A Fistful of Charms by Kim Harrison

Fiction, urban fantasy. Just released fourth volume in her Rachel Morgan series. This is a road trip book, taking Rachel (witch), and eventually Ivy (living vampire), out of town with a newly reconciled Jencks (pixie) to chase after Nick (human) the ex boyfriend and thief, a potentially powerful artifact, and a lot of werewolves. It’s funny, because though things do happen here and the plot carries forward, I am left with the impression of a placeholder book. Which is still not a bad thing, mind you, and I think Harrison’s instinct to get the original three out of the Hollows for a while is a good one. She’s developing as a writer – the climax of this book has some lovely, aching thematic overtones as Rachel tries to save/kill a living vampire who is in constant, excruciating agony from an unnamed illness. I think this is the first time Harrison’s managed to weave plot and theme together so neatly – she’s getting the trick of letting the plot follow the heart of the story, rather than the other way around, I think. Also, the pixies are hilarious and fascinating – toothbrushes! Karaoke!

Still, I did miss the usual supporting cast, particularly Trent (please go there, you’d better go there) and I was not quite convinced by the evolution of Rachel and Ivy’s complicated relationship as friends/colleagues/potential lovers/savior and vampire supplicant. It’s one of those things that make sense on analysis, but which on reading is viscerally startling and out-of-left field. And I suppose that’s how it would feel, but in this case, my sense of literary form and my sense of how people operate were not both satisfied.

A good book, though, and I’m quite impatient for the next, which should plunge us solidly back into the Hollows and Rachel’s wider life there.

Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough

Nonfiction. Combination biography of Teddy Roosevelt’s early years and historical portrait of a time and class. This is a book which emphasizes letters, much to my pleasure. McCullough writes good history in the way that he can pick just the right details to give you as complete a picture of people as possible without droning on for pages about, oh just for an example, what George Washington ate for breakfast on each successive day of the week. The portrait of aristocratic life in New York in the last decades of the nineteenth century is vivid in its privilege. Teddy’s story, when it slowly emerges from the background detail, is irritating in the way that he is a man who succeeded given every possible advantage and opportunity to do so. This should not, but does, lessen the impact of his expansive personality and intellect. I really don’t like this sort of reverse classism in myself or others, but I did eventually stop mentally deconstructing it when I got to the part about Teddy, the great outdoorsman, going out west with a bowie knife made by Tiffany’s. Because some things you’ve just got to laugh at. Still, this is an intriguing portrait of the family and Teddy’s early years, particularly the impact of his childhood battles with asthma and prolonged illness.

Unnatural Death, Strong Poison, and Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers

Fiction, historical mysteries. Lord Peter Wimsey inquires into the apparently innocent death of an elderly lady from miles away, acquits a woman accused of poisoning her lover, fails to get her to marry him, and goes undercover in an advertising agency to solve a murder and eventually crack an enormous drug trafficking ring. The first did not do much for me aside from the baseline Sayers cleverness and way of making me actually like historical British mysteries featuring the upper class. Which is to say that it’s an excellent book, and I hold particular authors to very high standards. Strong Poison is interesting, if only to see Peter agonizing over something which he has previously called a lark. The thing about Peter is that he has spent so long pretending the fool that he nearly believes it himself. It’s safer that way, judging by the short personal history slipped in at the front of Unnatural Death. Watching him not just touched by a case, but tormented, was engrossing.

As for Murder Must Advertise, there is no other word than romp. Glorious romp, in fact. I don’t think I’ve had that much fun in weeks. It’s hilarious, full
of off-color jokes and office personalities and politics, and I spent a lot of time grinning and muttering “oh, Peter.” But the book is not just a game; there is something watching and sad and deeply pensive here. I suspect it is Sayers herself.

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

Nonfiction, epistolary. Reprints of many letters the New York author exchanged with the staff of an English bookshop in the decades following World War II. Delightful. Shockingly, I am thoroughly charmed by the story of a previous generation who connected with people in far off places through the power of the written word in order to talk about something they all loved. You’re all stunned, I know. This book just made me happy, particularly as the careful reader can sense deep complexities under the surface and in the letters which are not printed. One of the final letters, after the author is informed that Frank, her first and most steadfast correspondent has died, is from Frank’s wife and it just made me wistful and pleased to belong to the human race.

The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold

Fiction, fantasy. Third in her Five Gods universe, dealing with the son. I liked this better a year and a reread later. It is very much a Bujold book, by which I mean that the main character, while operating within the inner circles of power, has some affliction (curse and blessing) which makes him an outsider to the society he works to serve. In this case the affliction is the possession of an animal spirit. Which is why, I think, I enjoyed this book but it did not grab me by the heart and gut like Curse of Chalion did – the structure of the magic and Ingrey’s role in the story ensure that he has only a passing contact with the gods of the universe. And that’s the highlight of the series for me, the way damaged people are placed in the path of indescribably vast power, and how the power itself does not so much change them, but the having of it compels them to change themselves. It’s the best of both worlds, really – books that push my destiny button but also insist on absolute personal responsibility. That is not as true in this book, partly because the new magic here is not quite as compelling to me personally. Also, I feel like the canvas is just a bit too crowded – the five people who do have prolonged contact with the gods plus the additional two or three magical practitioners dragged into the final tableau are a bit much for a book with close third narration on a single person. It leaves them all deftly but over quickly sketched, so they are a bit more caricatures of strengths and flaws than I would like.

It is still a very good book, though. Ingrey is a Bujold protagonist, and by that I mean that he is very often unaware of the ways he is extraordinary. The villain is also thoroughly creepifying, and I particularly like the way the book ends, tied up neatly but with threads of uncertainty and loss and future trial woven in, much like life.

Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril, Summer Knight, and Death Masks by Jim Butcher

Fiction, urban fantasy. First five books in the Harry Dresden series – “the other wizard Harry,” as the deeply unfortunate cover copy says. Himself is the only wizard in the Chicago yellow pages, and he’s got that whole hard-luck, snarky, “I have a tragic past” noir private eye thing going. By far Butcher’s strongest suit is those cinematic feeling action and battle scenes. There’s one in Fool Moon that had me sitting bolt upright in bed, heart pounding, and a whole Walmart sequence in Summer Knight which is just top-notch. There are also a lot of charming details – Harry’s thirty pound cat, his lab assistant (a talking skull), and the werewolves who save the world and then come home to D&D.

The books are definitely flawed, though, and I think most of it can be traced to pure authorial laziness. Butcher has a habit of writing an incredibly detailed action climax, and then summarizing what should have been the next thirty pages of denouement in five. He also consistently and irritatingly creates conflict by setting up characters with psychopathically enormous grudges against Harry, who is inevitably misunderstood and falsely accused (get another shtick, please). These are both improving with time, I think, though unfortunately Harry’s women issues aren’t; Butcher thinks he’s chivalrous, but he’s actually just obnoxious. Which is the heart of it, really, and as much as I enjoyed these books and as much as I hate saying things like this, there’s something indefinably male about these books and their concerns. Which is to say that I like them, but I simply do not care about them the way I do other urban fantasy which is very similar but more indefinably female, like Kim Harrison’s. I know, I know, please don’t start.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Fiction -- metafiction, actually. Sci fi, sorta. Okay, this is complicated, so it might take a while. In an alternate England of the 1980’s, literature is bigger than football and a production of Richard III is like a Beatles concert. Thursday E. Next (and others with Rowlingesque names), a literary Detective, becomes embroiled in the struggle between megacorp Goliath and the evil murderer Acheron Hades for her uncle’s latest invention, the Prose Portal, which allows people and things to travel between fiction and reality. It’s a new kind of terrorism when a madman can enter the original manuscript of a Dickens novel and murder a minor character, rewriting every copy in existence. The universe and technology are top notch, from the pet dodo (version 1.4) to the retinal screensaver to the Global Standard Deity to Thursday’s rogue Chronoguard, time hopping father. Thursday’s world is different from ours – Churchill was never Prime Minister, the Crimean War grinds on, and though everyone loves Jane Eyre, no one is really happy with how Jane goes off to India with St. John in the end. This is a book about rewriting – history, time, culture, your life and choices, and in that sense it is damn clever and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I am bothered by many stylistic choices, however, particularly the way every moment of emotional significance is pushed offstage and dealt with only in the tiny excerpts from characters’ memoirs and other fictional books at the beginning of each chapter. Just because it’s metafiction, it doesn’t mean it can’t be good fiction, too, and there really is no excuse for this.

More broadly speaking, all the fictional characters within the fiction, like Mr. Rochester, are explicitly aware that they are in a book and behave accordingly, and it took me a while to realize that Thursday, our narrator, operates similarly. I just don’t really dig that kind of consciousness – it’s ironic that a book which is all about sliding through the border into fiction is written in such a way to make doing so as a reader nearly impossible (aside from some of the emotional dampening, Fforde violates the first person narration in wild and distractingly strange ways). And what was up with the random vampire not-even-a-subplot?

Complaints aside, and all except the random vampires are really products of my strong personal tastes, I liked this a whole lot. It’s quirky and clever and fun, and I’ll definitely be carrying on with the series.

The Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver

Fiction. Mystery. Latest in the Lincoln Rime series, featuring the quadriplegic forensic investigator. Oh, Jeff. You were doing so well for the first 250 pages: the villain was thoroughly creepifying, the forensics were engaging and CSI-like, and the characters’ personal lives were actually interesting, too. And then we took a sharp left turn into exposition land, where the narrator takes over the story for five or ten pages at a stretch to explain that the villain really isn’t after what we thought (haven’t you written this book before? Twice?) and what he is after is a lot less interesting than the whole serial killer jaunt. It hurts me when you do this. To your credit, there were some interesting, if fumble-fingered, threads about the duties of a capital L Liberal in these over-patriotic times, and the villain promises to become more interesting again in a later book. Props for the good old college try, but let’s aim a bit higher next time, okay?

Anyone You Want Me to Be: A True Story of Sex and Death on the Internet by John Douglas and Stephen

Nonfiction. A reconstruction of the life of John Robinson, white collar criminal turned serial killer. The title is a bit misleading, actually, as this book covers much more than Robinson’s eventual adoption of the internet as hunting ground for new sexual and financial victims. Just as a portrait of a criminal life, this book is riveting (this would be something I like, because I really like that sort of thing). Robinson conducted an extraordinary forty year campaign of lies, trickery, financial schemes, uncountable relationships, sexual domination, and murder, to say nothing of raising four children and being an active member of his community. One of the most extraordinary aspects of the book is the way it tells the story of Robinson’s women, his victims reaching from beyond the grave to catch him in mistakes, and his wife and daughters rallying to savagely defend him. The book mostly steers clear of the more idiot TV moves – he’s a killer because his mother was cold – and it maintains an impressive control of fact and speculation and psychology.

A little bit of history here; Douglas was instrumental in starting the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit and ran it for many, many years. He’s brilliant and perceptive. But, well, man’s got issues. Most of which had no business in this refreshingly objective book. I was particularly unimpressed when he gave the full names of psychiatrists who had examined Robinson during a prison stay and reported him sane and safe. Arguments about the supremacy of, well, himself over mental health professionals aside, that’s just tacky. Also, I’m not going to forgive him this sentence, offered while discussing one of Robinson’s early victims, for either content or syntax: “Sometimes she acted as if she were hardly disabled at all, racing other people in wheelchairs at the mall and enjoying the thrill of beating them and exploding into laughter.”