Any World (That I'm Welcome To)

I've loved C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake mystery series for years. A few weeks ago, I found out that (a) it was now a TV series, and the first season (based on the first book, Dissolution) had just been released, and (b) Sansom had died a few days prior after a long illness. I hope he got to watch the show first, and that he liked how the adaptation turned out.

I thought it turned out pretty well! They do a fantastic job creating a looming, threatening, and just plain spooky atmosphere at the monastery, freezing and isolated on the high point rising from a boggy marsh. Sean Bean is as fantastic a Cromwell as you could wish for. ( Read more... )

Another book series recommendation, as spoiler-free as possible. Science fiction, partly near-future dystopian murder mystery and partly alien planet colonization mystery-ish, and notable for its nuanced treatment of mental illness. The books in publication order are Planetfall, After Atlas, Before Mars, and Atlas Alone.

The setup: the Atlas project took a thousand of Earth’s best and brightest off to seek God on an alien planet, leaving behind a time capsule to be opened forty years after its departure. Shortly afterward, a lot of Earth governments collapsed amidst massive riots. Now many areas are controlled by corporations which have taken over government functions, nearly everyone has artificial intelligence implants in their brains, and those implants are useful tools for the gov corps to control the unwillingly-indentured servants they’ve invested in training.

Interestingly, the reading order is flexible. Planetfall-the-book follows the colonists on the alien planet, while After Atlas and Before Mars happen at roughly the same time on Earth and Mars, and there’s no contact between the colony and our solar system. So you could read Planetfall first or last, and could potentially read Before Mars before After Atlas — which would change which book you would read knowing a looming Event was about to change the characters’ lives in drastic ways. Atlas Alone is really the only one you couldn’t read first, because it continues the story of some characters from After Atlas. If anyone reads the books in a different order, let me know what the experience is like!

The books all have mystery elements, especially the latter three. After Atlas is a straight-up mystery with a detective protagonist, while Before Mars kicks off with the main character discovering a warning in her own handwriting which she doesn’t remember writing (oh, and her wedding ring has been replaced by a fake, and there are footprints where no human should ever have walked…). Atlas Alone has a mysterious figure who communicates only via neural implant, a virtual reality game which somehow causes a real death, and ship’s crew who are probably up to no good. But the books are strongly character-driven as well, because you can have it all: plot and character and cool worldbuilding! The characters need to face their traumas, learn to have emotionally intimate connections with other human beings, and survive or improve their circumstances if possible. Not that this is easy or that they necessarily succeed on all counts…

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If this sounds at all like your cup of tea, please borrow the books from your library or buy them if that’s an option and improve the odds of a Book 5 a bit.

On a Jane Austen kick, obviously. I'd seen the 1995 Ang Lee movie adaptation of Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and Alan Rickman, of course. I recently saw the 2008 mini-series with Charity Wakefield and Dominic Cooper and the 1981 mini-series with Irene Richards and Tracey Childs. ( Spoilers for a very old book. )

I believe I mentioned that I really liked Claudia Gray's The Murder of Mr. Wickham? And that she managed to deliver fanservice in an impressively disciplined way where it all supported the contained story of the novel rather than cramming in everything and the kitchen sink? Here's an example, for anyone else who reads or writes fanfic.

( Minor spoiler for a fact revealed fairly early on. )

In some ways, this is very different from The 7 ½ Lives of Evelyn Hardcastle. There are a lot of things I really liked about it! And then there are those few frustrating bits, especially at the end.

It’s the 17th century, and Arent Hayes is the bodyguard and “Watson” for Samuel Pipps, a brilliant solver of mysteries. Unfortunately, Sammy has been arrested for mysterious reasons, and they’re about to board a ship from Batavia back to Amsterdam for his trial and probable execution. Arent drops a lot of asides about their previous cases and does a good job of giving us the impression that we’ve read the serialized adventures of Sammy Pipps and are now changing up the format with a tale from his sidekick’s point of view instead. Can Watson solve the mystery with Holmes locked in the brig?

Because there is definitely something wrong on the ship. First, a leper gives them all a mysterious warning and bursts into flames before they’ve even boarded. Then they unfurl the sail to reveal the symbol of Old Tom, a frightening devil who possessed a bunch of witches and lepers across Europe a while back. As the ship sails on, more dark and apparently supernatural happenings haunt the passengers and crew. Arent gets some help from Sara, the wife of the Governor-General who had Sammy arrested. She’s finally cracking under the strain of obeying her cruel husband and protecting her young daughter, who is too brilliant an inventor for most men in their society to tolerate. Being too smart tends to make people accuse you of having made a bargain with Old Tom…
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I've enjoyed most of Kate Elliott's books, so of course I checked out her new novella The Servant Mage as soon as I could. I...mostly really liked it. Fellian is a Lamplighter, a fire mage bound to indentured servitude under the relatively-new Liberationist regime. The Liberationists overthrew the dragon-elemental Monarchy in the name of equality and freedom and promptly set about oppressing everyone but the new ruling party, as you'd expect. Then a band of rebel Monarchists offer Fellian a chance to escape if she'll use her powers to help them rescue a royal baby before the Liberationists murder it. They show her that she's capable of much more than the Liberationists claim, and that her power doesn't spring from the contamination of an evil demon after all. But can she trust the Monarchists either?

Spoilers from here on out. ( Spoilers spoilers! Stop reading if you don't want spoilers! )

Short version: this book is really fun and well-written. If you are at all interested in the adventures of sixteen-year-old Leia, read it!

A few minor spoilers, but I've mostly tried to avoid them.

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I haven't read any Frog and Toad since I was about six year old. Based on this short (under four minutes) claymation adaptation of one of their stories, I've been missing out. Look how perfectly they capture the eternal struggle not to binge on cookies in just three lines:

FROG: *puts cookies in box* There. Now we will not eat any more cookies.
TOAD: But we can open the box.
FROG: That is true.

What was that willpower thing you mentioned again, Frog?

Seriously, though, it does an amazing job of introducing a relatable character dilemma, showing the struggle, and resolving it (for a certain value of resolving, anyway) in a way which is very concise but also clear and puts you right in the moment with them. It probably helps that we've all been there, whether it's with cookies or some other food or activity which will have negative effects if we over-indulge, but still. I feel like I should be taking notes on writing technique.

There is a lot to like about Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma series, but also plenty that is... well, bad. Every time I read one, I am annoyed and wonder if I should just quit reading. Yet I have read about thirty of the damned things, and am almost certainly going to read that new one my library just got an ebook copy of.

And you know, I'm going to try to stop feeling guilty about "wasting" my time like that. Okay, so parts of the books really, really irritate me. But obviously not enough to stop me from liking the good parts, so maybe I can just let myself be at peace with feeling conflicted and read on.

Anyway, in case anyone's curious, this is a historical mystery series set in 7th-century Ireland. Fidelma was born into the royal family of the kingdom of Muman, studied Irish law and qualified to practice (which women were legally allowed to do in Ireland at the time, turns out), and joined a religious house basically because it was a good career move. She teams up with Brother Eadulf the Angle (to his eternal annoyance, everyone keeps calling him a Saxon) at the Synod of Whitby, and they fight crime!

I will skip all of the possible complaints about characterization and such (I could make a few). And the historical arguments, because questions like how many Britons the Saxons and Angles killed vs. assimilated are races I don't have horses in. Tremayne definitely has opinions about things like that, and about whether ancient Ireland and the Celtic Church were way better than their neighbors, but he's so obviously in love with his subject that it's kind of charming. (I might feel differently if I had a stake in the answers.) Besides, given a choice between "society which at least doesn't legally bar you from any professions even if there are still social barriers" vs. "society which absolutely legally bars you from a whole lot," well, the first might not be paradise but I'd probably pick that one.

No, let me warn you about the writing. Characters have way, way too many conversations like this:

"As you know, Bocc, I am the rechtaire, or steward, of this abbey, which means that I am in charge of a lot of stuff."

"Why, yes, I did know that, since I also live here and have known you for years. Also we are speaking ancient Irish, which is my native language, so you didn't need to translate 'rechtaire.' That sure sounded peculiar, randomly repeating yourself like that. Or were you actually giving me the Latin title? I couldn't tell."

"Let's say it's the Latin, for that at least makes more sense than telling you what the word might be in the language of the Saxons as it is spoken fourteen centuries from now. Perhaps I have spent too much time in the tech-screpta, which is the library. I also feel a sudden urge to explain that in our society, children are usually sent to be fostered by another family at the age of seven."

"I know that also, having grown up here and been fostered myself. Why don't you let the narrative voice explain these things? You really are overtaxing yourself, and the readers' suspension of disbelief."

I am only slightly exaggerating.

But on the plus side, the author has an amazing knack for making ancient law sound really compelling. He catches your attention with the more obviously murder-related laws, like how you get compensated with cows (in a set number depending on your status) if your relative is murdered. Ooh, motive to kill a relative and frame someone whose family can pay! Then you get into how a foreign husband's social status depending entirely on his Irish wife puts serious strain on their relationship, because legal inequality is awful even if both parties love each other and don't take advantage of that inequality. And eventually you realize you're going, "Wait, each jurisdiction is required to maintain a hospital where even the poorest can receive care, and there are regulations to make sure is has good ventilation and fresh water? Tell me more!" That's pretty impressive.

Maybe if I pretend I'm just studying the books to see what techniques can make millions of readers interested in obscure points of ancient law, I can finally make the part of my brain that feels guilty for reading them shut up.

I've been thinking again about the Imperial Radch trilogy (Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy), and how differently the trilogy progresses from what I'm used to: instead of Breq acting on a wider and wider scale with each book and leading an increasingly huge revolution, the action stays relatively personal and local, and the revolution involves very few explosions and relatively little shooting. I think this difference is one of the things I love about it.

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You don't have to be the best or the most powerful or the center of attention to matter, or to make a difference: that's what these books say to me. And I love them for it.