• Tag Archives Ann Aguirre

  • Middlegame, Siren’s Song, & Honors

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    Seanan McGuire‘s Middlegame is a standalone story with no relation to any of her various series. It’s pretty remarkable for framing thematically dark fairy tale prose with time resets more commonly at home in science fiction. I had been avoiding her Wayward Children books, but may have to check them out after all just to see if they happen to resemble this in any way.

    Kristin McTiernan’s Black Magic’s Prey is a very… raw story. It starts out well enough, only to very quickly escalate into magical mind rape, lots of crying, sudden lesbianism, casual racism, razorblade gargling, situational rape, satan worship, and small town vindictiveness. And that’s all just in the first half (a pretty impressive accomplishment considering the book’s only about half the standard length), which is where I had to stop; I’m not keen on continually victimized protagonists and the summary for the followup just raises all sorts of questions I think I’d be better off not knowing the answers to.

    The Honors series is a sci-fi work co-authored by Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre which (at least initially) brings to mind Aguirre’s earlier Sirantha Jax series. So, it’s more than a little odd that the ‘about the authors’ section make it seem like everything was Caine’s idea while going well out of the way to pretend that series doesn’t exist. Oddity aside, while the first book is quite engaging the second has a completely different atmosphere to it with: A forced focus on social justice issues, a bit of character assassination where the protagonist is concerned, an overall devolvement into battle shounen tropes, and a cliffhanger ending.

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  • Books; Before and After

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    First the before, which was three books read back in August:

    Jean le Flambeur – This trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi reminded me of two other authors’ styles. The first book (The Quantum Thief) was reminiscent of Jack Vance, the second (The Fractal Prince) of R. Scott Bakker, and the third (The Causal Angel) a combination of the two. These books do not explain what’s going on. Rather, they show you what’s going on and trust that you’ll be able to understand/decipher the terminology and happenings on your own. It’s… certainly interesting.

    And now the after, three books I just read yesterday. The first since the trilogy above:

    The Winter Long – Seanan McGuire’s eighth October Daye novel apparently kicks off the ‘main’ plotline that’s been simmering in the background since Rosemary and Rue. Which is not to say that things have changed all that much, as it’s still fundamentally the same series it has always been… just with higher overall power levels.

    Unbinding – This eleventh Lupi novel is focused on wrapping up the loose ends from the tenth and is told from the perspective of the mindhealer Kai. There’s not really much to say about it honestly, since if you’ve been reading this far into the series you already know what to expect and this doesn’t do anything in particular to shake things up. One aspect stands out though, and that’s the possible newfound focus on marrying off its characters. I don’t really like the message this appears to be trying to send; that somehow ‘officially’ being bound to your SO should be important for the relationship in any way, shape, or form. Of course I highly doubt anyone impressionable enough to have their views on the subject changed will be reading a series like this in the first place, so I suppose it doesn’t matter much.

    Havoc – The second part of Ann Aquirre’s Dred Chronicles series is sort of so-so. I wasn’t really sure where things could go from the first book, and this one just feels like an excessive escalation. I also don’t remember the central government being so ridiculously corrupt in the Sirantha Jax novels (this takes place in the same universe), which caused some cognitive dissonance. It’s okay I guess, it just lacks solidity and doesn’t come across as particularly believable.

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  • Relatively Recent Books

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    Been procrastinating with adding these because it’s a pain. May as well get it over with now:

    • Sealed with a Curse (Cecy Robson) – Real bad. Basically all the worst Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance tropes/stereotypes mashed together. One of the characters having a surfer-dude accent for whateverthehell reason just made it all the more aggravating.
    • Allegiant (Veronica Roth) – Honestly, it’s been so long since I read this that my only recollection is liking how Tris’ story turned out while disliking the somewhat circular nature of the plot developments.
    • The Razorland Trilogy (Ann Aguirre) – The first book starts out good but seems to lose its way toward the end when the protagonists start picking up party members like a RPG. The second shifts between being interesting and being annoying (the latter mostly caused by the whole gender roles focus), and the third is readable enough even though it wraps everything up a little too neatly.
    • Red Delicious (Caitlín R. Kiernan) – Usually when people dislike something, they’ll just make a blog/forum post about it. Kiernan (as Kathleen Tierney) goes the extra mile and writes a book about it. This reads like an open letter regarding all the sorts of books/genres and literary criticisms she hates and frankly just comes across as rather sad posturing.
    • Wild Justice (Kelley Armstrong) – Fairly interesting continuation of the Nadia Stafford series that focuses on both Nadia’s past and her current relationship with Jack. There are a few things off about the ending stretch that sort of dull its sheen though.
    • The Undead Pool (Kim Harrison) – A more or less solid continuation of the series focused on vampires, elves, and Trent/Rachel’s relationship.

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  • Recent Books

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    Normally I do these three at a time… but, well…

    Cast in Sorrow (Michelle Sagara) – Completes the storyline started in Cast in Peril. I’m indifferent toward it. While on the one hand there’s some tangible progress on the Barrani front, on the other the general style and plot developments are starting to seriously trend into the abstract and hand-wavy. It’s hard to read some of it without feeling a deep sense of skepticism. Aside: For some strange reason I picture the Barrani as being similar to The Last Remnant‘s Sovani.

    Chimes at Midnight (Seanan McGuire) – Not much to say about this really other than it’s just as good as the earlier October Daye novels. Well, one more thing: It seems to mark the beginning of shifting the overarching background conflict into the foreground.

    Ritual Magic (Eileen Wilks) – It’s fairly amazing that this series continues to avoid the various and sundry paranormal romance pitfalls. Picking up right where Mortal Ties left off, it ends with what looks to be a good point to switch over to a different set of protagonists for a bit.

    Steelheart (Brandon Sanderson) – The setting for this novel is very good and having a protagonist that seems to have either asperger’s or autism is an interesting choice. Unfortunately, those are the only things I can praise about it since the general character behavior and plot developments seem ripped right out of a summer blockbuster. It all feels so artificial.

    Perdition (Ann Aguirre) – This beginning of a new series set in the Sirantha Jax universe is, for the most part, very engaging indeed. The only area in which it slips up a bit is the romance aspect. The relationship seems a little forced and does not feel quite natural. That said, it’s certainly not as bad as what you’d find in a generic romance novel.

    Dancing with the Devil (Keri Arthur) – Speaking of generic romance novels…. I ordered the first three books in this series blind due to what I’m going to chalk up to sudden insanity. For some reason I thought this might be more like Arthur’s Myth and Magic series then her Riley Jenson/Dark Angels series. Again, no clue why I thought that, but this book is as generic paranormal romance as you can get.

    Hearts in Darkness (Keri Arthur) – The first entry in this series is merely generic; this one is downright painful. Not only is the most by-the-numbers example of a paranormal romance still present and as vaguely embarrassing as ever, signs of power-level creep start to appear alongside a dash of internal inconsistency.

    Chasing the Shadows (Keri Arthur) – While for the most part just as unpleasant to read as the second book, this does take an unexpected turn toward the end. The ‘good guys’ actually losing is a very rare thing to see in this sort of novel. Of course, considering the new suite of powers Nikki gains here that loss may end up being not much of a loss at all in the long run.

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  • Bronze Gods, Graveyard Child, & Kat Redding

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    A. A. Aguirre’s (Ann and Andres Aguirre’s) Bronze Gods is a little off in some ways while being immensely interesting in others. Its first issue is… structural I guess. There’s this weird periodic absence of descriptive text, as if whole paragraphs of background flavor have been spontaneously excised with little regard to the holes left behind. The other complication is that the protagonists feel as though they’re being railroaded into an unnaturally deep relationship, which ends up particularly hard to ignore considering this has been written by a husband/wife team. Those two problems aside the book is a fairly engrossing window into a new setting.

    The fifth book in M.L.N. Hanover’s (Daniel Abraham’s) Black Sun’s Daughter series, Graveyard Child, is just as entertainingly unique as the previous four. It just has a certain flavor, a dash of the bizarre depicted in a remarkably believable manner that ends up working on every level. That all the previous plot points have been tied together into a basically complete whole here is just icing on the cake.

    E. S. Moore‘s Kat Redding series (To Walk the Night, Tainted Night, Tainted Blood, & Blessed By A Demon’s Mark) is rather severely flawed. The first book is not bad, merely average vampire-centered urban fantasy. Even so it has some annoyances in its penchant for branding (Honda DN-01) and the overuse of “I” coupled with a staccato sentence structure; “I did this. Then I did that. All the while I was thinking about what I would do when I got to where I meant to go.“. Just distracting. The second and third books however… those are actively unpleasant to read.

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