. (Viimeksimainittu tosin välillä ehkä hiukan liiankin sujuvasti – minusta olisi ollut kiinnostavaa kuinka kirjailija olisi onnistunut peilaamaan Moby Dickin tylysti kertomuksen katkaisevia valaanpyyntiluentoja omassa tekstissään). Hahmoista Jenny ja erityisesti Jocke jäivät hiukan kaukaisiksi, mutta sivuhahmot, erityisesti valastutkija/kalastaja pariskunta jonka kyydissä Jenny lähtee metsästämään valaanlaulua oli mainiosti hahmoteltu. Intertekstuaalisuuden tasoja olisin kaivannut ehkä vielä enemmän - olkoonkin että kirjan nimi ensimmäisellä tasolla viittaa vangittuun miekkavalaaseen eikä Melvilleen - mutta toisaalta en ole vielä tavannut kirjaa jossa olisi minusta liikaa viittaustasoja.

Lukijana minulla kuitenkin on ”henkilökohtainen onglema”, joka vaikeutti kovasti kirjasta nauttimista. Pitkään olen ollut sitä mieltä että tämä ongelma on nimenomaisesti suomalaisen kirjallisuuden vahva realismin perinne, savotta- ja korsurealismi kuten Leena Peltonen on oivasti tyylisuuntaa kutsunut. Asiaa pohdittuani olen tullut siihen tulokseen että kyseessä ei ole niinkään se etteikö suomalaisessa kirjallisuudessa olisi fantastisen perinnettä tai että realismin troopit olisivat minulle punainen vaate. Se mikä minut vieraannuttaa on lähes pakonomainen arjen tason korostaminen, ehkä erityisesti silloin kun teksti on tavalla tai toisella spekulatiivista. Niin tässäkin tapauksessa. Alun asuntojen, aamiaisten ja ratikkamatkojen kuvaukset olivat juuri sitä mitä minä en kirjaltani kaipaa. Vaikka romaani kasvoi upeasti loppua kohden ärsytti arjen trooppien käyttö alussa sen verran että ellen olisi luottanut kirjailijaan, olisi lukeminen saattanut tyssätä siihen.

Eli en minä vieläkään löytänyt sitä suomenkielellä kirjoitettua romaania joka todella kolahtaisi (lähimmäksi taitaa päästä Sinisalon Sankarit jossa on uskallettu leikkiä intertekstuaalisuudella ja joka on myös sukupolvestani johtuen sentimentaalinen lukukokemus). Mutta ei Moby Dolliin käytetty aika hukkaan mennyt; se avasi muutamiakin solmuja omissa ennakkoluuloissa ja loppupeleissä lukukokemus jäi ehdottomasti plussan puolelle.

 

Some reading

Posted by jukkahoo

It's been a while. How's life? Same here.

As it is July and my vacation time, I thought that secluding from the world in general was not a bad idea. And since Missus agreed, we decided that a little cottage time was in order.

I took twelve books with me and returned with 24. Of the 12 I read nine, while the other dozen were bought from the Mäntyharju thrift store, for reasons ranging from "Look at the price of this first edition of Borges!" to "Ah, material for my next reference book".

I brought mostly entertainment with me, which turned out just fine, since I did manage to read nine books in a week. Here is a rough coverage of the said books:

John Maddox Roberts: Saturnalia - Fifth book of the SPQR-series of historical whodunnit's in the republican Rome of playboy/detective Decius Caecilius Metelleus Younger. Very enjoyable romps: good humour, decent plotting, fun characters. This one sees our protagonist suddenly back in Rome, where his one of uncles has been murdered. The Elder Metellus wants Decius to ind the grieving widow guilty, while her brother, the veritable Nemesis of our hero, really wants her to be innocent. SPQR-series is well worth one's time and money.

John Maddox Roberts: Nobody Loves a Centurion - Sixth SPQR-book and Decius id dispatched to Gallia, where Caesar is running his masterplan for eventual leadership of Rome. A strange case of dead primus pilum gets Decius in trouble, since the probable murderer is one of his own patronage, or could it be one of the Gauls? Or possibly a blood-thirsty German, one of the many that are crossing over the Rhine? Hilarity ensues. 

M. D. Lachlan: Wolfsangel - Genuinely nice riff of werewolf-myth mixed with some properly gritty Viking-age bloodletting. Nice period-feeling, proper hammer&sorcery, with more than sizable portion of viking history. Loved the magics. 

J. Pekka Mäkelä: Karsta - Fourth novel by the (almost) lone champion of current Finnish SF. Another quiet masterpiece of bystander-sf. Humanity has lost the interstellar war and aftermath means cleaning up the places. Mäkelä solidifies his place as an important sociopolitical-sf writer.

Juha-Pekka Koskinen: Eilispäivän sankarit - Fun pulp fiction where the main character is woken from 30-odd year coma, after a bothched-up robbery attempt. Surprisingly, he seems to have been found guilty of more crimes than he remembers, and now someone is telling him to stop digging up the old stuff. Good, solid Finnish-pulp from craftsman of many different genres. A whiff of spec-fic here, but only a dash of the stuff.

Scott Oden: The Lion of Cairo - Very good historical fantasy, that did manage to feel both fresh and original, while nodding lovingly at Howard and Lamb. 12th century arab world, with muslim protagonists and very little Franks to mess it all up. Delightfully gritty, surprising and swashbuckling adventure. Didn't expect the fantasy aspect. Loved to read more and if I'm not mistaken, a sequel is a-coming. Very much recommended.

Tansy Rayner Roberts: Love and Romanpunk - Four stories of Romanpunk, from age of Julian emperors to near-future. Very nice take on various myths. Loved the Victorian-piece, while I wouldn't have minded seeing the Patrician-story a bit longer. There is some strong SF/F in Australia. 

Gavin Smith: Veteran - Decent richardmorganesque action-sf, with grimy future of interstellar war and dirty sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Too long, though. And far too verbose characters. Shame.

Ari Marmell: A Conqueror's Shadow - Another dissappointment, which managed to make a small comeback in the later stages. Very average bulk fantasy with some seriously silly characters, plot points and ideas. There is a definite improvement in the last third pf the novel, but while the characters seem more defined and their actions even somewhat understandtable, there is a weird juxtaposition between the way the author handles his characters and the blase rpg-plot and the adult/PG-feeling of the novel. At times the main characters are doing unspeakable deeds, whilst the writer tries to keep the feel of the book at almost kindergarten-level. Horrible violence next to decent humour, next to childish warfare tactics, next to brainless criminal mastermind, next to enchanting tale of fantasyland history, etc. 

For posterity's sake, here are the three books I didn't read: Karen Lord's Redemptio in Indigo, Iain Gale's Man of Honour and Jo Walton's Among Others (Sari read this one).

And some more books

Posted by Sari

J.G. Farrell: The Siege of Krishnapur

Farrell won the lost Booker last year with his novel The Troubles, making him a sort of a double winner. His first winner, The Siege of Krishnapur was also on the short-list of Best of Booker's, and though the award went to Salman Rushdie's masterful Midnight's Children, this novel would also have been a worthy winner. It is always wonderful and regrettably rare to find a book that really connects, and this truly was one of them.

Siege of Krishnapur is a novel about the Raj and the Indian rebellion of 1857. In the fictional town of Krishnapur the British elite hunkers down to a four month siege against the rebelling sepoys, and the novel is a depiction of their break-down, disillusionment and for many, death. It is insightful, witty, graphic, sad, grotesque and hilarious. It exposes the folly of victorian jingoism, but manages to do it so that reader retains her sympathy for the characters. It brings up a myriad of ideas and debates from evolution to colonialism, and is written so well, that most reviewers on the net have felt compelled to spice up their reviews with copious quotations. It is a bloody brilliant novel.

Sherwood Smith: Inda

Smith's Inda series is a first fat fantasy series I have finished in a long time. It is set in the same universe as her earlier novels, but much further back in the history. Inda is a second son of a noble with a future all set up according to the traditions of his people. His future wife has been fostered with him from childhood, and he is to be the caretaker of his father's castle and lands for his elder brother. Inda series begins as a school novel, transforms itself into a pirate adventure and again to a novel about political struggles and war when Inda is exiled and becomes a pirate while his friends and family continue to navigate the murky politics of their nation.

There is lots to like In Inda books, especially if you like your fantasy long and world-building detailed. Smith has been developing this world for a very long time and her familiarity with it makes the long and at times convoluted series worth while. We are not talking about Tolkien-level detail, but I found that the novels had a similar feel of background to them: the author does not need to infodump all she knows of the world into the narrative and that makes for a fuller reading experience.

The characters are sympathetic and their difficult relationships well realised. There are some interesting reflections on desire, beauty and gender roles, interesting magical system and some quite detailed action sequences. I do think, though, that stretching the story to four big volumes was unnecessary. This may be just because a) I really have been off fat fantasy for years and don't seem to be able to get into its groove and b) I really don't much care for pirates. Even so, a good series.

Molly Gloss: The Dazzle of Day

If you are not reading Jo Walton at Tor.com you should be. She writes interestingly and intelligently about books she is interested in, and luckily for me, her taste and mine coincide almost perfectly. Thus if she talks about a book I have not yet read, chaches are I try to get it. Which I did with The Dazzle of Day.

The Dazzle of Day is a story of generation starship Dusty Miller, filled with quakers on their way to a new world. Honestly. And it is an intriguing novel. There are multiple point of view characters, mainly from the same extended family, whose life and feelings Gloss depicts at the point of Miller's joyrney when they are breaking and approching slowly their destination.

Gloss writers quintessentially literary science fiction, the kind Margaret Attwood and Rachel Cusk propably would bend over backwards to call something else. This is a very low-tech science fiction novel. The science from solar sails to relativity is present, but it isin't what is important to the characters or to the novelist. Some of them have exciting jobs like mending the solar sails or exploring the new planet, some of them are farmers or maintenance workers. Some of them are active in the meetings where the future of the community is debated, some are not.

Actually, The Dazzle of the Day is a novel about every day life. We get a slice of the life of these characters, their relationships, lives hopes and loves. The fact that they work and live on a generation starship does not define their lives. They do every-day things and have every-day discussions, They go to toilet, have bad sex, work, sing, mourn and die. Even the hopes and fears generated by the approaching end of their journey and the complications rising from their new home planet being barely life-sustaining are handled in a very low-key manner.

We never even find out what happens to our main characters. The book begins with a chapter on earth and ends generations later on the new planet. In the middle we peak into a moment in these characters lives and are left without closure. This is space travel made ordinary, and that is way it was a book I appreciated but did not connect with. This foregrounding of the every day is a default mode of Finnish writing, and it is one I don't much care about. However, it is a mode very rarely succesfully used in SF, and so makes for an interesting reading experience.

 

Hyllyntyhjennystä

Posted by jukkahoo

Elämme muutoksen aikoja. Hyllyt liikkuvat, niin myös niiden sisältö. Hyviin koteihin on tarjolla proosaa, lyriikkaa, muistelmia, pakinoita, kuvakirjoja, tietoa, taitoa ja Jyväskylän kaupungin historia osat I ja II. Ja genrehyllyjä ei vielä edes ole alettu katsella sillä silmällä...

 

 

 

 

Book backlog

Posted by Sari

David Leavitt: Indian Clerk

I don't know if it really is a recent phenomenon, but I have a sort of gut feeling literary historicals fictionalising the lives of real people might be in vogue. (Wolf Hall, Arthur and George, True Story of the Kelly Gang...) In these novels the authors seem to be adhering to historical facts as we know them, and imagining the interior lives of the subjects based on what sources and research there is. It is a strange balancing act for an author, and for a reader – especially one interested in the history behind the characters – it is a reading experience full of caveats.

Leavitt's Indian Clerk is firmly in this category. It tells the stories of a Cambridge mathematician G.H. Hardy and his colleague Srinivasa Ramanujan, the Indian clerk of the title. In early 1900s Ramanujan writes to Hardy from Madras telling he is very near of solving Riemann-hypothesis and when Hardy and his colleague Littlewood bring him to England, he becomes an instant sensation, ”a hindoo calculator”. Unfortunately, the devout Ramanujan is trapped in England by the First World War and his health deteriorates badly, partly because of misdiagnosis and the difficulties of maintaining a nourishing vegetarian diet in war-time England, and he dies shortly after returning to India.

Unlike many other american novelists Leavitt has an understanding of the meaning of class in British society and Indian clerk is both a sensitive and insightful portrait of Hardy, and an examination of class and race in early 20^th century Cambridge. Hardy and Ramanujan have very little in common beyond mathematics, and Hardy almost wholly fails to understand his colleague, even though he – both fictional and historical Hardy – describes meeting him as the one romantic incident in his life. That disconnect and - on the other hand - the connect the men share when talking about mathematics works well, espcially when viewed in contrast to the larger societal questions the novel examines. Leavitt isn't quite as succesful with the structure and plot of the novel which does leave a reader feeling little aimless.

 

Megan Whalen Turner: The Thief, Queen of Attolia, King of Attolia, Conspiracy of Kings

Turner's series of YA fantasy novels have for quite a while been among my favourites, the kind of books I reread every now and again as comfort fic because they feed my id. The Thief and Queen of Attolia were published some time a go, and in the past few years Turner has returned to her world with two new novels. The Thief turns on a narrative sleight of hands which is either clever or irritating depending on what sort of reader you are, and even stating this is a bit of a spoiler. Queen of Attolia is a very strange romance mixed with war maybe war mixed with strange romance, and King of Attolia a straight sequel to that. Conspiracy of Kings is a parallel novel to King of Attolia where another character from the Thief gets mixed up in a coup in a neighbouring kingdom.

Turner's fantasy world is refreshingly not a pseudomedieval one, but one riffing off from ancient Greece and its city states. The world is well-imagined, though I am not a great fan of the ”folk tales” she frequently inserts to her novels to created depth and further a point. The plots move nicely and there is plenty of conspiracies, war and action but also engaging characters and human relationships.

My absolute favourite, and the one I return to quite regularily, is King of Attolia because it utilizes one of my favourite tropes in all fiction: looking at familiar characters through the eyes of a new one. Here the Queen of Attolia and her newly crowned King are seen through the originally quite hostile eyes of a member of the Queens guard who slowly begins to understand his monarchs and their difficult relationship.

 

A Very Late Booksy Post

Posted by Sari

This is more than a bit embarrasing, my reading diary is about two years out of date. There are roughly about a seventy books which I have read and not committed my opinion for the posterity to enjoy. How will they survive without my definitive and ground breaking analysis on these works?! To remedy the situation at least a bit, here are some.

Gregory Benford: Martian Race

In Benford’s Mars exploration novel, the nation states have concluded that the best way to get a manned Mars mission off the ground is to pool resources and offer a huge reward for anyone who completes the mission. Two privately funded missions are on or on their way to Mars, racing to fulfill the requirements to win the grand prize. Benford extrapolates what kind of media circus a privatly funded Mars mission could be, what kind of life could be sustained on Mars, and finally, the pros and cons of competition and co-operation in such extreme circumstances.

There is something very old school and sciency as opposed to fictiony about this book. Technologically, a manned Mars mission is within our reach, and though this novel has enough babble about trajectories and payloads, it is the social and economic aspects of a Mars mission that Benford is really interested in. The characters are rather bland - including Julia, the biologist who is the point of view character - and their relationships are rather one note affairs. Even the Martian life Julia finds is somehow subservient to the social extrapolation. It is the idea that matters, and the the end result is pretty much a fictionalised version of Zuber’s A Case for Mars. Which is not a bad thing, but because the fiction in this science fiction is rather thin, one is left with a feeling that reading Zuber would have been enough.


Lois McMasters Bujold: Diplomatic Immunity / Cryoburn (Spoilerish)

Bujold has again written a Vorkosiganverse novel to fill her contractual obligations to Baen. I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. Miles has already had a number of satisfying ends to his story arch, so each new novel seems to be a little forced in terms of the whole series.

I re-read Diplomatic Immunity as a quick comfort read earlier this year. In the novel Miles and Ekaterin are diverted from their belated galactic honeymoon to solve a diplomatic incident in quaddiespace and end up trying to stop a bombing at a space station and an interplanetary war with Cetaganda. It is a nice novel. It is nice to see the quaddiespace again, to find out how Bel is doing and the detective story is also quite deftly handled. But after the novels from Mirror Mirror to Civil Campaing it does feel bland, even though Miles gets himself ina fix that nearly costs him his life.

The same can be said about Cryoburn, though there Bujold's penchant to mix adventure with quite deft handling of more serious science fictional ideas is more evident than in the preceding novel. This time Miles who has evidently settled into his life as a husband, father and an imperial auditor is sent to the planet Kibou-daini to look into a cryofreeze corporation expanding their operations to Komarr. Again, as is usual for Bujold, the surface of the novel is a action/detective story, while the theme of the novel is something more fundamental to human experience: dying. And because this is science fiction, also immortality. Most of the punch of the book is at the end where the themes come together with a real bang. Unfortunately, the story itself just lacks something to make this work as well as the best books in the series.

A.M. Dellamonica: Indigo Springs

This Sunburst award winning novel is an intrusion fantasy of the same sort as some Sean Stuart’s work: magic is breaking into our world and the consequences are alarming to say the least. It is a novel told in flashbacks about how Astrid discovered magic which manifests as a  fluid callec vitagua which can imbue people and objects with power. Astrid is imprisoned and tells her story to Will, whose family has left him to join a magical cult founded by Astrid's friend and hopeless love interes Sahara.

Indigo Springs is one of those books I wanted to like more than I actually liked. Its writing is economical, the worldbuilding excellent, and the characters believable. Even so, it just did not grab me, and the ending wich is left pretty open for the sequel sort of annoyed me.

Robert Charles Wilson: Julian Comstock

For some quite inexplicable reason I have been attracted to this novel since the first time I saw a picture of it. It was just the name: Julian Comstock. For some reason I wanted to read about Julian Comstock. Jukka was not as enthused as I was so I held out investing in the hardback, even though every time I visited Akateeminen I felt compelled to lift a copy up and just look at it. This, obviously was a way to set yourself up for a disapointment. How could the book be as intriguing as the idea of it I had built up in my head for nearly a year. And it wasn’t my imaginary book, obviously, how could it be, but it was something quite as good.

Julian Comstock is a story of a post-apocalyptic America in the 22th century. Oil has run out and resulted in a collapse of the modern North America. By the events of the book, slavery is back as indentured servitude, America is ruled by a life-long president, is at war in Labrador against Europe, and religious life is regulated by Dominion which oversees different churches and controls access to the information salvaged from the ruins of the once great cities. Julian Comstock is the nephew of the current president who had Julian’s father killed as a traitor when he was getting too popular. Julian’s life story and his rise to the presidency is narrated after the fact by his friend Adam Hazzard, a naïve country boy Julian befriends while exiled to west by his uncle.

There are lots of things I liked about Julian Comstock. The story pulls you in, the worldbuilding works, the historical references to our times, to ancient Rome and to Civil War era US all mash well with the postapocalyptic America. Wilson has also made his future one where race is an unmarked feature, and – like in LeGuin’s Earthsea – the realisation that many of the characters including Adam are in not white is a much needed jolt out of complacent reading habits. I also liked the ending of the book, predicated though it was by the mapping of Julian Comstock’s life over emperor Julian the Apostate.

However, there are problems in the book. The biggest is one that is typical for  many speculative fiction writers, and it is that of focalisation. In Julian Comstock, the sole focaliser is our naïve and thus unreliable narrator Adam, as the novel is presented as his memoirs. It is a legitimate way of constructing a novel, but does not quite work here. The register slips when Wilson needs to give reader necessary pieces of information Adam should not know or, even more crucially, understand, and thus Adam's character does not remain consistent. This could be explained by the difference between a young naïve Adam to whom things happen, and old jaded Adam who is telling the story, but if that is what Wilson was aiming for, the structure fails to make it clear for the reader. For me the problem is even more annoying as this feels like a problem with craft not art – artificial as that dichotomy may be.

But even so, this, the first of this year’s Hugo nominee novels I have read, set the bar pretty high. It will be interesting to see how it stacks up with more lauded nominees, especially the co-winners Windup Girl and The City and the City.