Sabriel
by Garth Nix
The cover of this book was what initially caught my attention when Virginia picked it up from the library. I’d never heard of it before, and the description on the back seemed interesting. Unfortunately I stuck it in the mental pile of Things That Would Be Cool To Read If I Had More Time, and moved on. Virginia finished it, and loved it, and then told me there was an audio version! At the library we discover that it’s read by none other than Tim Curry!
In some ways this is a fairly typical YA fantasy novel. Young heroine forced to take on a burden before she’s really quite ready, and face down the big bad guy. Along the way she picks up the obligatory side-kick and friend, neither of whom are what they appear to be.
Where Sabriel takes things in a new direction is the setting. The introduction of which is surprisingly slow, however the fact that it is slow allows the reader to really discover it, rather than just having it handed to you in one big lump.
Sabriel is a holy necromancer, tasked to aid the dead through the transition from life to death. It turns out that dying isn’t as easy as you might have thought. There are 7 gates a soul has to travel through, otherwise it may return to cause mischief! Just such an undead thing has dragged Sabriel’s father into the realm of death, forcing Sabriel to take her fathers tools and quest to rescue him from the BBEG.
Tim Curry did a wonderful job bringing this book to life, and I’m really looking forward to listening to the second book in the series!
Summon the Thunder (Star Trek: Vanguard #2)
by Dayton Ward
Sadly not as good as the first book in the series. It felt like there was just a little too much crammed in that just didn’t work. Forced humor, twists to the story line that kinda killed some of the tension...
Leviathan (Leviathan #1)
by Scott Westerfeld, Alan Cumming (Narrator)
This was a wonderful book to listen to on the way to and from the beach. It’s an alternate history of the early days of World War I where the Allies have developed biotechnology and use created beasties in place of machines and the Central Powers use mechs. The story focuses on a young girl who is pretending to be a boy to enlist in the British Empire’s air force - a force made up of giant floating jellyfish and whales, and a young man who is the heir of the crown of Austria-Hungary who’s grandfather (the current emperor) is trying to kill.
This really had the potential to be really bad, but between Westerfield’s writing and Cumming’s reading it became a wonderful and somewhat silly book.
Fragile Things
By Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is an amazing storyteller, and this collection of short stories highlights some of his most interesting work. Unfortunately it wasn’t all his strongest. Like most collections of short works it had its good and its bad. I’d hoped for less bad from Gaiman.
The Good
The poem “The Day the Saucers Came” seems to have become an instant classic, and for good reason.
Sunbird was a really interesting phoenix story.
A Study in Emerald was my personal favorite of the whole volume. It was a great start to the book...
Pages from a Journal Found in a Shoebox Left in a Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma and Louisville, Kentucky was interesting and I think hit the mark just right.
The Problem of Susan was wonderfully meta!
The So-So
Monarch of the Glens was good, but long. I know that Gaiman sometimes takes a while to get where he’s going, but it just didn’t do it for me, at least not as part of this collection, and not as the last story in the book!
How to Talk to Girls at Parties was cute, and I liked the idea... but it just didn’t work for me.
The Bad
Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot
October in the Chair
The poems
I think the biggest issue with this collection is that is isn’t coherent. It never comes together, which is a shame. Another reviewer described it as a mix tape rather than an album, and I think that is a perfect analogy.
Go the Fuck to Sleep
by Adam Mansbach, Ricardo Cortés (Illustrator), Samuel L Jackson (Narator)
Seriously, you don't need kids to appreciate it. Puppies work just fine.
Cugel's Saga
By Jack Vance
The third book of the Dying Earth saga continues to follow Cugel as he once again has to make his way back to revenge himself against the Laughing Magician. He is an interesting contrast in character traits, often conflicting, even contradictory! Yet he can fairly easily be defined by his two main traits: he is selfishly lazy and highly goal motivated. This leads him to engage in some really vile acts, yet his acts seem only to highlight the corruption and absurdity of the world he inhabits. His fortune is constantly on the rise or decline, and it’s usually doing the opposite of what he thinks it’s doing.
There is something endearing about Cugel, which made reading about him a very pleasant experience. This time I listened to the book, and I really enjoyed the reader Arthur Morey. He did an excellent bringing the Dying Earth to life.
Quarter Share
by Nathan Lowell
18 year old Ishmael Horatio Wang’s mother, a professor on a corporate world, is killed in an accident. Ishmael is given 90 days to find employment or get off-world, and the corporation isn’t hiring. With no interest in joining the military, he signs on to a merchant ship. This is how quarter share begins. Over the next 200 pages we learn with Ishmael what it means to be a member of the crew of a merchant ship plying the space lanes.
Aside from some really fascinating world building there isn’t a whole lot that actually happens in this book. It’s the story of an above average, but not really exceptional, kid becoming an adult.
There was a notable lack of conflict in the story. No jealous crew mates, no real personality conflicts, nobody even really having a bad day and snapping at anyone else. I think the story could have used a little more, as sticking enough people together for long periods of time in a contained environment is bound to cause some issues.
Also, were they slipping something into the coffee to keep everyone’s libido in check? I get that there was a rule in place that forbid fraternization, but as with the near total lack of conflict, the lack of sex seemed... artificial.
In spite of these flaws, I found the book to be very engrossing. The world building is really quite fantastic, and I’m looking forward to reading Half Share. If I could I would rate the book as 3.5 stars due to the flaws, but 3 seems too low considering how much I enjoyed it.
Star Trek: Vanguard: Harbinger
by David Mack
This is the first book in the Vanguard series. Set in the early days of the original series at the very beginning of Kirk’s command of the USS Enterprise this series focuses on Vanguard, a huge space station perched at the very edge of Federation territory in an area of space known as the Taurus Reach, located between the Klingon Empire and the Tholian Assembly.
As a means of introducing Vanguard and it’s crew to readers they bring the Enterprise limping into base after the events of the episode “Where No One Has Gone Before”. In spite of the fact that this was written well before the re-imagining of Star Trek by J.J. Abrams, the portrayal of Captain Kirk as a skirt-chasing hothead seems to fit very well with Chris Pine’s Kirk.
There are certain parallels between Vanguard and DS9, including the fact that it’s a big space station at the Federation’s edge, with a diverse cast of characters that is introduced by bringing the flagship there and having the crews mingle. On the other hand, in some ways it’s even darker than DS9, while at the same time retaining a bit of that... something special that made a campy tv show from 4 decades ago still a driving force in the cultural and media landscape.
Only 1 classic this batch, bringing my total to 10/27.