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edenfallingIt's time for the continuing adventures of Liz and her reading list! These are the books I read in May 2009. (Click on the cuts for summaries and reactions. I reserve the right to spoil all hell out of any book if spoilery bits are what I feel like talking about.)
New: 7
---Envy of the Gods, John Prevas (nonfiction: what Alexander the Great did after the battle of Gaugamela until his death. I actively disrecommend this book, and anything else Prevas has ever written. The man cannot write for shit, for one thing. He can't organize a paragraph around a single idea, and he restates each of his points about three times over in the course of every two pages, because he can't make them properly the first time. He has gender issues up the wazoo. He takes a vague stab at saying the Persians and other central Asian peoples weren't really barbarians and were in many ways more cultured than the Greeks... and then calls them barbarians anyway, and falls back on every offensive, othering stereotype of 'the Oriental mind' in the book. He uses paper-thin Freudianism with no real evidence. He reports sensationalist claptrap as if it were true and only after he's told a story does he admit that, actually, most scholars think it's a load of hooey. He identifies places and battles on the basis of what he says is tentative speculation from a few scholars, and then acts as if that tentative identification is rock-solid truth.
The only reason I finished this book is because I had no knowledge whatsoever about what Alexander did after winning Gaugamela, beyond the vague notion, taught in World History courses, that he kept heading eastward until he reached India, at which point his army mutinied and made him turn back, and then he died at 33 and left no heir so his empire fell to pieces. Prevas does tell enough about the details to make me ragingly curious about everything he's leaving out -- like, oh, actual military history, or proper archeological studies of the settlements Alexander founded. But he is useless for anything more in-depth than, say, a Wikipedia article.
So fuck him.)
---Salt and Silver, Anna Katherine (paranormal romance: when they were young and stupid, Allie and her friends, Amanda and Stan, accidentally opened a Door to Hell in the basement of the diner where Allie worked. They would have died if Ryan, a demon hunter, hadn't saved them and agreed to guard the Door as a full-time job. He and Allie spent the next seven years dancing around their attraction to each other. Now the Door has mysteriously vanished, and new Doors are opening around New York City at an unprecedented rate, threatening to drown the world in demons... unless Ryan, Allie, and a group of hunters can go into Hell and find a way to short-circuit the end of the world.
This is an astonishingly cute story, considering the subject matter. Allie's narration is quirky and entertaining, and for a genre romance novel, there's a much higher focus on the urban fantasy elements and a much lower focus on the sex-and-love stuff than I expected. Also, the balance between humor and danger/pathos/horror is managed very well.)
---Vulcan's Glory, D. C. Fontana (sci-fi: a Star Trek novel, set during Spock's first tour of duty aboard the Enterprise, under Captain Pike. This story has two main plots and two subplots. First, the Enterprise is ordered to the planet Areta, to check on the status of efforts made to encourage its native civilization in their recovery after a devastating nuclear war. Second, a massive emerald known as Vulcan's Glory, a symbol of racial pride that was lost long ago, is traced to Areta; unfortunately, someone is willing to commit murder over the gem. The subplots are Spock's continued discomfort with the role he is expected to play on his home planet, expressed mostly through his doubts about his betrothal to T'Pring and his subsequent tentative romance with a fellow Vulcan Starfleet scientist, T'Pris; and Scotty's misadventures in brewing and selling moonshine. The two main plots and Spock's emotional subplot work smoothly together, especially since there's a nice, subtle echo with Pike and Number One's own romantic difficulties, but Scotty's subplot, while cute, is totally extraneous.
This is a solid and workmanlike book. Occasionally it's a bit obvious and heavy-handed in its themes, and the details of its mystery plot are slightly awkward -- there is no reason for T'Pris not to voice at least the broad outline of her suspicions to Number One, which would have saved a lot of trouble and tragedy -- but it's extremely likeable nonetheless. Also, it includes Caitlin Barry, a female Chief Engineer who is competent and doesn't suffer fools; Amanda forcing Sarek to consider uncomfortable questions; T'Pris and T'Pring, two Vulcan women who unapologetically call the tune in their romantic and sexual relationships; and several intelligent Aretan women with quite a lot of social power -- for example, some townswomen are members of the city watch, and one nomadic woman, Berendel, is the makleh of her tribe [i.e., the lead trader and historian], a position which is almost more powerful than the shinsei, or chieftain. Given that the author is D. C. Fontana, this is not particularly surprising, but is nevertheless very welcome. *grin*)
---My Enemy, My Ally, Diane Duane (sci-fi: a Star Trek novel dealing with the Romulan Empire; the two main characters are Kirk and Commander-General Ael i-Mhiessan t'Rllaillieu, the aunt of the Romulan commander in The Enterprise Incident. Ael, for whom honor is nearly everything, has discovered secret government projects that are horrifically dishonorable and whose consequences will cause devastation throughout the Federation, the Klingon Empire, and will eat away at the Romulan Empire from the inside. She can't get her own allies in the Senate and the Praetorate to help, so she turns to her enemies, namely Kirk and the Enterprise, to help her betray her own people in order to save them.
I enjoyed this book an awful lot. Many Star Trek writers use their effectively unlimited special effects budgets to expand the non-human and non-humanoid cast, which I appreciate. I also very much enjoy the presence and strength of female characters. The plot is engrossing, and Ael and Kirk's interaction is fascinating and, eventually, moving. *plots to get hold of the sequel ASAP*)
---The Vulcan Academy Murders, Jean Lorrah (sci-fi: a Star Trek novel. When a crewman's voluntary nervous system is completely destroyed during a skirmish with the Klingons, Spock recommends he be taken to Vulcan for an experimental procedure that, incidentally, his mother is also undergoing to cure her of a degenerative disease. Since the Enterprise needs dry dock repairs, Kirk and McCoy also travel to Vulcan, where they stumble into a series of inexplicable deaths in the Vulcan Academy medical complex. Kirk begins to investigate, since Vulcan does not have a police force. Meanwhile, Sarek and Spock attempt to build on their tentative reconciliation in Journey to Babel, McCoy helps out in the hospital, and we get a subplot about one of Amanda's doctors and the Vulcan family he has become attached to.
The actual murder investigation is a little awkward, but since Kirk is not a detective, it doesn't seem too farfetched. The details about Vulcan culture are interesting, though I can't buy them entirely -- my views were set over a decade ago by Spock's World. It's also always interesting to read people's ideas of future computer science written before the internet really took off; they have an inadvertently sweet retro feel.)
---How Much for Just the Planet?, John M. Ford (sci-fi: a Star Trek novel, in which the Federation and the Klingon Empire negotiate with the inhabitants of a non-aligned colony world over the right to mine its vast dilithium deposits. This is a farce. It is a brilliant farce. It is also a musical without music; that part is less successful for me, because unless lyrics are very strongly rhythmic, I can't even begin to imagine how they might sound when set to music and sung. This also means that unless I hear them performed, I will never notice if songs are parodying or otherwise sharing a melody with other songs, no matter how well known the originals are. [If I hear them performed, it's a completely different story, but I can't extrapolate from words to sound without a written score. I would have loved an appendix with sheet music!]
So the musical numbers fell flat for me. But everything else... well, look, just read the book. If you like farce, you will love it. If you dislike farce, you may hate it. If you are indifferent to farce, you will probably be very confused, but you may have fun anyway.)
---Star Trek, Alan Dean Foster, adapted from a script by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (film novelization: as I have said before, I don't like Foster's writing style; I find it florid, intrusive, and generally nails-on-a-chalkboard annoying. [Also, he jumps POVs something awful in parts of this book; I can't remember if he did that in Transformers, and I haven't read his original fiction, but I see no excuse for sloppy technique whether you own the story you're writing or not.] Furthermore, the novelization is based on an early version of the script, and the changes made between this version and the filmed version were GOOD CHANGES. They tightened dialogue, cut stupid digressions, fixed a few plot holes, and generally made all the characters likeable instead of arrogant douchebags. That said, there are some nice little connective moments in the novel, so it's not completely worthless. Just mostly.
Why yes, I am biased. Sue me.)
Old: 2
---I Am Spock, Leonard Nimoy (nonfiction: Nimoy's second autobiography, written in 1995, dealing mostly with his professional life as an actor and director, rather than his personal life or childhood. He comes across as a warm, self-aware man, and his mental conversations with Spock are, to borrow a word, fascinating. I am still peeved that I gave away my own copy of this book several years ago.)
---The Wounded Sky, Diane Duane (sci-fi: a Star Trek novel, which I think is meant to be set after TMP but before TWOK, though the exact details are not hugely relevant. Anyway, the story is that the Enterprise is chosen to test a new, experimental space drive that works via bizarre handwavy singularity inter-dimensional physics; it is capable of intergalactic travel rather than the standard interstellar travel of the warp drive. Things go very wrong, and get very metaphysical, and I always end this book with tears in my eyes, damn it. Kirk-centric, but Duane writes a very good and amazingly non-annoying Kirk; one understands, viscerally, why he's a man worthy of loyalty, which can be hard to see in some other versions.
Random canon inconsistency: Duane has Kirk remember, in passing, seeing humpback whales on Earth, which The Voyage Home later proved impossible. Ah well.)
May Total: 9 books (plus several magazines, a few newspapers, and a ridiculous amount of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 34 books (17 new, 17 old)
---------------
On a completely different subject, my glee at my new apartment is partially offset by my annoyance at the death of my latest pair of sneakers.
I sat down this evening at work to remove a stone from my right shoe, and noticed that I could see light inside said shoe, down near the toe. This is never a good sign. Closer investigation revealed that the join between the sole and the upper section has an irreparable tear at least an inch long. "Oh," I said, "no wonder my sock got sopping wet when it rained a few days ago."
So on Wednesday, I have to take a bus to the mall and buy new sneakers.
I think this pair lasted about 11 months. I don't really expect sneakers to make it much past a year -- I am hard on my shoes -- but I was hoping these would hold out until August. *sigh*
New: 7
---Envy of the Gods, John Prevas (nonfiction: what Alexander the Great did after the battle of Gaugamela until his death. I actively disrecommend this book, and anything else Prevas has ever written. The man cannot write for shit, for one thing. He can't organize a paragraph around a single idea, and he restates each of his points about three times over in the course of every two pages, because he can't make them properly the first time. He has gender issues up the wazoo. He takes a vague stab at saying the Persians and other central Asian peoples weren't really barbarians and were in many ways more cultured than the Greeks... and then calls them barbarians anyway, and falls back on every offensive, othering stereotype of 'the Oriental mind' in the book. He uses paper-thin Freudianism with no real evidence. He reports sensationalist claptrap as if it were true and only after he's told a story does he admit that, actually, most scholars think it's a load of hooey. He identifies places and battles on the basis of what he says is tentative speculation from a few scholars, and then acts as if that tentative identification is rock-solid truth.
The only reason I finished this book is because I had no knowledge whatsoever about what Alexander did after winning Gaugamela, beyond the vague notion, taught in World History courses, that he kept heading eastward until he reached India, at which point his army mutinied and made him turn back, and then he died at 33 and left no heir so his empire fell to pieces. Prevas does tell enough about the details to make me ragingly curious about everything he's leaving out -- like, oh, actual military history, or proper archeological studies of the settlements Alexander founded. But he is useless for anything more in-depth than, say, a Wikipedia article.
So fuck him.)
---Salt and Silver, Anna Katherine (paranormal romance: when they were young and stupid, Allie and her friends, Amanda and Stan, accidentally opened a Door to Hell in the basement of the diner where Allie worked. They would have died if Ryan, a demon hunter, hadn't saved them and agreed to guard the Door as a full-time job. He and Allie spent the next seven years dancing around their attraction to each other. Now the Door has mysteriously vanished, and new Doors are opening around New York City at an unprecedented rate, threatening to drown the world in demons... unless Ryan, Allie, and a group of hunters can go into Hell and find a way to short-circuit the end of the world.
This is an astonishingly cute story, considering the subject matter. Allie's narration is quirky and entertaining, and for a genre romance novel, there's a much higher focus on the urban fantasy elements and a much lower focus on the sex-and-love stuff than I expected. Also, the balance between humor and danger/pathos/horror is managed very well.)
---Vulcan's Glory, D. C. Fontana (sci-fi: a Star Trek novel, set during Spock's first tour of duty aboard the Enterprise, under Captain Pike. This story has two main plots and two subplots. First, the Enterprise is ordered to the planet Areta, to check on the status of efforts made to encourage its native civilization in their recovery after a devastating nuclear war. Second, a massive emerald known as Vulcan's Glory, a symbol of racial pride that was lost long ago, is traced to Areta; unfortunately, someone is willing to commit murder over the gem. The subplots are Spock's continued discomfort with the role he is expected to play on his home planet, expressed mostly through his doubts about his betrothal to T'Pring and his subsequent tentative romance with a fellow Vulcan Starfleet scientist, T'Pris; and Scotty's misadventures in brewing and selling moonshine. The two main plots and Spock's emotional subplot work smoothly together, especially since there's a nice, subtle echo with Pike and Number One's own romantic difficulties, but Scotty's subplot, while cute, is totally extraneous.
This is a solid and workmanlike book. Occasionally it's a bit obvious and heavy-handed in its themes, and the details of its mystery plot are slightly awkward -- there is no reason for T'Pris not to voice at least the broad outline of her suspicions to Number One, which would have saved a lot of trouble and tragedy -- but it's extremely likeable nonetheless. Also, it includes Caitlin Barry, a female Chief Engineer who is competent and doesn't suffer fools; Amanda forcing Sarek to consider uncomfortable questions; T'Pris and T'Pring, two Vulcan women who unapologetically call the tune in their romantic and sexual relationships; and several intelligent Aretan women with quite a lot of social power -- for example, some townswomen are members of the city watch, and one nomadic woman, Berendel, is the makleh of her tribe [i.e., the lead trader and historian], a position which is almost more powerful than the shinsei, or chieftain. Given that the author is D. C. Fontana, this is not particularly surprising, but is nevertheless very welcome. *grin*)
---My Enemy, My Ally, Diane Duane (sci-fi: a Star Trek novel dealing with the Romulan Empire; the two main characters are Kirk and Commander-General Ael i-Mhiessan t'Rllaillieu, the aunt of the Romulan commander in The Enterprise Incident. Ael, for whom honor is nearly everything, has discovered secret government projects that are horrifically dishonorable and whose consequences will cause devastation throughout the Federation, the Klingon Empire, and will eat away at the Romulan Empire from the inside. She can't get her own allies in the Senate and the Praetorate to help, so she turns to her enemies, namely Kirk and the Enterprise, to help her betray her own people in order to save them.
I enjoyed this book an awful lot. Many Star Trek writers use their effectively unlimited special effects budgets to expand the non-human and non-humanoid cast, which I appreciate. I also very much enjoy the presence and strength of female characters. The plot is engrossing, and Ael and Kirk's interaction is fascinating and, eventually, moving. *plots to get hold of the sequel ASAP*)
---The Vulcan Academy Murders, Jean Lorrah (sci-fi: a Star Trek novel. When a crewman's voluntary nervous system is completely destroyed during a skirmish with the Klingons, Spock recommends he be taken to Vulcan for an experimental procedure that, incidentally, his mother is also undergoing to cure her of a degenerative disease. Since the Enterprise needs dry dock repairs, Kirk and McCoy also travel to Vulcan, where they stumble into a series of inexplicable deaths in the Vulcan Academy medical complex. Kirk begins to investigate, since Vulcan does not have a police force. Meanwhile, Sarek and Spock attempt to build on their tentative reconciliation in Journey to Babel, McCoy helps out in the hospital, and we get a subplot about one of Amanda's doctors and the Vulcan family he has become attached to.
The actual murder investigation is a little awkward, but since Kirk is not a detective, it doesn't seem too farfetched. The details about Vulcan culture are interesting, though I can't buy them entirely -- my views were set over a decade ago by Spock's World. It's also always interesting to read people's ideas of future computer science written before the internet really took off; they have an inadvertently sweet retro feel.)
---How Much for Just the Planet?, John M. Ford (sci-fi: a Star Trek novel, in which the Federation and the Klingon Empire negotiate with the inhabitants of a non-aligned colony world over the right to mine its vast dilithium deposits. This is a farce. It is a brilliant farce. It is also a musical without music; that part is less successful for me, because unless lyrics are very strongly rhythmic, I can't even begin to imagine how they might sound when set to music and sung. This also means that unless I hear them performed, I will never notice if songs are parodying or otherwise sharing a melody with other songs, no matter how well known the originals are. [If I hear them performed, it's a completely different story, but I can't extrapolate from words to sound without a written score. I would have loved an appendix with sheet music!]
So the musical numbers fell flat for me. But everything else... well, look, just read the book. If you like farce, you will love it. If you dislike farce, you may hate it. If you are indifferent to farce, you will probably be very confused, but you may have fun anyway.)
---Star Trek, Alan Dean Foster, adapted from a script by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (film novelization: as I have said before, I don't like Foster's writing style; I find it florid, intrusive, and generally nails-on-a-chalkboard annoying. [Also, he jumps POVs something awful in parts of this book; I can't remember if he did that in Transformers, and I haven't read his original fiction, but I see no excuse for sloppy technique whether you own the story you're writing or not.] Furthermore, the novelization is based on an early version of the script, and the changes made between this version and the filmed version were GOOD CHANGES. They tightened dialogue, cut stupid digressions, fixed a few plot holes, and generally made all the characters likeable instead of arrogant douchebags. That said, there are some nice little connective moments in the novel, so it's not completely worthless. Just mostly.
Why yes, I am biased. Sue me.)
Old: 2
---I Am Spock, Leonard Nimoy (nonfiction: Nimoy's second autobiography, written in 1995, dealing mostly with his professional life as an actor and director, rather than his personal life or childhood. He comes across as a warm, self-aware man, and his mental conversations with Spock are, to borrow a word, fascinating. I am still peeved that I gave away my own copy of this book several years ago.)
---The Wounded Sky, Diane Duane (sci-fi: a Star Trek novel, which I think is meant to be set after TMP but before TWOK, though the exact details are not hugely relevant. Anyway, the story is that the Enterprise is chosen to test a new, experimental space drive that works via bizarre handwavy singularity inter-dimensional physics; it is capable of intergalactic travel rather than the standard interstellar travel of the warp drive. Things go very wrong, and get very metaphysical, and I always end this book with tears in my eyes, damn it. Kirk-centric, but Duane writes a very good and amazingly non-annoying Kirk; one understands, viscerally, why he's a man worthy of loyalty, which can be hard to see in some other versions.
Random canon inconsistency: Duane has Kirk remember, in passing, seeing humpback whales on Earth, which The Voyage Home later proved impossible. Ah well.)
May Total: 9 books (plus several magazines, a few newspapers, and a ridiculous amount of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 34 books (17 new, 17 old)
---------------
On a completely different subject, my glee at my new apartment is partially offset by my annoyance at the death of my latest pair of sneakers.
I sat down this evening at work to remove a stone from my right shoe, and noticed that I could see light inside said shoe, down near the toe. This is never a good sign. Closer investigation revealed that the join between the sole and the upper section has an irreparable tear at least an inch long. "Oh," I said, "no wonder my sock got sopping wet when it rained a few days ago."
So on Wednesday, I have to take a bus to the mall and buy new sneakers.
I think this pair lasted about 11 months. I don't really expect sneakers to make it much past a year -- I am hard on my shoes -- but I was hoping these would hold out until August. *sigh*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 06:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 03:17 pm (UTC)I have a hard time finding shoes, you see, because the arch of my foot is apparently slightly offset from where most people's arches are -- in other words, the soles of 60-80% of all shoes hit my feet in useless or uncomfortable places. So there are a lot of very well-made shoes that I can't wear if I want to be able to walk at all. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 06:17 am (UTC)I'm rereading a bunch of her stuff, and y'know, I can totally see all the stuff that shaped my own brain when I read her books in my teens.
Right now, I'm re-reading The Door Into Shadow. My Flowers!Ten and Hasai es'Pheress are laughing their respective asses off (in full chords) over something all the humans around them can't even begin to understand, since it involves remembering the future as well as the past . . .
Oh, well. At least the dragon and the Time Lord are in a *good* mood. :/ ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 03:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 03:42 pm (UTC)I have to admit, I
stole a chunk ofwas inspired by Duane's dragons when giving Flowers!Doc's some of his alien abilities (the split vocal harmonies particularly). I mean, powerful alien beings with wonky timesenses who are sworn to a policy of non-interference in the human world? With the main representative of said alien race (and they *are* aliens, even though it's a fantasy world) being an oddball loner who bonds with a human woman and is normally charming and good-natured . . . unless you're one of the bad guys and you piss him off, in which case he'll demonstrate how scary his species *really* is.Gosh, I don't see parallels there at all . . . XD
However, she stole some of those characteristics to give to Vulcans in her own Trek books, so I don't feel too bad. And she's written some DW stuff, too, which always makes me wonder if there isn't a little Time Lord in her dragons (particularly Hasai) to begin with! ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-03 02:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 07:34 am (UTC)Congrats on the new flat, by the way.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 03:14 pm (UTC)Also, I got into the habit of reading magazines on my lunch breaks and during slow night shifts rather than bringing books from home. I blame the financial crisis, the presidential primaries, and the general election, and am slowly shifting back out of that pattern.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 11:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 03:23 pm (UTC)I think this was a feature, not a bug -- it meant you got authors who really, really cared about what they're writing, who were clearly having a ball, and who were not afraid to tackle big issues even though they might mess up official continuity -- but apparently Paramount disagrees, since sometime in the late 1990s they switched over to a Star Wars style 'extended universe,' where all the tie-in novels MUST adhere to show and film continuity, and can't disagree with each other either. *sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-03 12:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 04:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-03 01:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-02 04:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-03 02:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 03:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-05 02:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-05 01:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-05 02:56 am (UTC)So far, the quality has been decent-to-good, with occasional rises to brilliance. Duane is currently my touchstone for How To Do It Right, but I've loved her original work for over fifteen years now, so that's not particularly surprising.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-01 03:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-01 09:12 pm (UTC)Anyway, hi! I had a lot of fun reading Vulcan's Glory. I have also been lurking around your own journal reading your meta and your Pike/Number One fic for the last month or so, and having a lot of fun with that as well. *grin*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-01 09:17 pm (UTC)eta: yay! so glad you're enjoying! I have a post-Vulcan's Glory TOS story for Trek Novel Fest I'm currently working in, hence my glee.