Toivo's Thoughts

 I follow Charles Stross on social media. He seems like a really cool guy. The Laundry Files looks like a series I should love.

Alas, the novel really isn't good. There's a clear nostalgia vibe in the old technobabble, but Stross throws so much random geek vocabulary at the reader that it's really distracting, irrelevant and overwhelming, and in some cases not even particularly believable if you happened to be in the industry in the day the book takes place in.

The work reads really like geek fanfiction. I know a young me getting into tech would've been all over this. The more adult me is really upset about how the Hot Girl (tm) is treated, how the protagonist really kind of just bumbles through life, and how the novel itself is very bizarrely paced. It felt like two books glued together, with the end cut off.

It doesn't end on a cliffhanger, but it ends very abruptly in a less than satisfactory fashion.

I picked this novel up due to a recommendation from a friend. The dustcover blurb (or should it be Amazon blurb these days?) was not fully convincing -- necromancy? Meh. I have not read any other books from Muir, so I  went into this quite blind.

Turns out, I really enjoyed this book.

A big part of the enjoyment is the language which is rich in nerdy words like arithmonym. It is also rich in delightfully offensive language. The world building and overall style is refreshingly unique; the setting reminds me more of Warhammer 40k than anything (from what little I know of said lore.) Which, again, isn't my thing, but here it works.

There is also a lot of gore. And I mean a lot, once it gets going. It's quite a dark story.

People I know criticized the emotional and relationships arcs of the story as impossible to take seriously, and that this detracted from the book. While I acknowledge the point, the story happened to really press my buttons in the good way. In other words, what I really enjoyed may not be your cup of tea here. The overuse of certain descriptive words, cranking things to 11, the style of humor all are likely to be factors which can make or break this for you.

So -- overall original, enjoyable prose, a story arc which speaks to my teenage emo self, witty immature banter and a lot of action.

I encountered Leigh Bardugo and the first part in her trilogy by being invited to a YA book club meeting to discuss the book.

While this novel is oddly part of two series, continuing the adventures of gunnery sergeant Torin Kerr of the Confederation Marines, it can stand on its own as well, as the setting is pretty familiar science fiction trope territory.

The genre is space opera on an individual scale; the action isn't space fleet battles as much as boots on the ground in the dirt. It's feel-good pop-corn reading; the eminently competent sergeant Kerr is thrown into any number of dicy situations and manages to get herself and most of her people back out of them, showing integrity and honor and all the romanticized values of a military in the process.

The above shouldn't be taken to imply this book isn't good. Ms. Huff continues to deliver the tropy feel-good romp with great skill. Everything is just a notch above what one would expect: the characters, while by no means deep, are interesting and sympathetic and different; the world building feels natural; while the protagonist manages to overcome the plot challenges elegantly enough to satisfy Hollywood sensibilities, a lot of politics and morality and big picture setting somehow still manages to come through.

The basic plot: A group of grave robbers are about to unearth ancient weapons from one of the Elder Races, and it's up to Kerr and her no-longer-marines company to stop them before their actions can cause another war. The plot pacing isn't perfect; a lot of the book is a dungeon crawl with one group following the other, and consequently covering some of the same ground. While this allows for comparison between the motivations of the two groups it still felt a bit annoying. The story follows multiple viewpoints as needed in chronological order, and it flows very naturally. The prose is good, albeit not extraordinary.

In summary — if you want a competent, tough-but-good idealized version of a space marine leading a motley crew of races on a romp for justice, this is a book for you.

Three and a half out of five.

Since I quite liked Holly Black's first Curse Workers installment, I went ahead and read the rest of the series. All the things I liked about the first volume continued to work on the next two, and if anything they got better. The magic and abilities are present in the world, but mostly in the way it shapes society and interactions, and are very rarely actually used.
The clear strength of the series are the relationships between its characters. A mother who means well but is dramatically inconsiderate, siblings who have their own motivations, and friends who have their own problems.
It's very refreshing to not have simple Mary Sue / Marty Stu settings, or unnecessarily dramatized relationships. The protagonist's friends will be unhappy if they're not treated well, but nobody will cut off ties for a single slight of some kind. Everyone has their own motivations, and occasionally they're unrelated, occasionally they coincide with those of others, and occasionally they're in conflict, and the character will have to make value judgments, just like real life.
The pacing is generally good; the books aren't the most action-packed thing out there, but they easily held my interest. The love interest plot is devilishly complicated and clever in its set-up, and as some other situations, the protagonist is faced with multiple choices, all seemingly less than ideal.
The first book is readable on its own, the next two do better as part of the full trifecta.
Four and a half out of five for the whole enchilada.

At work we recently took a personality test to find our strengths. One of my results suggested that I leverage my ability to foresee problems in projects to prevent roadblocks from arising later. I found this a very sweet way of saying my glass is half empty. Regardless, I keep thinking of this as I watch the Syrian refugee crisis unfold.

The Guardian published a collection of some very eloquent opinions on the current state of the crisis, well worth a read even if you might not agree with the authors.

The Middle East and North Africa is a mess. This isn't new. Outside meddling there isn't new. Not interceding in atrocities isn't new, and the difficulty of figuring out how to intercede even if the international legal framework and domestic political will exists isn't new either. Much has been written about that, and since I have no constructive additions to offer on "save Syria by following these easy steps!" I shan't add to it.

The whole situation where the wealthy central and norther European countries can act as a shining beacon of all that is good while relying on the poor southern European countries to keep out and house the riff-raff is offensively hypocritical. Europe and the rest of the Westernized wealthy world needs to get their act together and distribute and relocate refugees humanely and proportionately, and at the very least provide concrete support to the border countries who have to bear the load currently. If I was fleeing a war-torn region and I was given a choice to relocate to Romania or France to make a new life, you bet I'd have a preference. At the same time, those border countries, poor as they may be, need to be clearly held accountable to common standards of decency and human rights. But none of that is news either.

Instead I'll go into some musings about the refugees.

When I say refugee, I mean a person fleeing conditions that any sane person would flee from. Consequently, the line between refugee (poor innocent family escaping a bombed-to-rubble city) and an ambitious young person who wants to make something of themselves (economic migrant) is much blurrier than we pretend it is. A snarky comment to illustrate the bias in language: A Westernized country is one that takes immigrants sends expatriates. One of the Guardian essays made the point that the only way to guarantee that foreigners don't want to come to your country is to make your country one that you wouldn't want to live in -- i.e. as long as your country is nice, people want to come there.

Not only is the line blurry, there's little real way to determine who's what. When an individual shows up at your border with no papers, how do you tell whether they want to live in a rich country, or whether they fear for their life, or whether they're there to wage religious war? How do you even tell who they really are? Yes, of course some investigation can be done if you can spare competent detectives and great resources, but in reality that's not feasible. What many countries have consequently done is to subject people claiming refugee status to treatment sufficiently unpleasant that only those who really fear for their lives would put up with it. That, of course, is absurd and inhumane.

I'm heartened by the warmth and welcome and humanity people in Central Europe have shown in welcoming refugees. As much of a realist as I occasionally am, in my dealings with individual people I tend to find humanity to be, on a family-level, good and generous. What bothers me about the scenes of Germans welcoming refugees with such warmth is the sustainability of the feel-good tide. I hope I'm wrong in fearing that people have a romantic notion of welcoming poor huddled families who will be grateful and make no fuss and quietly settle into a proper Western lifestyle.

While many of the refugees are educated and young and liberal, many may have very alien cultural and religious norms and practices. Many are deeply traumatized and are in desperate need of intensive psychological counseling and treatment. They may be human, with all the foibles and irrationalities that implies. They may also just be jerks. What I want to see is that people realize this; that there's a responsibility that comes with accepting people into your society and that responsibility is much more complex and deep than just giving them housing and food. What I want to see is that people understand this, and show warmth and generosity and acceptance even when those refugees do not act the way we expect them to. I want to see this because the alternatives are ugly; they're firebombing of refugee centers, they're ostracizing refugees into permanent second-class citizen status, and they're watching as desperate people drown at your borders. I desperately want any country and society I'm part of to be better than that.

If you're interested about the scale -- about twice the population of Finland has fled just from Syria alone, never mind all the other conflicts in the region -- NPR has a good summary.

I started to read this series because of the kitsune deuteragonist, and I had some quibbles with the first two books. Many of them are still present in this third installment: the main character is annoyingly dim-witted and oblivious at times and the plot, while well paced and reasonably complex etc. seems like it came from a "how to write a good noir PI story in 57 easy steps," just somehow a bit too planned and clinical. I couldn't begin to say why a properly executed and planned plot bothers me.

What the third installment has going for it, in addition to the kitsune and the decent murder mystery, is the vampire aspect. The way the novel addresses the practicalities of its vampires, and the protagonist has to confront what he is and what he will have to do to survive was wonderfully refreshing.

There is some repetitive introductory material, presumably for people who want to start from the third installment. Otherwise, the storytelling has improved a bit from the previous two installments, and the book is fine pop-corn reading. Sufficiently so that I actually am about to buy the next installment.

Three and a half out of five, with an extra fox star.

Here be a list of some nifty vampire novels:

1. New Amsterdam
   
2. Seven for a Secret
   
3. The White City
   
4. Ad Eternum
   
5. Garrett Investigates
   

Elizabeth Bear does vampires and steampunk. Enough said.

Okay, I'll say more. The series consists of several novels and one collection of novellas, following generally the same set of protagonists. Aside from being alternative history whodunnits, they play with the idea of what the immortality of a vampire means in the context of friendship and love with mortals. One of the main draws to me in the series definitely was the way in which Ms. Bear gives some of these themes more than the usual lip service.

The series jumps around in time a bit, and we get to see the same protagonists in several periods along their lives, and as the world changes around them. The narrative choices are well done, although I have to admit that the series leaves me wanting more, and there certainly is plenty material in the world and set of characters for countless more books. Bear's web site suggests none are planned, but doesn't exclude the possibility.

There is tragedy, but overall the stories are light enough to remain enjoyable. The prose is throughout competent, although not amazingly exceptional, the pacing is nice and the characters are interesting. Overall this was a pretty refreshing series, so I'll give it four out of five.

Patricia Briggs is one of those authors that I preorder, and if it's a book she's written I haven't read I'll buy it without any further thought. Not because her books are amazing literature, but they are among my favorites in popcorn reading, with interesting characters, a world, and well-paced plots.

That being said, of all her books I tend to like the Alpha and Omega stories the least, and while I haven't quite identified why that is (since they share the world and to some extent characters from my favorite series of hers with Mercy Thompson), the pattern unfortunately still holds.

The setting is your typical urban fantasy, our world except with fae, werewolves, vampires and the like. The plot is that there's a fae doing nasty things to children, and our protagonist couple has to save the day.

The pacing is weird, and while the book does wrap up this particular story, the whole affair felt unfinished. I am still not fond of the protagonists, and the longer story arch about werewolf babies does not resonate with me at all.

On the upside, since this world is shared with the Mercy Thompson series and takes place at the same time, it's obvious that this ties in with some larger meta-plot regarding the fae, so it may be of moderate interest in that respect.

Two and a half out of five.