varjohaltia | Aug. 18th, 2013

Aug. 18th, 2013

I had read the first book in this trilogy years ago on the recommendation of a friend, and found it a reasonably well written novel with an interesting concept. Being part of a series, it didn't really come to much of a conclusion plot-wise. When I had a chance to read the remaining novels, I used the opportunity to find out where the tale went.

Hobb's world is a pretty standard fantasy-medieval setting, one where there is no particular need for supernatural monsters, humans doing just peachy filling that role. The characters are interesting, unique, and have strengths and weaknesses. Conflict doesn't necessarily come from "evil" as much as conflicting interests or personalities; of course madness and paranoia and lust for power and wealth are always good motivations as well. Her prose is competent and pleasant to read, but never really rises to an amazing experience. Her plots are overarching and well crafted.

Now, for the bad (mild spoilers ahead): The realm and its heroes are threatened. Things get worse. And worse. And worse. Things are kindasorta maybe fixed. The end.

The books are long. You spend a lot of time with the characters, watching them lose loved ones, make mistakes, learn, sacrifice their dreams for the greater good. And in the end... I'm not necessarily insistent on a Hollywood-style happy, unrealistic ending every time, but I was left pretty distraught by the fates of the characters. A lot of the growth seemed for nothing, a lot of the side plots and adventures never saw fruition.

I'm conflicted; there are many good aspects to the trilogy, but in the end I was not happy with my experience, so I'll rate it two stars.

The Liveship Traders trilogy is set in the same world as the Farseer trilogy, but a later time and different geography. It is a heavily maritime series with traders and pirates and all that. The titular liveships are sailing ships which have been imbued with life; their figureheads are alive, speaking and able to use their hands and representing the ship itself.

The concept, to me, sounds goofy at first blush, but Ms. Hobb pulls it off quite well. Much of what I said for the previous trilogy applies here as well. The maritime slant is interesting and well done, although in general a medieval maritime setting isn't a particularly kind one, and there's little that can be done to make it so. While the conflicts arising from the machinations of man would be plenty, here we encounter non-human entities as well. For a large part they do their things in parallel with the human story line without intersecting too directly.

One of the more interesting and mysterious characters from the Farseer trilogy carries over to this one, and I was hoping to find out more about said character. While featured in the books, virtually nothing of their origin and future is revealed. Instead, Ms. Hobb sets out to further develop an interesting ecology that was hinted at in the Farseer trilogy. Dragons and the ability to imbue inanimate objects with life become close to obsessive fetishes. Even so, the ideas are fascinating and interesting and solidly continue to build the world she started to explore in her previous trilogy. Moral issues are rife for exploration, ecological analogies come to mind, but aren't really followed up.

Unfortunately, as before, the characters we follow seem only tools to allow for exploring the world; their eventual fates remain just as, if not more, unsatisfactory as the protagonists in the Farseer trilogy. The moral and social issues raised and barely tackled and the rounding out of an interesting setting do not come even close to off-setting the disappointment felt as events unfold to their relative conclusion. The non-human story line for most of the series was boring. I found myself barely skimming over those pages, and I don't think I missed much of anything.

One out of five, with a consolation extra star for technical merit.

When I read Butcher's first Dresden Files novel, I wasn't very impressed. I liked the short-lived TV show, and from the urging of my friends picked the series back up, ending up enjoying it quite a bit. So, with those books read I went to explore his fantasy series.

The setting is relatively original, an interesting mash-up of Roman, barbarian and feudal systems, with magic that is pretty exclusively based on controlling elementals of sorts. It's pretty obvious from the first few books that there's something deeper afoot and a hidden history underlying everything, but we get few concrete clues. As expected from his Dresden Files days, the pacing and prose is very proficient.

It takes a while, but eventually a core group of protagonists emerge. The characters are likable enough, some more than others, but never really get properly rounded. This likely has to do with the other primary shortcomings of the series: Butcher is using it as a major military geekfest. It reminded me a bit of Elizabeth Moon's Sheepfarmer's Daughter in that regard; the characters were just a means to an end and they and their relationships seem almost forgotten at times while pages upon pages are spent exploring military tactics.

So, once more I'm conflicted. I dropped the series, and don't intend to continue it. Yet there's nothing particularly wrong with it, not nearly in the same way as with Hobb's trilogies. It just doesn't manage to keep my interest. Two and a half out of five.

A sequel to The Quantum Thief, an original and imaginative mix of hard scifi and cyberpunk from a mathematician-cum-author from my alma mater and hometown. The entire story of a mathematician scoring a three book deal in his third language with a major publisher with only a draft of the first sounds so improbable that it in itself seems like science fiction. Either way, the first novel was pretty neat, and I felt an additional slight amount of patriotic and hometown obligation to get the next installment as well.

Unfortunately, The Fractal Prince has trouble rising above the bar that Mr. Rajaniemi set himself. It's no worse, certainly, but... the major ideas largely were already introduced, and the new car smell is gone. I'm still slightly ambivalent of the use of Finnish terms and names, and I'm not sure how much a non-Finnish speaking audience loses by not getting the full connotations. The prose is complicated and well crafted and the world continues to be so abstract and fantastic that you have to really pay attention to what's being described. The relationship between the protagonists doesn't seem to advance much in any direction.

I had commented about the "Britishness" of The Quantum Thief and the same applies here. The style and feel of this work is much more reminiscent of Banks, Stross etc. than any American or Eastern European author I've ever read. If you like the style, this is a bonus; if you don't, it's a strike against.

While more intimately tied into the setting than the first book, The Fractal Prince also does passably as a standalone work, plot-wise.

Overall, it's a continuation of an ambitious work, but one that doesn't quite reach its own goals.

Three out of five.

Ah, another dose of proper urban fantasy that turns out to be paranormal romance. I'm not sure who recommended this to me, but I got it as light reading for my Kindle.

To but it bluntly, it's yet another paranormal fantasy book. The setting is somewhat different in that it's set in a law firm, and the protagonist isn't a leather-wearing tough-as-nails PI/mechanic/biker but rather a young lawyer with no particular physical skills beyond equestrian experience. Consequently — and refreshingly! — the cover picture is a straight-on shot of a woman in a business casual suit, rather than a midriffy weapon-lugging over-the-shoulder looking stereotype. But, really, all things considered, it's exactly what you'd expect to get in the genre.

The unfortunate need to name-drop brands and demonstrate technical cluelessness does little to ease the gender or genre stereotypes. Still, the offenses were sufficiently minor and infrequent that they did not bother me for long. Still, I wish publishers had proper editors to fix these things.

Mind you, getting what you expect can be a positive. The book really is pretty good, certainly among the better ones in its genre. When it gets to sex, the prose doesn't hurry and is tasteful in its explicitness. Hints are dropped at multiple longer story arcs, but the main story is properly self-contained. The characters are reasonably interesting, and the world, while containing vampires, werewolves and elves, doesn't feel like a carbon copy of so many others.

In summary, there's little here that would make one wave the book around and rave, but I found myself really liking it quite a bit, and putting Ms. Bornikova on my "to read" list.

Three out of five, just for guilty pleasure.