Recent Bookery
Apr. 4th, 2016 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretB is for Burglar by Sue Grafton
I don't think I mentioned reading A is for Alibi, but I read that a few months ago and now I've read the next one, and I have checked out C is for Corpse, because these books are great. The mysteries are intricate but not all that compelling, but the characters! My lord, Grafton knows how to turn the knife when she writes that it's May Snyder who finally hears Kinsey in the Grice's home. She could have delivered the information the Snyders delivered in so many other ways. Everyone in a Kinsey Milhone novel is a fully realized character with fully realized motivations, and it makes the investigations into so much more than a detective wandering around town questioning people and taking down their stories.
Legends of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 1: Dawn by Yoshiki Tanaka
The first in a classic Japanese space opera novel series, later converted into popular anime and manga, I'm told, not being very knowledgeable about anime myself. The original novels are finally being translated into English some thirty years after their original publication (making this book, I believe, the first book I have read eligible for the 2016 Hugo Award).
The language and storytelling are times Golden Agey and clunky and there are three named female characters in the whole book, but it's a pretty fun story anyway. The politics of the story involve a hereditary empire (of space Nazis) falling into decadence waging battle against a democracy edging toward demagoguery, and it's easy to see disturbing parallels between the dysfunction of the Alliance and our own present dysfunctional election... some of the lines from the Patriotic Knights sound disturbingly like things Donald Trump has said.
Perhaps the most interesting mechanical feature for me was the way the space battles were described. Traditionally space opera uses naval metaphors for space battles, or somewhat less commonly air force metaphors. Tanaka writes his space battles as if they were infantry engagements, with constant reference to holding lines and holdinng positions and maintaining supply lines. It was not a convincing way to write space battles, but it made them interesting to read anyway because it was new to me, and it helped highlight what made particular generals and admirals good or bad at their job.
Made to Kill by Adam Christopher
Not the best novel I've ever read about a robot noir detective, but it was a good time anyway. I liked how consciously Christopher was writing 'Chandler's scifi novel', how Los Angeles's unique sense of what it was as a city was at the core of the story.
Angles of Attack by Marko Kloos
Probably the best in this series of milSF adventures, and the last one was (admittedly possibly undeservingly) nominated for a Hugo Award. Angles is elevated by the presence of Dmitry, who Kloos writes both as a ridiculous Russian stereotype and as a fascinating and complex person in his own right who uses the Russian stereotypes for his own ambiguous purposes. I know it's unlikely, but I hope we get more Dmitry in future books.
The meat of the Frontlines series is supposed to be, I guess, infantry engagements between space marines and the behemoth alien Lankies, given that our protagonist is a combat controller who's mostly ineffectual unless boots are on the ground. Angles has far less of this than the previous two books, and one of the two major infantry engagements is basically a boring cakewalk, but I didn't feel the lack, because the space battles are better and the interplay between Dmitry and Andrew is alternately gripping and hilarious, and the way in which selfishness and fear struggles against hope and duty gives me pause.
I don't think I mentioned reading A is for Alibi, but I read that a few months ago and now I've read the next one, and I have checked out C is for Corpse, because these books are great. The mysteries are intricate but not all that compelling, but the characters! My lord, Grafton knows how to turn the knife when she writes that it's May Snyder who finally hears Kinsey in the Grice's home. She could have delivered the information the Snyders delivered in so many other ways. Everyone in a Kinsey Milhone novel is a fully realized character with fully realized motivations, and it makes the investigations into so much more than a detective wandering around town questioning people and taking down their stories.
Legends of the Galactic Heroes, Volume 1: Dawn by Yoshiki Tanaka
The first in a classic Japanese space opera novel series, later converted into popular anime and manga, I'm told, not being very knowledgeable about anime myself. The original novels are finally being translated into English some thirty years after their original publication (making this book, I believe, the first book I have read eligible for the 2016 Hugo Award).
The language and storytelling are times Golden Agey and clunky and there are three named female characters in the whole book, but it's a pretty fun story anyway. The politics of the story involve a hereditary empire (of space Nazis) falling into decadence waging battle against a democracy edging toward demagoguery, and it's easy to see disturbing parallels between the dysfunction of the Alliance and our own present dysfunctional election... some of the lines from the Patriotic Knights sound disturbingly like things Donald Trump has said.
Perhaps the most interesting mechanical feature for me was the way the space battles were described. Traditionally space opera uses naval metaphors for space battles, or somewhat less commonly air force metaphors. Tanaka writes his space battles as if they were infantry engagements, with constant reference to holding lines and holdinng positions and maintaining supply lines. It was not a convincing way to write space battles, but it made them interesting to read anyway because it was new to me, and it helped highlight what made particular generals and admirals good or bad at their job.
Made to Kill by Adam Christopher
Not the best novel I've ever read about a robot noir detective, but it was a good time anyway. I liked how consciously Christopher was writing 'Chandler's scifi novel', how Los Angeles's unique sense of what it was as a city was at the core of the story.
Angles of Attack by Marko Kloos
Probably the best in this series of milSF adventures, and the last one was (admittedly possibly undeservingly) nominated for a Hugo Award. Angles is elevated by the presence of Dmitry, who Kloos writes both as a ridiculous Russian stereotype and as a fascinating and complex person in his own right who uses the Russian stereotypes for his own ambiguous purposes. I know it's unlikely, but I hope we get more Dmitry in future books.
The meat of the Frontlines series is supposed to be, I guess, infantry engagements between space marines and the behemoth alien Lankies, given that our protagonist is a combat controller who's mostly ineffectual unless boots are on the ground. Angles has far less of this than the previous two books, and one of the two major infantry engagements is basically a boring cakewalk, but I didn't feel the lack, because the space battles are better and the interplay between Dmitry and Andrew is alternately gripping and hilarious, and the way in which selfishness and fear struggles against hope and duty gives me pause.