Recent-ish reading (novels)
Feb. 2nd, 2026 05:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glaurungRobert O'Brien, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.
Saw this on my mother's shelf and took it home. Re-read it for the first time since I was a teenager and it remained enjoyable, although I found myself questioning many of the book's fundamental assumptions - Before NIMH, were the rats actually living by stealing? Of course not, they were living off what the humans threw away. Does it make sense for them to give up machines and electricity in their new home out in the wilderness? No, not at all. They could build a watermill on the stream and use that to generate their own power and create their own industry.
Nicola Griffith, Hild
Absolutely brilliant. The sequel, Menewood, is on my TBR shelf and I am looking forward to it very much.
Martha Wells, Queen Demon.
This is the sequel to Witch King, continuing the story of Kai and his friends, in what is now called the Rising World series. Like the first volume, it alternates between chapters set during a war against genocidal necromancers (Hierarchs) who are attempting to conquer the world and kill everyone in it who they don't consider useful, and eighty years later as the surviving rebels work to rebuild a depopulated world.
The story in the past continues the narrative of the first volume, as the rebellion, having destroyed the Hierarch capitol, seeks to defeat remaining Hierarch forces before they can muster enough death magic to slaughter the rebel army and end the incipient rebellion. Eighty years later, Kai doesn't have time to deal with the political situation in the Rising World's government that resulted in his kidnapping and entombment (in volume 1), as an archaeological expedition to the Hierarch's homeland in the far south has uncovered evidence of renewed Hierarch activity.
I found myself wondering as I read this - what was the Hierarch's grand plan, since their approach of killing almost everyone seemed self-defeating (what good is it to be unquestioned ruler of an empty world)? Wells did not disappoint and my question was answered in the end. Like the first volume, although it ends with lots of unresolved questions to be addressed in the next book, it is a self-contained story.
Martha Wells, Element of Fire.
This was Wells' first novel, and the first instalment of her Ile-Rien series. The setting is post-medieval, with the kingdom of Ile-Rien being a fantasy version of early 17th century France, only instead of Louis XIV, we have the Dowager Queen Ravenna, who is clearly based off of Elizabeth I, continuing to hold a great deal of power as her less than competent son Roland sits on the throne. An uneasy peace exists between Ile-Rien, where both Christianity and pagan worship is tolerated, and Bisra, where a Christian government outlaws other religions and brutally suppresses all heresy and dissent. Ravenna's late husband Fulstan had an affair with Moire, the Queen of Air and Darkness of the kingdom of Faery. Moire was banished to Hell after losing a bet with Queen Titania, leaving Kade to be raised by her father, but she's been exiled from court for several years as the story opens. Ravenna is working to establish absolute monarchy in the realm, requiring all nobles to raze any fortifications on their estates. Intrigues and plots amongst the noble courtiers are rife. Wells is careful to detail the elaborate fashions and headgear of the courtiers.
As the story opens, the captain of the Queen's guard, Thomas Boniface, is breaking into an evil wizard's tower to free a kidnapped sorcerer, whose expertise is necessary to renew the magical wards on the palace. Meanwhile Kade has joined a theatrical troupe in order to get into the court and petition Ravenna and Roland for permission to return home. The opening chapters toss you into the deep end of the court's complexities and intrigues, but I never felt lost or that I needed a scorecard to keep track of everyone.
The book's main deficiency was the laser focus on upper class people - there weren't any chapters from the point of view of servants, and darn few named characters who weren't of the nobility. Characters are also markedly less multi-racial than in Well's later work. That aside, as first novels go, it's well above average and worth your time.
I have bought the rest of the Ile-Rien books and will read them soon.
Morgan was a huge Mercedes Lackey fan, and even after multiple culls we had two entire shelves full of her books. I finally got around to reading some of them.
Burning Water (Diana Tregarde series): I regret reading this and won't touch any more of the series. I normally like urban fantasy, but copaganda is a big turn off, and I found the premise (the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca is seeking to return to power and banish the White invaders by having his followers perform blood sacrifices in Houston, rather than in Mexico City for reasons that are never properly explained) annoyingly racist.
The Complete Arrows Trilogy (Valdemar series):
One of those books that feels like it wants to be YA (young protagonist who is Very Special, characters with simple motivations and problems, straightforward conflicts where there's never any question of who's good and who's bad), only for adults. A lot of the conflict and drama depended on characters acting like complete idiots, and I rolled my eyes a lot at how special and sparkly the Companion horses were. But it was nonetheless somewhere between OK and good? I'm not eager to put another one of the many trilogies in the series on my TBR list, but I'm not wanting to banish the book to the upstairs shelf where I keep authors Morgan adored but I don't like.
Elizabeth Moon is another author Morgan kept through multiple culls who I had never read. I decided it was time to check her stuff out.
Sassinak was sitting on the shelf, so I gave it a try, and abandoned it after a couple chapters. It was very obviously a genderswapped retelling of Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy, only done much more poorly.
Because I know Morgan had very good taste, I decided to give Moon another chance. The complete Paksenarrion series was also on the shelf, but I didn't feel like fantasy at the time, so I bought Moon's mil SF Serrano series and read that. And found myself checking the publication date because a lot of things in it felt very similar to Weber's Honor Harrington books. Extremely competent starship captain? check. Future with life-prolonging drugs? Check. Good space empire governed by nobility? check. Evil scheming bad space empire with complicated plots to undermine/overthrow the good empire? Check. Evil space empire a laughable stereotyped caricature? Check (Space Communists for Weber, Space Mafia (no, seriously) for Moon). A visit to the planet of Space Fundamentalists who treat women as property? check.
The first Serrano book and the first Honor Harrington book came out the same year from the same publisher (Baen), so the similarities are probably due to the preferences of Jim Baen, or else they were both borrowing from some earlier Mil-SF ur-text.
That said, the Serrano series, despite having far too much about horses and horse riding for my taste, was easily ten times better than the Honor Harrington series. Only a few of the books contained space battles (instead of every single one), there was refreshingly little infodumping or long appendixes explaining the physics of space travel, the stories did not *drip* with the author's complete contempt for anyone and everyone left of Mussolini (as everything by Weber does), and Moon actually spent time thinking about the consequences of her setting's Baen-required tropes (for instance, one plotline running through the series is the problems created by rejuvenation technology, how it threatens to ossify society and especially leadership, and the pro- and anti-rejuv political factions created by such problems. Weber spends zero time thinking about the consequences of the rejuv tech in his universe).
I enjoyed the Serrano series, but found myself Really Quite Tired of fictional oligarchies and of discovering that even the underdog characters turn out to be of noble blood. I might check out the Paksenarrion series someday, but not anytime soon.
Saw this on my mother's shelf and took it home. Re-read it for the first time since I was a teenager and it remained enjoyable, although I found myself questioning many of the book's fundamental assumptions - Before NIMH, were the rats actually living by stealing? Of course not, they were living off what the humans threw away. Does it make sense for them to give up machines and electricity in their new home out in the wilderness? No, not at all. They could build a watermill on the stream and use that to generate their own power and create their own industry.
Nicola Griffith, Hild
Absolutely brilliant. The sequel, Menewood, is on my TBR shelf and I am looking forward to it very much.
Martha Wells, Queen Demon.
This is the sequel to Witch King, continuing the story of Kai and his friends, in what is now called the Rising World series. Like the first volume, it alternates between chapters set during a war against genocidal necromancers (Hierarchs) who are attempting to conquer the world and kill everyone in it who they don't consider useful, and eighty years later as the surviving rebels work to rebuild a depopulated world.
The story in the past continues the narrative of the first volume, as the rebellion, having destroyed the Hierarch capitol, seeks to defeat remaining Hierarch forces before they can muster enough death magic to slaughter the rebel army and end the incipient rebellion. Eighty years later, Kai doesn't have time to deal with the political situation in the Rising World's government that resulted in his kidnapping and entombment (in volume 1), as an archaeological expedition to the Hierarch's homeland in the far south has uncovered evidence of renewed Hierarch activity.
I found myself wondering as I read this - what was the Hierarch's grand plan, since their approach of killing almost everyone seemed self-defeating (what good is it to be unquestioned ruler of an empty world)? Wells did not disappoint and my question was answered in the end. Like the first volume, although it ends with lots of unresolved questions to be addressed in the next book, it is a self-contained story.
Martha Wells, Element of Fire.
This was Wells' first novel, and the first instalment of her Ile-Rien series. The setting is post-medieval, with the kingdom of Ile-Rien being a fantasy version of early 17th century France, only instead of Louis XIV, we have the Dowager Queen Ravenna, who is clearly based off of Elizabeth I, continuing to hold a great deal of power as her less than competent son Roland sits on the throne. An uneasy peace exists between Ile-Rien, where both Christianity and pagan worship is tolerated, and Bisra, where a Christian government outlaws other religions and brutally suppresses all heresy and dissent. Ravenna's late husband Fulstan had an affair with Moire, the Queen of Air and Darkness of the kingdom of Faery. Moire was banished to Hell after losing a bet with Queen Titania, leaving Kade to be raised by her father, but she's been exiled from court for several years as the story opens. Ravenna is working to establish absolute monarchy in the realm, requiring all nobles to raze any fortifications on their estates. Intrigues and plots amongst the noble courtiers are rife. Wells is careful to detail the elaborate fashions and headgear of the courtiers.
As the story opens, the captain of the Queen's guard, Thomas Boniface, is breaking into an evil wizard's tower to free a kidnapped sorcerer, whose expertise is necessary to renew the magical wards on the palace. Meanwhile Kade has joined a theatrical troupe in order to get into the court and petition Ravenna and Roland for permission to return home. The opening chapters toss you into the deep end of the court's complexities and intrigues, but I never felt lost or that I needed a scorecard to keep track of everyone.
The book's main deficiency was the laser focus on upper class people - there weren't any chapters from the point of view of servants, and darn few named characters who weren't of the nobility. Characters are also markedly less multi-racial than in Well's later work. That aside, as first novels go, it's well above average and worth your time.
I have bought the rest of the Ile-Rien books and will read them soon.
Morgan was a huge Mercedes Lackey fan, and even after multiple culls we had two entire shelves full of her books. I finally got around to reading some of them.
Burning Water (Diana Tregarde series): I regret reading this and won't touch any more of the series. I normally like urban fantasy, but copaganda is a big turn off, and I found the premise (the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca is seeking to return to power and banish the White invaders by having his followers perform blood sacrifices in Houston, rather than in Mexico City for reasons that are never properly explained) annoyingly racist.
The Complete Arrows Trilogy (Valdemar series):
One of those books that feels like it wants to be YA (young protagonist who is Very Special, characters with simple motivations and problems, straightforward conflicts where there's never any question of who's good and who's bad), only for adults. A lot of the conflict and drama depended on characters acting like complete idiots, and I rolled my eyes a lot at how special and sparkly the Companion horses were. But it was nonetheless somewhere between OK and good? I'm not eager to put another one of the many trilogies in the series on my TBR list, but I'm not wanting to banish the book to the upstairs shelf where I keep authors Morgan adored but I don't like.
Elizabeth Moon is another author Morgan kept through multiple culls who I had never read. I decided it was time to check her stuff out.
Sassinak was sitting on the shelf, so I gave it a try, and abandoned it after a couple chapters. It was very obviously a genderswapped retelling of Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy, only done much more poorly.
Because I know Morgan had very good taste, I decided to give Moon another chance. The complete Paksenarrion series was also on the shelf, but I didn't feel like fantasy at the time, so I bought Moon's mil SF Serrano series and read that. And found myself checking the publication date because a lot of things in it felt very similar to Weber's Honor Harrington books. Extremely competent starship captain? check. Future with life-prolonging drugs? Check. Good space empire governed by nobility? check. Evil scheming bad space empire with complicated plots to undermine/overthrow the good empire? Check. Evil space empire a laughable stereotyped caricature? Check (Space Communists for Weber, Space Mafia (no, seriously) for Moon). A visit to the planet of Space Fundamentalists who treat women as property? check.
The first Serrano book and the first Honor Harrington book came out the same year from the same publisher (Baen), so the similarities are probably due to the preferences of Jim Baen, or else they were both borrowing from some earlier Mil-SF ur-text.
That said, the Serrano series, despite having far too much about horses and horse riding for my taste, was easily ten times better than the Honor Harrington series. Only a few of the books contained space battles (instead of every single one), there was refreshingly little infodumping or long appendixes explaining the physics of space travel, the stories did not *drip* with the author's complete contempt for anyone and everyone left of Mussolini (as everything by Weber does), and Moon actually spent time thinking about the consequences of her setting's Baen-required tropes (for instance, one plotline running through the series is the problems created by rejuvenation technology, how it threatens to ossify society and especially leadership, and the pro- and anti-rejuv political factions created by such problems. Weber spends zero time thinking about the consequences of the rejuv tech in his universe).
I enjoyed the Serrano series, but found myself Really Quite Tired of fictional oligarchies and of discovering that even the underdog characters turn out to be of noble blood. I might check out the Paksenarrion series someday, but not anytime soon.