Secondhand Reviews

Here is where I review books that I pick up secondhand at rummage sales and library sales, as well as old novels and story collections that have passed into the public domain and are free online. Anything cheap is fair game: good luck finding yourself a...

[secondhand-reviews]

Book Reviews Update:

So, after a review drought of nearly nine months... I am going to post a series-so-far review of two series I’ve been reading since about November, Temeraire and The Vorkosigan Saga. Largely because I still have reviews that I haven’t finished from August, and don’t want to add to the load...

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Vorkosigan-liveried vomit bugs all over Vorbarr Sultana.

A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold.

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Quick Poll for non-spambots

I’ve been thinking of changing up the Secondhand Reviews format to something that will allow me to post shorter things more often. I’d probably keep the ratings system, but add a separate “did not finish because,” set of ratings, so you can tell if I hated a book or was just not that invested. So, your options are: 1. Leave it the way it is and get to work on the review backlog, slacker. 2. Post shorter things more often. (Possibly a “first impressions when I start a book and a brief review/rating when I finish: the goal would be to keep these under 1,000 words.) 3. I don’t care, I’m only here to laugh when you force yourself to finish a book you clearly hate. Or, you could put your feedback after the question mark. Maybe?

[allthewritingcontests]

So, I was not happy when I picked up this book. I admit, I tried to fudge it and get a different book, but every other book I spun seemed worse, so I just went with option one.

What is option one?

Oh, Alphas. I really love the concept of alphas and omegas. The idea of a society where the social norms are different because of a basic biological imperative, but still recognizable is pretty interesting and it’s cool that a book took a common fanfic trope and-

Oh… not those alphas? You meant alpha in the idea that one wolf is naturally higher than the others even though both wolves and humans are natural pack animals and exist within fairly equal family units? Well. That’ll work too I guess.

Keep reading

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To tide you over while I try to get through a backlog of reviews going back to June, I present to you a review by my friend Toast, featuring a hillaribad YA novel and many, many gifs, including fish kissing. ... Why yes, this is secondhand reviews, getting a review secondhand. :D

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As You Wish: Inconcievable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride, by Cary Elwes with Joe Layden

Quick Summary: Tea and I are absolute Princess Bride nuts. Given the opportunity, we can (and have) quoted the entire movie, line for line. I have probably seen it, whole or in part, about 200 times, and I’m not sure that’s an exaggeration...

Oh, the book? Cary retells all the glorious fun they had on set while making it, from his bewilderment at actually getting the part, to the poor guy they had to suit up in a rubber rat suit, to training for months for the sword duel, to the point where he got himself knocked out with bad stunt decisions.

First Impressions: I must warn you: unless you have seen the movie, you will have no interest in this book. I’m young enough that I was never aware of any of the other roles that the cast played in other movies, except for Billy Crystal, so I got lots of pleasant surprises, for example that Cary (Westley) has been on Psych, and that Robin Wright (Buttercup) has been on Saturday Night Live. Mostly, however, this is the story of a twenty three year old man recounting the making of a movie that sounds like it was the time of his life.

Review: The primary value of this book is nostalgia. If you love the movie, if you ever wonder about the actors as people, or if you want backstage trivia, go for it. Most amusing to me personally, as a veteran high school theater, was the cast dynamics: everyone seems to have gotten along swimmingly and had an absolutely lovely time. It’s also clear that they miss some of their now-deceased cast members, such as Andre the Giant, very much. There are certainly sections that are about the business aspect of making movies; that directors are very lucky to get the right cast and actors are very lucky to get the right director, but Cary manages to explain them in a forthright and easy to understand manner.

Favorite tales from the production are: - Mandy Patinkin (Inigo) and Cary watched dozens and dozens of movie swordfights as homework for their fencing training. - The cast did the majority of their own stunts. - William Goldman ruined the first take of the scene where Buttercup’s dress catches on fire by screaming “SHE’S ON FIRE!” - Mandy bruised a rib trying not to laugh during the Miracle Max scene - They actually had to re-choreograph the swordfight on the spot because after Cary and Mandy had practiced for so long, it got faster and faster and was too short. - Andre the Giant fell asleep in a hotel lobby and couldn’t be woken up, so the staff arranged a cordon of those velvet ropes around him and proceeded to vacuum the rest of the lobby.

Rating: 5/5 I was laughing most of the time that I was reading it, and Cary’s love for the movie and his co-stars is obvious the whole way through. I feel now as if the movie simply wouldn’t be as good as it is if they hadn’t all been so happy together.

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Dragon Wing, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Quick Summary: A book wherein twice the actual stuff could have happened in half the time if the authors weren’t phoning it in. Also, not enough dragons.

First Impressions: The prologue is unnecessary. Seriously, just skip the prologue. All you need to know is that there’s a dude who never speaks being sent out by a nutty guy who likes to hear himself talk to... something something... find “his lord” an apprentice on the other side of the Death Gate. Also they hate the “Sartan” (I keep reading that as Satan and am not convinced it is accidental,) who have apparently stuffed them in an evil, sentient labyrinth. Second first impressions: It’s pretty clear something weird is going on. Also, all the worldbuilding (or most of it) is done in footnotes, and I don’t know how I feel about that.(1) I do get a pretty stale vibe from the setup, which is very faux-medieval feudal (with dragons) and I got a feeling that the gender politics are going to annoy me as soon as it was mentioned that the only reason they weren’t letting the lady of the keep, whose husband has just been murdered, throw herself on his funeral pyre was that she still had an infant son to nurse. Maybe it will be better when we get to dragons and not-human kingdoms?

(1): It’s informative? Like, the characters are unanimously unable to explain these sorts of things, and the narrative is third-omniscient and hopping around like a jackrabbit on crack. But I’m used to footnotes being an absolute jewel, because I have read too much Discworld and the entire Bartimeus Trilogy.

Review: This book is relentlessly mediocre. In fact, it’s so mediocre it comes around the other side and becomes laughable. It is a morass of unresolved plot threads, side characters far more interesting than the mains, and randomly dropped worldbuilding “facts.” Given someone who could actually write with consistent characterization, or a plot more interesting than dry cardboard, the worldbuilding would actually be quite interesting.  The first major sin this book committed was failing to get me invested in any of the main characters, who are, as follows: Hugh the Hand, assassin with a so-sad childhood of being raised by the nonsensical order of monks that worship death. Prince Bane, the son of a mysterious mage who dumped him on the king and queen of the lower islands to raise in order to further his plan of world domination. Alfred, supposedly this kid’s chamberlain, actually the only remaining Sartan, for... reasons... He’d be interesting if he didn’t faint at the slightest provocation, or had any sort of character at all. Limbeck: a dwarf, leader of a union of workers on the lowest isle, where all the water of the sky realm is mined. Yes, I kid you not. He’s the only person with anything close to resembling character growth or motivations, but he bores the snot out of me because all the chapters about him were so damn pat. Haplo: Some dude who the mysterious prologue dude is sending out to different realms for reasons. My favorite character is Haplo’s dog, for the following reasons. 1) consistent characterization (it’s a dog...) 2) least useless character in the book (he protects Haplo and Bane, doesn’t spend his time grandstanding, can climb freaking ladders,) 3) I don’t have to listen to to his hackneyed internal monologue when the authors finally decide to drop in because, again, he is a dog.

Characters who are far more interesting than the main cast... well, pretty much all the named ladies in the world, of which there are three. The first is Queen Anne, Bane’s adoptive mother... well, technically speaking she’s under an enchantment to ensure that she adores her “son,” despite knowing that he’s not hers, but the thing is that she and her husband have, in the last thirty years, united almost the entire human population on multiple islands, fought armies of elves, and created something like a stable government. Anne must have ovaries of steel, but we see her for all of a page. Jarre, Limbeck’s girlfriend / right hand woman in unionizing and organizing the workers of Drevlin, gets a little more screen time. See, the dwarves maintain a machine that harvests water from the lowermost isles, caught in something called the “maelstorm” but they also worship it, for... plot convenience reasons. Also they think the Elves are immortal gods, so the entire plot arc reeked of badly preserved colonialism. When you add in the infantilizaiton of the dwarves, between their “peaceful” nature and their frankly embarassing language (they call the water mining apparatus the “Kicksey-winsey,” and almost everything else in the dwarf chapters is exactly that bad,) it doesn’t actually get any better. When it comes to the Workers’ United Union, Limbeck is the speech-making visionary (because of course he is) Jarre does literally everything else, and she does it with style. She knows her neighbors and how to get them to agree. She knows the laws of the island and uses them to advantage. She’s a decent orator herself and more importantly, can organize an escape from the authorities after a demonstration on about two minutes’ notice.  So of course the book ditches her when Limbeck has gotten off Drevlin. I’m not saying she’s perfect, I’m saying that despite the authors’ massive failure to portray her as a “strong woman,” or with any consistent emotional landscape, at least she gets shit done, unlike the quartet of dumbasses who go on to leave her island, be captured by elves, and meet the Big Bad of the book, Bane’s dad, or “Sinistrad the Mysteriarch.” We’ll get to him in a minute: first, Bane’s mom.

I wanted to like Bane’s mom, Idirial. The book was almost 70% over, I knew Jarre wasn’t coming back, Bane was being an insufferable brat, and Haplo and Hugh were busy trying to figure out who had the biggest, baddest antihero dick, which was annoying. However, Idirial’s plotline was handled with the grace of an ocean liner trying to sail up a culvert in the side of the road, the impact that her plotline should have had being the ocean liner, the quality of writing being the culvert. Simply put: Idirial’s flashback chapter shows her falling in love with Sinistrad, who I may point out is one of the only men of her generation on the upper isles (because the Mysteriarchs are having trouble reproducing,) who only wants her because his great evil plan is to have a child, swap it with the child of the human monarchs, and take over the world. It’s a three step plan, unfortunately missing all the important steps. Anyhow, Idirial is stated to be “almost as magically powerful as her husband,” like twenty times, but... as it is, she hates and is terrified of her husband and spends all her life hiding in her room brushing her hair. Gone with her will to fight her fate is my respect for the authors, and it was headed pretty low when I discovered they’d named their main villain “Sinistrad.” Speaking of Sinistrad, he manages to die by violating Evil Overlord Rule #34:  I will not turn into a snake. It never helps. ... Yup. He turns into a snake (transformation is never mentioned in the book prior to this) and Hugh stabs him, at which point he bites Hugh, who dies instantly of villain venom, because of course he’s venomous.

Rating: 2.3/5 This book only got the three points above a 2 back because I spent a lot of time laughing at it, going “they’re giant hands? Really?” or “Of course Alfred is a Sartan, he’s only the most useless human ever,” or “Shut the fuck up, Haplo.” It doesn’t make a three, because the last quarter of the book, which should have been the most exciting, was one of the most boring monoliths I have ever encountered, outside of Wheel of Time. Suddenly, there are new characters to aggressively not care about, Sinistrad’s plot is revealed - and it makes no fucking sense: if he knew that the king and queen had a baby - conveniently at the same time as Idirial had given birth to their spawn, he should actually know something about the human nation, instead of relying on his ten year old kid to give him information. As we can see, he can both transform and teleport wherever the hell he likes, so what’s stopping him from gathering his own goddamn information? Laziness, I think. Be warned, you folks: I’m not even going to attempt the second book in this series, let alone all seven. Who knows what new heights of mediocrity my poor brain would be exposed to?

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Magic Knight Rayearth, by CLAMP

(I know CLAMP is a group, but if I’m attributing this to the whole team when that’s wrong... blame the book and Wikipedia, neither were specific.)

Overall, I am of the opinion that this would be a little easier for me to follow as an anime. (There is an Anime. I could be persuaded to watch it.) However, as I said, I have a high tolerance - even a fondness - for transported-to-another-land fantasy. I’ve even got a decently high tolerance for Magical Girl antics in the “real world,” provided I am not forced to deal with spending a lot of the story in a high school. (I’m allergic to middle and high schools. Just the smell of them makes me sneeze violently and try to sneak backstage or hide in the library.)

This is the second book in the series, but I feel like I missed very little besides exposition. In summary, eighth graders Hikaru, Fuu, and Umi, were dragged from Tokyo to the magical land of Cephiro via scenically located world portal. Now they’re on a quest to rescue Princess Emeraude, whose magic sustains the land, defeating her kidnapper Zagato. ... They’ve also got a pokemon bunny as a guide. It’s cute?

The book opens with the three girls meeting a boy called Ferio, and adding him to the questing party. After that, they fight a witch, locate a magical crystal in a two dimensional spring (no really. I like this wonderland!) and have to pass a vision quest test in which those they trust the most attack them. Honestly a lot of this book is three girls fighting fantasy battles in the woods, and some strategic recap of book one. 

I’m not fond of the “stating what’s happening to clarify for the audience,” thing that’s going on here, ie. “Hikaru’s sword only appears when she has the will to fight!” and “your will is what allows you to harness the magic of Cephiro!” but I understand that it’s a limitation of the media here if we want to keep moving on. 

Rating: 4/5. I’d watch the Anime. I imagine the previous owner adored this book, because it’s falling apart.

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Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut

Sirens of Titan is the second book in this series I will review, but have not finished. Not, this time, necessarily out of hatred for the book - which is proof that just because someone can write well is no guarantee that their book won’t cheese me off to the point that I won’t finish it. Especially because there is plenty of good stuff in this book, but the bad - the bad is bad on an existential level, and it is something I am just so damn tired of that I can’t even muster the energy to do a long and drawn-out review and figure out a rating. Some of you were around when I reviewed A Plague of Angels. In essence, I had the same problem with this book. I refuse to go on playing along with a plot in which a woman is raped to contribute to the character development of the designated male hero, who is also her rapist. I just flat out refuse. I’m sure Vonnegut’s thoughts on religion, free will, and Mars will show up in other books that do not have this problem. Or maybe if Vonnegut hadn’t counted on his whole audience to sympathize with a rapist we wouldn’t have this goddamn problem. Maybe if Vonnegut hadn’t decided that a perfectly workable female character had to be sacrificed on the altar of the designated male hero’s self-awareness, I would still be reading this book.

I know somebody is going to come by and tell me “it was the 50′s.” WRONG. Historical context does not make henious things less henious. Someone else is going to come and tell me “it’s a classic,” or “but it’s ~literature~” First off, “literature” is the product of marketing, fame, and time, along with a heavy dose of genre snobbery. Your “literature” of the early 2000′s, when examined by future academics, will be Dan Brown because the actual top two authors were writing for people under the age of 20, who apparently don’t count. Second off, “literature” does not mean I magically have to give something a second chance because lots of other people have read it. Sure, there are plenty of good things in the rest of the book, up to where I stopped reading, if you like commentary on militarism or the American upper crust. But, I am disappointed, angry at Heinlein, and angry at a vast body of literature that has decreed that women are to be sacrificed, to be abused and suffer and die, so that a chosen few men can pursue some soplistic philosophical goal. This was bullshit in 1959, and it’s bullshit today. The fact that this book purports to be the story of how that particular man found “the meaning of life,” and a man granted the plot-device of knowing the future arranged this all for his benefit makes this all extra disgusting. Having them joke about it afterward was the final straw. 

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Full Metal Panic, by Shouji Gatou and Retsu Tateo

This is the seventh book in the series and I have NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON.

Okay, so I picked up from context: Kaname is an otherwise ordinary high school girl and Souske is her... bodyguard? Something. He’s ex-military something despite being in high school too. 

The book is set up with every chapter being episodic and pretty self-contained, which made it at least somewhat easier to follow. That said, I have no idea if there is a main plot and this was filler, or if the situation described above is just the comedy set up for the Very Hungry Mouseipillar (no shit, the first chapter is about a mouse chewing perfectly circular holes in people’s lunches and gym shorts,) and other antics like Synchronized swimming, and Kaname making amends with her long-absent grandfather.

Also Kaname gets captured by a teenage gang, who are apparently recurring villains / annoyances. I’m missing context here. Lots of context.  Especially for why the principal of the school seems to believe that Kaname and Souske should act like teenage private eyes and investigate every little weird thing that happens at the school. (Probably I’m missing cultural context too...)

I’ll give this a 3/5. It was amusing, but I was too confused to enjoy some of it. I can’t even tell if I’d watch the anime, because I don’t know if this is filler or not. Would I have enjoyed it more if I’d picked up the first book? Possibly.

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Roadsong, by Allan Gross and Joanna Estep

I’ll be frank with you. We’re abandoning my usual format because what I know about Manga can be fit in a thimble and shipped out to sea. I find it hard to follow comics too, probably because I can’t split my attention between the words and the pictures very well. Also, I spent my teenage years clueless as to what a manga was... we had some somewhere in my high school library, but I had literally zero clue where to start. ... Also I might have spent my teenage years reading A Wizard of Earthsea backstage at drama practice.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that my first impression was to wonder why the spine was on the left, because I was fairly certain that manga faced the other way. When it comes to manga, I’m the pink panther. That said, I liked Roadsong. There’s a lot of cheese - the main dirty-cop villianess has a pet hawk, which made me laugh every time it was brought up. I thought everything surrounding the explosion that kicks off the plot, sending brothers-in law Monty and Simon on the run was confusing, and I don’t know why Monty’s father was the lone survivor (other than Rule of Drama,) but I got invested in all the wrong characters pretty quickly. (By which I mean that everyone I really liked other than Harley Kyle, who sounds like she should be in Gotham, died before chapter three. I really should have read the back.)

After a while I got somewhat invested in Simon, resident awkward goth dork who would really benefit from actually communicating with his girlfriend. Monty didn’t grow on me until he started actually being useful near the end of the book, but it’s a short book. The standout character here is definitely Harley Kyle. I like her name. I like her style. I like her ruthlessness and competence - if the boys weren’t very lucky (and she didn’t actually have to do her regular job too, as well as getting away with trying to kill the boys off,) they wouldn’t have survived the book. I also like that Harley is multifaceted: she’s actually pretty nice to people she isn’t being paid to kill to cover up her involvement in her boss Yamada’s plot to kill Monty McBride’s father. (Ironically, one of the few people he didn’t kill. Seriously, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU BLOW UP A SHIP, YOU DUMBASS.) Towards the end of the book Harley goes out of her way to help Candy, a showgirl at the really sketchy bar where Monty  and Simon have been playing... then gets a clue out of it and goes off to take care of shooting the boys.

I’d give it a 4/5, because while I’d pick up the second volume if I found it cheap, I’m unlikely to track it down. Also because I liked the villain better than either of the main characters... though not quite enough to want her to win.

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Grab Bag Manga Reviews!

Last weekend I went to Acen with castielatemytoast. Now that I am once more a functional human being, it’s time spend the next couple weeks reviewing the manga I picked up there out of a grab bag... because they certainly were secondhand. Since two out of three are later books in a series and I have only minimal experience with manga, (Anime? Yes. Manga? Not much.) this should be an adventure.

The Haul 4: Grab Bag Blues Roadsong, by Allan Gross and Joanna Estep: a book about brothers in law on the run. I got book #1. Magic Knight Rayearth, by CLAMP: Book #2 of a series wherein three schoolgirls are called upon to save the magical land of Cephiro. Fortunately, I have a high tolerance for “transported to a magical kingdom” fantasy, caused by years of heavy reading. (And the sacrifice of my liver.) 

Full Metal Panic, by Shouji Gatou and Retsu Tateo: I still have no idea what exactly this is about, probably because I recieved book #6. Um, the guy is a special agent? He’s the girl’s bodyguard or something? Oh, and they keep being sent by the principal of their high school to do ridiculous things.

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The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, by Diana Wynne Jones

Quick Summary: Although this is technically speaking only sort of a companion book to Wynne Jones’ The Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin, you can read it with or without any knowledge of them. It is essentially part travel guide, part encyclopedia, for your “tour” in Fantasyland. 

First Impressions: DWJ was a massive nerd and I miss her. :( Absolutely do read the introduction, it’s a hoot, covering Maps (an absolute must on any fantasy novel tour of fantasyland) long, nonsensical dedications, and cryptic gobbeldygook made up by the author to put forward as a wise or symbolic saying (henceforth referred to as Gnomic Utterances.)

Review: The book is set up as part encyclopedia, part grab-bag of potential plot elements for a fantasy novel destinations along your tour. The only rule is that you cannot skip to the end, and that you will do three tours, with the second one being disorganized and unremarkable, as middle books of a trilogy often are. DWJ lampoons lazy writing, hackneyed plot contrivance, and cliche characters and locations all the way. 

This book was TVTropes before there was a TVTropes. (Warning: don’t click the link if you’re attached to your free time or sanity.) It also does a very good job of pointing out, in a dry, sneaky manner, the unfortunate implications that come from writing a lot of these cliched settings and plots, and pointing out how the “tourist,” who takes the place of the story’s hero as a self-insert character, is often insulated from the implied or stated terrible fates that occur elsewhere in fantasyland. The sexism inherent in many cliche plots (for instance, that a male tourist (or main character) will eventually have sex with the most attractive woman available at an appropriate time, whereas a female tourist will be required to be deep in True Love with any man she has sex with - yet never worry about birth control or her period) is pointed out, as is the completely screwed up economy and ecology of the world, where horses supposedly breed by pollination, the only insects are biting midges, some flies, and silkworms, no one eats anything but stew, and no country ever manages to import or export anything in particular. The Gnomic Utterances, found at the head of every section, are gems of nonsense, having nothing to do with the section besides starting with the same letter. For example, section M is headed with:

Martas V, Tyrant of Do’olge’thly, always cut one hair fromn his head every day - no more, no less. This, it is said, greatly prolonged his reign, since everyone was waiting to see him with a full haircut.

   Ka’a Orto’o, Gnomic Utterances, CLI vi

There are also many, many references to other fantasy books, though seldom by name. (See the entire entry on Spiders, which “have been forced to evolve into something big enough to entrap dwarfs, gnomes, and small succulent humans.”) In addition, there are some sidebars full of advice, such as “What to Pack for your tour,” giving you a page-long list of a couple hundred pounds of basic supplies, and then noting that you will not have any of these things, and “How to Interact with Wizards.”

Rating: 5/5. If you read or write fantasy, read this book. DWJ sees and judges your moments  of lazy plotting. For that matter, if you read or write Sci-Fi, a little self-awareness will allow you to realize that when you have your strapping space hero surrounded by an alien harem of beautiful green slave women in “Diaphenous Robes” (OMT) you’re really writing the exact cliche that DWJ outlines in Slaves: Female (2), noting that after the hero goes about “assisting them to escape from the exploitative tyrrany under which they have been existing,” the next step is generally sex, “before stranding them in the middle of nowhere to make their way thousands of miles back to their own country.”  It’s also useful if you ever get consumed whole by a cheap fantasy novel, assuming that you keep it in your pocket at all times in order to be completely prepared for that eventuality. But, mostly for writing and constructive criticism, if you’re not the type of person who can’t open their wardrobe without tripping over a fantasy realm.

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The Haul 3: Return of the Haul

So, it’s summer (and garage sale season) once more. Which means that since I have recently become unemployed once again, it’s time to kick up the rate of book reviews. Today’s finds are:

Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov: Because I can’t seem to read Foundation OR Robots in order. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut: Do I know if I like Vonnegut? Actualy, I don’t know, as I have somehow never read anything by him before.

Unfinished Tales by JRR Tolkien, compiled by Christopher Tolkien: Now, if only I could find myself a cheap copy of the Silmarillarion with a pretty cover... I may review this story-by-story, or recap it. Dragon Wing and Elven Star: Books 1 & 2 of the Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman: I will admit that sometimes my tastes run quite simple. In this case, I was caught by the maps in the front of Dragon Wing, which depicts a world where there are not only giant floating sky islands making up the entire landmass, but the apparently orbit each other in needlessly complicated patterns, oh, and there are dragons. Having read a chapter while waiting in line at the rummage sale, I’m predicting entertainment, if not high quality. Lost Horizon by James Hilton: Either I’m going to learn a lot about Tibet or I’m going to develop an extreme, imperialism-fuled rant about the book. The cover is gorgeous though. Previous Grabs: Stalking the Wild Hare: stories from the Gen Con Writers’ Symposium, edited by John Helfers, Chris Pierson, Marc Tassin, and Jean Rabe: This is a book of short stories. I’ll be evaluating them individually, and probably sporadically. Before anyone freaks out about Gen Con and Hugos and bleh, I’ll let you know that this was collected in 2010 and has been sitting around our local library until they had to give it away... though the mint condition of it suggests that I’ll be the first person to open it.  Steampunk: Extraordinary Tales of Victorian Futurism edited by Mike Ashley: This was a birthday present I-dont-know-how-many years back, and I’ll be reviewing stories individually for this as well, on a “when I get to things” basis. 

[secondhand-reviews]

White Thunder

Quick Summary: When a young FBI officer goes missing on the Navajo Reservation near Four Corners, it’s up to Ella Clah to track him down... preferably before the entire FBI comes stomping across the reservation.

First Impressions: I like Ella Clah. Her establishing character moment is yoinking the keys from a dumb young burglar’s car to keep him from speeding off into the desert when he realizes that there’s a cop on the property. I also really like detective stories that deal with culture clash, and the disappearance of an outsider on a Navajo reservation near four corners is going to deliver that in spades. This is the kind of story that would not have worked if Ella had been an average joe white FBI officer: because she is Navajo and grew up on the reservation, she understands the area and is invested in solving the case before it becomes an excuse for the FBI to come stomping around.

Review: As a mystery, it works very well. There are two main problems: where is Agent Thomas, and why is he missing? Since it becomes obvious early on that he isn’t collapsed in the desert within a reasonable distance from the last place he was seen, Ella is forced to put together his latest investigation in order to figure out what kind of trouble he’s gotten himself into.

There were a few rough patches: in particular, Justine and Ella went over a few character development angles unrelated to the mystery multiple times, presumably to check that they were told as well as shown. Some of them - like Ella wishing she could spend some more time with her daughter - made sense as recurring themes, but Bruce Little’s crush on Ella was beaten to death with a shovel. A lot of necessary “as you know” sections, wherein Ella or Justine would bring up plot points from previous books, relevant police procedure that the audience shouldn’t be expected to know, or cultural side-notes (like their love of Navajo breakfast burritos, which was sort of endearing in and of itself) were clunky and broke the rhythm, and would have been better handled in the internal monologue, since the Thurlos just couldn’t swing it with the dialogue. (Their asides to the audience explaining specific words or items are slightly better, if only because it’s not dialogue.) The crime that Agent Thomas was investigating was quite interesting - it was dependent on an understanding of a particular aspect of Navajo culture and funeral practices, which the Thurlos made quite certain that the audience understood early on. The red herrings were also dependent on understanding the interplay of cultures on and around the reservation, but explained enough that the reader could extrapolate as well as follow along. It doesn’t quite qualify as a Fair Play Whodunnit, because we meet one of the culprits fairly late in the book and their guilt is almost immediately confirmed: the rest of the book involves arranging things so that they can both rescue Agent Thomas and catch the culprits at the same time. As a special note: I was full-on convinced for the first few chapters that Agent Thomas was deader than a doormouse, so congratulations to him - he lived! Also, thank you Thurlos, since I get tired of all murders all the time.

That said, the best part of this book is watching Ella navigate the intersection between culture and crime, and the huge variety of sympathetic Navajo characters’ various relationships to their traditions and the pressures of being more or less integrated to mainstream US society.

Rating: 4.5/5 I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite several clunky dialogue and explanation choices. Ella and her colleagues are complex, sympathetic, and competent, and I’d read another Ella Clah novel.

[secondhand-reviews]

Since he was very young he had known that in certain ways he was unlike anyone he knew. For a child the consciousness of such a difference is very painful, since having done nothing yet and being incapable of doing anything, he cannot justify it.

The Disposessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin

[secondhand-reviews]

seeingteacupsindragons, when I complained about my review for The Fires of Merlin, pointed me towards this set of fiction bingo cards. So, because my conclusion is that Fires of Merlin was written by formula while T.A. Barron was busy doing something else, I'm going to play for blackout. Left to right, top to bottom, bold is what I got:

Nouns for Names: Technically speaking, a Merlin is a certain hawk. This almost got a pass because Merlin is a famous mythological character, but... nah. Someone Vomits: In my experience, people faint equally as often in fantasy novels, but surprisingly there was no puke. Drink those problems: Not applicable, it's JYA. Landscape actually a Giant Animal: The enormous boulders that mark the only trustworthy ford over the river are actually nine dragon eggs.  Surprise Asshole: Urnalda's never been friendly, but her sudden betrayal of Merlin is really jarring. Secret Legacy: Count the ways. Merlin is the son of the evil king, the grandson of the most respected wizard the land has ever seen, heir to those magic powers, and supposed to fight everyone's least favorite dragon. Surprise Hero: Valderag the dragon turns out to be only concerned with defending his children and dies fighting Kreelixes to defend one. Action Sequence Banter: Merlin's not very funny, and surprisingly this pretty much never comes up. Mystical Animal Companion: I'm really tempted to count Hallia, because the deer people are pretty much a Symbol of Dagda (TM), but the random black horse Ionn is what counts here. Pale (Human) Male Savior Complex: All the humans in this series are white. And only humans seem to have any relevance to the fate of Fincayra, despite there being at least three functioning non-human societies living there. All the non-humans are flat societies with stereotyped characters, and without the context of the rest of the series, there wouldn't be a single three dimensional female character.

Fridging: No, but the plot goes out of it's way to keep Rhia and Ellen away from the action. Man Pain: Teenage angst, really Free Space: Obligatory prophecy! Deus Ex Machina: Domnu intervenes when the plot is stalled and transports Merlin to her lair to enlist his help in reclaiming the Galator, which was stolen from her. Default Hetero: The annoyance that is this romantic plot tumor. Hallia is the only humanoid girl Merlin's age we've seen on this damn island so far (that isn't his sister, anyway) so of course they fall for each other! Manic Pixie Love Interest: Hallia falls more into the slap-slap-kiss style of cliche female belligerence. Noble Savages: The deer people who are too good and pure and close to Dagda but are persecuted by all other people because they look like tasty venison. Inexplicable Romance: Boy is it ever. Tragic Genius: No. Exotic Character is So Exotic: If I hear "lithe" or "graceful" in relation to Hallia ONE MORE TIME...

Love Triangle: That would require having more than one eligible female character of a similar age to Merlin, so no. Emotion-Controlled Eye Color: Nope! Wise Elder: Cairpre the bard isn't too old, but he's the main mentor who yanks prophecies out of his hat at the drop of a hat. Why is Prophecy not a square on this? I'm taking it for the free space. Faux Medieval Setting: When humans outside of Merlin's family come up, they're living in wattle and daub huts herding sheep.  Dragons: Pretty much the only good part of the book was the baby dragon.  Conclusion: Somehow I managed to get only one bingo. (Far Right Column.)

[secondhand-reviews]

The Fires of Merlin, by T. A. Barron

Somehow, I had a hard time finishing this, though I loved the series in middle school. It must be that I already knew more or less what was going to happen (despite having no memory of the actual book) so I wasn't very excited to see what came next. Also, my radar for "unexplained and unexamined trope bullshit" is much sharper than it was eleven years ago. (I swear to god that Lost Years is at least a four and that on average this might be the worst in the series. Considering that there is no payoff from anything except the romance in Mirror of Merlin, or to my knowledge in Wings of Merlin, I can only presume that this is a useless book.)

Quick Summary: Merlin is still at the beginning of his magical training, but unfortunately someone has woken a dragon once defeated by Merlin's grandfather Tuatha, and there is a prophecy that seems to indicate that only Merlin can defeat him.

First Impressions: *Vague mutterings of "wow this seems really familiar."* Merlin starts out about to complete the first step of his formal magical training, by using a psaltery (some sort of box harp) to call forth magic via music. However, he's interrupted by a message from the dwarf Sorceress Urnalda that the dragon Valderag has woken and is about to flambe her people. Merlin then proceeds to angst that 1) he will now never be a proper wizard because you only get one shot at showing off with your handmade instrument 2) Oh yeah, his mother and his tutor remember a prophecy that Valderag will be defeated by a descendant of Tuatha, but that person won't survive.

This is going to be a long book full of unnecessary teenage angst and misunderstandings, isn't it?

Review: I bought this book under the impression that since I didn't remember squat about the plot, I hadn't read it, though I was pretty sure I'd gone through the entire Young Merlin cycle at one point. (Upon further research, it appears that I read the entirety of it besides Wings of Merlin.) As it turns out, I didn't remember it because it contributes practically nothing to the series as a whole. On it's own, it's a very thin plot that requires lots of wandering around aimlessly to meet all the required allies and a very flat beginning of a romance between Merlin and Hallia, who is a deer-shifter. It wouldn't be bad - I like both characters individually - but they have zero chemistry and Hallia starts out extremely suspicious of Merlin because humans have done bad things (TM) to her clan before. I'd say she has reason to doubt Merlin's trustworthiness, but Barron clearly thinks she doesn't, because her wiser older brother instantly likes Merlin, and it all gets brushed under the rug. Even if we ignore the weak stab at a romantic plot tumor, the plot of Fires of Merlin is extremely weak and repetitive for this series when you consider what's gone before. (Skip the inset to avoid spoilers.)

In previous books, Merlin has:

1) Lost Years of Merlin: discovered his magic, lost control of said magic, lost his sight in the resulting fire, begun to use his "second sight" which has been steadily improving but will (probably) never match up exactly to regular sight, gone to the magic isle of Fincayra, met his long-lost sister Rhia, learned that his father, the king of Fincayra, is a tyrant, lost The Galator (a fairly unexplained McGuffin) to Domnu, who might be one of the three fates or some other folkloric figure, overthrown his father the king, (Though whoever named him Stagmar should really have seen the evil-overlord thing coming,) and completed a prophecy with a twist. 2) The Seven Songs of Merlin: Gone on a quest to learn "The Seven Songs of Wizardy" so he can go to the otherworld to get the Elixir of Life and save his mother's life from um, some evil sickness that I forgot the plot reason for. Incidentally, this means that he has to claim his birthright as a wizard (and his grandfather's staff) and follow the instructions in a song that is really a prophecy. Oh, and Rhia is conveniently not available to help him on his quest because she's off with her magical harp McGuffin using it to heal the land, and also helping to distribute some of the other helpful artifacts that Stagmar had been hording until the end of the last book.

So, by the third book in the series, it's no wonder that there is a vague rhyming prophecy that everyone interprets wrong, that Merlin clearly has a lot of magical mojo, and that T.A. Barron will never let Rhiannon, clearly the sibling better suited to going on magical quests in Fincayra, have any role more intense than "glorified tour guide." 

Which makes me angry. WHY IN HELL IS RHIA NOT IN THEIR INTERPRETATION OF THE PROPHECY? She's the daughter of Stagmar, granddaughter of Tuatha, knows oodles more than Merlin about Fincayra because she's lived there all her life, and has good tracking and hunting skills, as well as being okay at healing and making a habit of talking to trees. Nothing in the prophecy says "he." The only thing in the prophecy that even seems to point to Merlin ("Descended from enemies fought long ago") applies equally to Rhia. The prophecy as it stands can't refer to the actual defeater of Valderag and still be specific enough to include Merlin but exclude Rhia, so Barron just waves it aside. 

T.A. Barron: No, it has to be Merlin, and he's totally going to die! Me: There are two more books and people have sacrificed themselves to save Merlin like three times aready. Come on, I didn't fall for that when I was twelve.

So, Rhia has to stay behind for two reasons. Mostly, because she is female and therefore has to stay behind to give their mother emotional support (because everyone thinks Merlin’s gonna die,) but also because these books are only about Merlin and if Rhia was along she'd slap her brother out of his stupid angst coma after he "loses his powers."

... Which brings me to Urnalda. In the previous book, Urnalda was sort of a trickster mentor that helped Merlin learn important life lessons (TM) but was cranky and had an abrasive accent. Here, her dwarves have been reduced to buffoonery, her accent drives me up the wall (I've begun to hate rendered accents when they're used to reinforce stereotypes anyway: this one is both really, really annoying and definitely made to reinforce that the dwarves are uneducated and uncouth,) and she "takes Merlin's magic," by basically tricking him into thinking it's gone. (Yes, I recognize that makes no sense. It makes no better sense in the book except that Merlin is the kind of idiot who will believe anything he's told about magic and is going through his mandated YA hero 'year of angst' right now. He's a prime target for the placebo effect. I can tell you that this is probably the stupidest he gets in the entire series.)

So, Merlin totally has no more powers guys, because Urnalda can just take them with no preparation and more importantly, NO INDICATION WHATSOEVER in the previous two books that this is even possible. So he has to do this quest the hard way! Except... that shouldn't work. Merlin should be Dead with a capital D in this case. Because immediately after Urnalda contacted him in the first chapter, he was attacked by a Kreelix - basically a bat-thing that detects magic and tries to eat anyone who does magic. They're also hella poisionous, like one touch of the fang is instant death. (Rhia offs the one that goes after him on her turf by getting the trees to smash it to a pulp. This is why she's the cooler sibling.) Kreelixes can pretty much sense who has a magical talent, track them down even if they're not doing any magic at the time (because their response time to Merlin is ridiculously short,) and then try and kill them. Being targeted by Kreelixes = you fucking have magic. 

Merlin gets periodically attacked by Kreelixes throughout the book, but always in a situation where he can be an idiot and say "Oh no, they attacked because Eremon gave me the gift of turning into a Stag, they must have detected that magic and killed Eremon!" Which doesn't work, because anyone who has ever read a book before, let alone the prequels to this, would be able to recognize that the Kreelix went directly for Merlin and Eremon died because he got in the way. Hallia, who was just as magic due to being a deer person, was completely ignored by the Kreelix. (I'm not going to go into the fact that the deer people can give friends the temporary ability to transform and go jogging with them, but only by cutting off a bit of the stag's horn. Largely because I can do an entire rant on lazy YA fantasy writing and feminism on this book alone. The other ones are not nearly so bad.)

Other things that our "wise" wizard is in denial about:

Merlin: None of this can be traced to our archetype of evil, Rhita Gawr! That would be too much of a coincidence! [Later] I can't believe that you have been tricked into doing Rhita Gawr's work! Merlin: Hallia totally hates me because her brother died defending me. [Later] Hallia totally has a thing for me. (Admittedly, that's getting into the next book, but if you're paying attention by the end you can see it. It's drowning in cliches.) Merlin: I will never get a second chance to be a proper wizard! Every fucking event in the series: Merlin will use his massive magical power to make shit less fucked up!

This has been a lot of ranting for a tiny scrap of actual plot that's in this book. Other things that I should mention are:

- There was a matched set of magical McGuffins that needed to be redistributed to the people of Fincayra after book one, but apparently that was only for the humans? Except there are literally a couple of hundred vanilla humans on the entire island according to who shows up in this book (and how many humans are in the series as a whole,) and every other people has their own governmental system, meaning that Stagmar basically controlled a bunch of people in dirt huts. Anyway, all potentially interesting plotlines about how Fincayra works are ignored by this book, so it shouldn’t matter. Hell, Fincayra is ignored, which is a terrible thing for a book set on the enchanted island of adventure.

- The geography of Fincayra is whack. It takes a day and a half to get from somewhere in Druma wood to the crossing into the dwarf lands on foot. Then it takes several hours to make it to the main ford with the "boulders" on the map. Then it takes like most of a day to climb up a beach to a volcano down on the far southeast coast of the island. Then Merlin rides the length of the damn island back to the dwarf lands on horseback in tops, about eight hours. Barron just didn't care where anything happened in this book, or even whether this book made sense.

Rating: 2/5 It’s readable, especially if you’re eleven, dying for wizards, and oblivious to tropes or geography. The rest of the series - or at the very least, Lost Years of Merlin, is better. But this was an illogical mess full of whining, an unnecessary awkward stab at romance between two bratty fifteen-year-olds, violently repetitive complete denial, and Barron not caring about anything he'd established in this world so far. I struggled to finish it because if Merlin mused about how I will never get my powers back or This can't be connected to Rhita Gawr one more time I was going to throw the book. For bonus points, nothing that happens in this book besides Merlin meeting Hallia will be relevant in any of the following books, or the sequel series. Barron also periodically forgets that Merlin's second sight is not supposed to be very good at seeing color and was, at least in the first book, complete crap in the dark. Coming up: I play Fantasy Trope Bingo with Fires of Merlin!