Hey, guys! It’s been a while, but I’ve been pretty house-bound. I got that shiny new truck now, though, so I drove myself to the city for some book shopping!

From Half Price Books:
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
I’ve been curious about this book for several years now, and as the movie is in my Netflix queue, I thought it was a fortuitous find. Alliteration, heh~

Flatland by Edwin A. Abbot
The steal of the day at only 48¢! Thank you, Dover Thrift Editions!

From Hastings:
Blameless by Gail Carriger
It wasn’t supposed to be out until September, but Hastings is always putting books out early, so I couldn’t help but check! Yay!

Rurouni Kenshin Volume 25
Yes, the elusive 25 finally crossed my path. Funny story: I saw a copy at Half Price Books, but put it back because it was so messed up, the pages all yellowed and the cover wrinkled and water damaged. Hooray for collector’s pickiness~

An assortment of SF/F magazines for my short story research:
Asimov’s Science Fiction
Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine
Realms of Fantasy
Interzone

Premise:
Palimpsest is a city, assessable only in the dreams after intimate encounters with those who bear the mark of it on their skin. To this city come four desperate souls, all of whom have lost something important. What they find will change them forever.

Note: Calico Reaction book club selection for August 2010

Thoughts:
I came away from this with the most mixed feeling I’ve ever entertained for a book. The premise itself bordered on the ridiculous—a magical world, the entrance to which is sex—tell me that doesn’t just scream of an excuse to write a ton of sex. But I was familiar enough with the author’s writing style and convictions to believe there might be something else to the story, so I took a chance.

In the hands of a lesser author, it would have been easy for this to devolve into a tawdry spectacle, but Valente’s beautiful prose couldn’t entirely save this book. The ‘lyrically erotic’(1) spell did not last long on the real world side of the story. It quickly becomes a grim spiral of obsession and self-loathing. I had expected gender and sexuality issues to be dealt with more thoroughly, since the author is unabashedly feminist, but there were no political issues to the story that I could discern, and that may be why I couldn’t understand the sexual angle. I kept asking myself ‘why?’ without finding a real reason.

However, the part that takes place in Palimpsest really shines. It’s a terrible, wonderful place, and described in Valente’s headily poetic prose, it sparked my much neglected artistic instincts. It more than made up for the loose sense of plot through the first half of the book.

The middle dragged like anything, as the characters delved deeper into their need for the city. Only the city’s voice made it worth the slog, and it finally paid off as the plot began to coalesce in earnest. The threads of the story wove together nicely, beautifully, even, in the end, and I wasn’t sorry I had decided to read it.

Rating: Not sorry I read it but…
It was worth it if only for the language, but I have yet to read a book with graphic sexual content that actually accented the storytelling. Yes, I am a prude. No, I don’t care what you think about that.

Influences:
I sound like a bit of a broken record, but Valente’s prose was just breathtakingly imaginative. I wish I had been able to get a copy of In the Night Garden, too.

Next up is The Tale of Despereaux! What are the odds a children’s book would come right after a most decidedly adult book?

(1) From the blurb on the back of the book. No, I’m not typing it up for you. Go look at the back cover on Amazon if you care that much.

Premise:
Alexia Maccon’s husband disappears as a rash of ‘humanization’ spreads amongst the supernatural denizens of London. With the mysterious inventor Madame Lefoux, her best friend Ivy, her obnoxious sister, her petulant French maid and one particularly doofy claviger in tow, she braves the ride to Scotland in a dirigible, armed with her trusty parasol and trademark no-nonsense resolve to get to the bottom of the mess.

Warning: This review may contain spoilers for Soulless.

Thoughts:
Let me just say Gail Carriger has provided a worthy second installment to her Parasol Protectorate series. While the storytelling does not entirely remedy the shortcomings of development from the first volume, it does tone down the romantic element and add a new level to the steampunk ambiance, working it into the plot more cohesively with the addition of firsthand experience with the dirigibles that were only mentioned in Soulless, and the aetherographic (1) transmitters. The new character, inventor Madame Lefoux, also helped in this aspect. I have to admit I felt Alexia’s new parasol was more a prop than a tool here. Hopefully this will be remedied in the future installments.

The story moved a little more slowly, and it wasn’t a bad thing at all, as it allowed a more structured setup for the resolution of the plot. The farcical humor was never lost, even when our intrepid heroine was dangling hundreds of feet above the earth after being thrown over the rail of the dirigible. It kept the Drama! of the tale from becoming overwhelming, but did not impede the storytelling. It wasn’t all it could have been, but it was still quite a triumph; Carriger’s style is coming along nicely.

I do have to admit that the ‘shocking’ ending wasn’t all that shocking to me. I read a few too many reviews that were trying not to be spoilery, when those who want to avoid spoilers would have been better served if the reviewers had just left off discussing it altogether. It wasn’t much of a leap of logic to figure out what was coming. It did have the desired effect of inspiring a rabid desire to acquire Blameless, which is due out in September. Maybe it’s a good thing I had to wait so long to get this book, now I only have a two week wait. I hope she’s not going to make cliffhangers a regular thing, I kinda hate that…

Rating: Brain Candy
NOM NOM NOM

Influences:
Part of what I like the most about these books is Alexia’s character. She is one tough Victorian miss, that’s for sure.

Next up is Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente.

(1) I don’t know if this is the right word, or if it is spelled correctly; I lent out my copy before I got around to writing this review. Oops~

Premise:
My name is Kvothe.

You may have heard of me.

I know, I usually write my own premise blurb, I just really loved this bit. It captures the feel of the story so well, even though most of that stuff doesn’t actually happen in the first volume. (Does that count as a spoiler? I don’t care about them so I usually don’t even notice spoilery bits in reviews.)

Thoughts:
I’ll go ahead and say I bought this because of the acclaim. It seems like everyone and their aunt was giddy with glee the day the release date for the long-awaited sequel was announced, so I picked it up, not really expecting much. Cynical? Maybe, but I’ve learned the hard way that popular doesn’t always equal good, especially not when you entertain a highly subjective and personal view of what good is. The first few chapters didn’t seem to bear much promise, either. It took fifty-two pages for the story to kick in properly. Though the information provided in those pages proved necessary for the plot as a whole, it was a little dry and drawn out.

But then Kvothe started talking (Yes, it’s first person and I usually hate it and all that blah blah blah) and I was immediately enthralled. This is just the sort of book I look for when I’m book-shopping: richly detailed, beautifully written, intricately plotted and a page count you can sink your teeth into. (722!)

This is storytelling at its finest. Despite the abundance of detail, the story never dragged much at all after the initial ‘meh’ of the beginning. I’m so glad I didn’t stop after the first chapter. I had considered it quite seriously; it took me longer to pick up the book again after that than it did for me to finish the rest of the book. I could not put it down.

Rating: Ripping Good Yarn
Not quite sparkling, but so close! If it had a few more female characters, I’d probably bump it up to my top rating, even with that clunky opening, but that’s really all it’s lacking. I’m not waiting for the paperback on the sequel, either. Since I’m such a cheapskate, with my Half Price Books addiction and all, that should tell you something in itself.

Influences:
There’s so much here to admire: the dialogue; the rich, flowing prose; the lush detail; worldbuilding both subtle and concise; Rothfuss’s ability to render an entirely sympathetic character of this flawed and scarred man. I wish I could have been more eloquent about all the things I liked, but it’s been a few weeks. None of my catch-up reviews are going to be very detailed, I’m afraid; all the information has been dumped to make room for the impending revisions for my rough draft. Yes, I finished it! Not that anyone I haven’t already told is going to read this, but I just had to throw it in somewhere. I can’t believe I posted two reviews without saying anything about it already…

Next up will be Changeless, by Gail Carriger. Moar braincandy for everyone!

Premise:
Prince Roger is the typical, arrogant, foppish, royal brat. His mother, the Empress of Man, sends him on a diplomatic mission, which, after a shocking act of sabotage, ends in his ship being emergency landed on an alien planet. He and his men must make the dangerous trek to the nearest spaceport (conveniently run by their enemies), beset by hostile alien forces, with limited supplies and rapidly degenerating technological weapons.

Thoughts:
There was nothing wrong with the technical aspects of this book. Weber and Ringo have a solid handle on setting and plot. Unfortunately, character development seemed to get lost in the shuffle. I couldn’t form a connection to any of the characters with all the head-hopping going on, and that is one thing I need to enjoy a book. It’s all so much action. Nothing wrong with that, but without being able to care about the characters, it just wore on me after the endless tramping through hostile terrain and fighting with the aliens. By the time they got to the last stand at the ruins of Voitan, I was just eager for it to be over. Too bad it wasn’t. After the grueling battle, I was annoyed to find that the book still had more fighting and intriguing, and my already wavering interest just died.

There were a few things that stood out in this book. I said the character development was lacking, but that was mostly on the side characters. Prince Roger, as the focus of the story, was dealt with in detail, and his inner conflicts about loosing men to protect his life were genuine, but often felt brushed off in the face of the plot. It’s sometimes difficult to maintain a proper balance of show versus tell, and for an intense, action driven plot, it was a good balance, but for me, I need the relationships to be shown. For the record, it is possible to do this concisely, as evidenced by any number of Agatha Christie novels, which overflow with relationships, and rarely have more than 250 pages to expand on them in, to say nothing of the twists and turns of a mystery novel. It was difficult to care about the growing attraction between Roger and Despreaux when it was pieced out in micro-bites, and the deaths of the numerous side characters failed to generate an emotional response—and I’m a sentimental sort of reader, I hate it when characters die!

Rating: Couldn’t Finish It
If you are a fan of plot-driven action, brisk pacing and military tactics, you’ll love this book. I just didn’t happen to find it particularly compelling.

Influences:
I was interested in reading a book with military tactics in the forefront, but ultimately, I found them boring.

Next up is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.