Grac's book blog

More books I just couldn't get into...

I last did this kind of post about 9 months ago, so I thought it was time for a refresher on 'the kind of books that do not turn Grac's crank' - as always, ymmv and someone out there is bound to be thinking that I wouldn't know good writing if it kicked me in the arse for including one or more of the following:

• Surrender None and Liar's Oath by Elizabeth Moon - the prequels to Moon's better known Paksennarion books, I'd heard good things about this series regardless of authorly misbehaviour. I found the first quite tedious and the second not a great deal better and bailed midway through.
• A Wish After Midnight by Zetta Elliot - I can see why some people loved this book but I just wanted to shake the protagonist till she rattled.
• The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson - the basic premise (what if the Black Death had pretty much put a stop to Western civilisation?) was intriguing but the book itself, not so much.
• The Usurper's Crown by Sarah Zettel - loved the first book, enjoyed the series as a whole, but is it really a good idea to have a prequel as book 2 in a series? Nope.
  
• Noir by K.W. Jeter - writing that cries 'look at me, I am so cool and edgy!' usually isn't either, imho. 
• The Poison Tree by Tony Strong - mediocre mystery set in Cambridge gets subsumed by writer's desire to shock with kinky sex
• The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway - apparently people either tend to love or hate this book, there is no middle ground
• The Bones of Avalon by Phil Rickman - yes, if you try hard enough it is possible to make Tudor times and Dr John Dee boring, honest!
• The Dante Trap by Arnaud Delalande - see above and change to 18th century Venice and a serial killer replicating the nine circles of Hell

Fortunately this is just a sliver of what I read the rest of the time, so it's not all bad! However life is really too short to read stuff that doesn't hit your buttons, not when there's other stuff out there that's much better...

'Setting the East Ablaze' by Peter Hopkirk

'Setting the East Ablaze' by Peter Hopkirk - I'd read a bunch of Peter Hopkirk's other books and enjoyed them immensely, but for some reason I'd never got round to reading this one, I have no idea why not!

The basic premise of 'Setting the East Ablaze' is that it's the story of how the newly-formed Bolshevik government of Russia hoped to expand into the former Tsarist-held countries of central Asia but also intended them as stepping stones to further conquest. In particular, the conquest of India, then a substantial part of the British Empire and temptingly close to Russian-held territory.

Having travelled this year to Uzbekistan, it was also entertaining to see the storyline set in places I'd been, back when it was significantly less civilised than it is now. Following on from a number of Hopkirk's other books about 'the Great Game' and the countries of Central Asia, 'Setting the East Ablaze' again reads like a well-written novel.

If anyone's interested in other books by this writer, I can particularly recommend 'Foreign Devils on the Silk Road' (about 1920's and 30's archaeology in Central Asia, which I'd now very much like to read again) and 'The Great Game' (about the rivalry between England and Russia, as played out between their respective espionage networks in India and Afghanistan).

'Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves' by Jacqueline Yallop

'Magpies, Squirrels and Thieves' by Jacqueline Yallop - subtitled 'How the Victorians Collected the World', this book seemed quite intriguing in its apparent premise, to look at the sudden explosion of collectormania that swept Victorian Britain.

Unfortunately, when I actually got into the book, that wasn't what it was about at all - rather than looking at ordinary folks and their collections, it focussed on the life and career of four individuals who made collecting their life and work.

While it's clear those individuals (3 men and a woman) handled antiquities that went on to be the backbone of a large number of current museum collections both in Britain and elsewhere, I found that much less interesting than it could have been. What I was looking for, which the book didn't give me, was the more mundane folks, the ones whose obsessions with collecting were more down-to-earth, rather than the folks who travelled the globe and made it their livelihood.

'Iran: Empire of the Mind' by Michael Axworthy

'Iran: Empire of the Mind' by Michael Axworthy - I'd been looking for a good one-volume history of Iran and this one was recommended to me, so when I recently went on a non-fiction reading spree it was one I added to the pile...

In one slim paperback, we're taken from the foundation of Iran, its place within a variety of empires through to independence in the 20th century and the current regime. Along the way, the author also takes small side expeditions into some of the cultural issues that arise, as well as clearly spelling out the whole Shi'a and Sunni split in a way that is quite comprehensible.

All in all, a book that does exactly what it sets out to do, to chronicle the birth and development of a much misunderstood nation, which is never a bad thing.

'Bad Traffic' by Simon Lewis

'Bad Traffic' by Simon Lewis - I'd heard good things about this novel, so it was on my list of stuff to try and get hold of from the library now they're very kindly doing free inter-library requests...

The basic premise of 'Bad Traffic' is that it's the story of Jian, a policeman in China who is pretty much just getting by, taking bribes and concentrating on feathering his own nest no matter what - all that changes, however, when he gets a panicky phone call from his daughter, who is at university in England.

Although he speaks no English at all, Jian drops everything and flies to the UK, finding himself in a country more alien than he could ever have imagined, where he cannot exercise the power or authority he is normally used to exercising without a second thought. His daughter has dropped out of her college course, though she'd still been telling him things were fine, and when he finds her mobile phone with a video of her on it, Jian fears the worst and swears revenge.

'Bad Traffic' reminds me very much of books by folks like Elmore Leonard, with Jian very much a fish out of water - along the way, his path crosses with other folks who have come into contact with the people his daughter got into trouble with, and it's one of those who ends up being a very unwilling interpreter and sidekick.

'Lord of Emperors' by Guy Gavriel Kay

'Lord of Emperors' by Guy Gavriel Kay - this is the second book in the Sarantine Mosaic series, following on from 'Sailing to Sarantium' which I reviewed in August.

Like the previous book, this story is mostly set in Sarantium which is heavily modelled on the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, with our protagonist working on the mosaics destined to decorate the ceiling of their equivalent to Hagia Sophia. All the plotting you'd expect, with various folks jostling for power and an emperor attempting to hold everything together...

In the end, I was somehow left feeling disappointed by 'Lord of Emperors', mostly perhaps because the element of the mystical that was hinted at in 'Sailing to Sarantium' failed to play as significant a part as I'd hoped. A major character from the first book just leaves for an unspecified destination and the very clever creatures he'd helped create are pretty much unused and unexplained - one in particular appears at an apposite moment with no explanation how it got there.

There's also an element of pairing folks off, which got a little wearing especially right at the end when there's a surprise 'romantic' ending that I didn't quite believe. As I said last time, I understand that this isn't considered one of Kay's better works so I may still try him again...

'Revelation' by C.J. Sansom

'Revelation' by C.J. Sansom - this is the fourth book in Sansom's series, featuring Tudor lawyer and detective Matthew Shardlake, and it's all good. I've really enjoyed all the books in this series and 'Revelation' was no exception to that...

In this volume, Shardlake is settling down to a new job as a barrister in the Court of Requests - a job that suits his egalitarian nature quite well, as it often means representing the poor and oppressed against more powerful adversaries. Among the cases he has picked up is that of Adam Kite, a young man who is risking a nasty death as a heretic because of his compulsive behaviour, which is religious in nature.

Alongside this, when one of Shardlake's friends is found gruesomely murdered, he's unwittingly drawn into a hunt for a serial killer - in a time where having the wrong religious views can literally be fatal, how dangerous is a killer who believes he is re-enacting scenes from the Book of Revelation? There's trouble in the domestic arena too, as Shardlake's friend and employee Jack Barak's marriage is crumbling under the strain of the hunt for the serial killer and other stressors.

Another enjoyable outing for Shardlake, which leaves me wanting more - the series continues in 'Heartstone' and I look forward to many more!

'The Darkangel' by Meredith Ann Pierce

'The Darkangel' by Meredith Ann Pierce - this is the first book of a trilogy apparently first published in the 1980's and resurrected more recently to fit in with the whole urban fantasy vampire renaissance.

Where 'The Darkangel' differs from many of the books in that genre is that it's actually more traditional fantasy, being set in an indeterminate medieval landscape where our protagonist (Aeriel) is slave to a wealthy young woman who ends up being snatched by the eponymous darkangel to join his group of wives.

For some reason, after spending much of the beginning of the book angsting about how plain she is and how she could never get snatched in the same way, Aeriel then goes and gets herself some self-confidence building before she engineers another encounter with the darkangel. This time, she does get to join his wives, even if only as a servant to start with.

This is all about Aeriel's determination she can encourage the small spark of good left inside someone who is systematically kidnapping young women and turning them into wraiths. The writing is lyrical, very heavily influenced by fairy tales, and towards the end of this volume it does start to get a little wearing, as does Aeriel's certainty she can succeed. The series continues in 'A Gathering of Gargoyles' and I've yet to make my mind up whether I care enough to carry on...

'Zoo City' by Lauren Beukes

'Zoo City' by Lauren Beukes - this book has picked up a number of award nominations and wins, so I thought I'd check it out as I'm always looking for something good and a little different in the science fiction world.

'Zoo City' is set in a future alternate South Africa, one where a significant chunk of the population have suffered from a particular ailment - essentially, the commiting of a crime leads to an animal becoming attached to you and the loss of that animal is a Very Bad Thing indeed. On the flipside, the posession of that animal is also accompanied by some kind of psychic gift. As a visual representation of someone's past behaviour or failings, the existence of an animal by your side points you out as someone different, with the resultant discrimination.

Our protagonist, Zinzi, is one such - she has a Sloth as a companion and makes her living by being involved in 419 scams and exercising her psychic gift for finding things. In 'Zoo City' Zinzi gets dragged into the search for the missing half of a teeange pop sensation and discovers much more sinister things going on beneath the world she thought she already knew everything about.

It's a clever read, with Zinzi (and Sloth) being well-written and rounded characters; by the end of the book, you feel like Zinzi is starting to realise just what her previous actions have done to others, for the first time since she got Sloth and became very focussed on her own survival. Unfortunately, the author didn't seem to have figured out how she wanted to end the book and it pretty much just stops with the written equivalent of fade-to-black, which is disappointing. Still, I'll be keeping an eye out for future novels by this writer, as I'm interested to see how she follows up on something that was so critically lauded...

'The Iron King' by Julie Kagawa

'The Iron King' by Julie Kagawa - another 'first in a series' book which I picked up because I'd heard good things about it. It's amazing how many of my reviews involve phrases which are a variation on 'I really wanted to like this book, but...'; I suppose it's good in some ways because it shows that I still believe writers can produce stuff I will love unreservedly, if only I could find it!

'The Iron King' is another of those reviews. There's a lot to like about it, with clearly a lot of thought going into the overall world-building even if the basic premise (teen is not who s/he thinks s/he is) has been written a thousand times before. The use of characters we 'know' from elsewhere is good, and not as predictable as it might have been, which to me shows quite a light hand from the author.

Meghan is our protagonist, discovering an unexpected heritage in the company of a variety of characters - unfortunately, the guy we immediately see she's supposed to fall for is the least well-written of all of them, which must be a bit of a trial. Who wants to be outdone by the Cheshire Cat, after all?

The series continues in 'The Iron Daughter' and I expect I'll probably pick it up at some point - for some reason, the whole thing didn't quite grab me in the way that (for example) the whole Mercedes Thompson series by Patricia Briggs has, but maybe my days of empathising with teenage girls are too far in the past and I prefer an adult with a little more agency?