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52. The Big Hoodoo, by Bill White
53. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne Valente
54. A Madness of Angels, by Kate Griffin
55. Girl Genius 10, by Phil and Kaja Foglio
56. Fables: Witches, by Bill Willingham
57. Unwritten Vol 2 Inside Man, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross
58. Blackout/All Clear, by Connie Willis
59. The Habitation of the Blessed, by Catherynne Valente
52. The Big Hoodoo, Bill White. This is a lovingly written Trail of Cthulhu Scenario that is pure pulp, and also a homage to the science fiction writers of the 1940s and 1950s. I got to play Robert Heinlein in this one at Dreamation. Now, I want to run it.
53. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne Valente. This is the online version, not the print version. It's beautifully written and morally complex, asking hard questions, providing no easy answers, and sometimes, no answers at all. When I read it to my mother, who may not have absorbed a word of it, I got as far as September claiming her mother's sword, and that was just perfect. When I got to the climax at the end, I was thinking, helplessly, "No! You cannot make me feel sorry for the evil marquess! That's just not fair!" But that was, after all, the point.
54. A Madness of Angels, by Kate Griffin. This is the first in a series recommended by Seanan McGuire, and it gets really good on page 44. That's a problem. If it hadn't been for Seanan's recommendation, I would have stopped reading on page three or so. I'm not sure what it was that I found boring about the first 43 pages. I mean, it opens with a bang and a flash, and immediately goes into an extended action scene. And, I found myself bored.
Fortunately, after that, it got really good. It joins China Mieville's Kraken as books an aspiring Unknown Armies GM should read. It is also good source material for the Sorcerer RPG. It is not as good as Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, but I do see why it was called a Neverwhere for the digital age. I've got the sequel in my to read queue. (The third one's out in hardback.)
The protagonist gets pounded on a lot, but doesn't seem to get quite as battered as Harry Dresden does, and seems to kick more ass, but I'd need to do some rereading to double check that. And, while my sympathies are with the protagonist, I do see why a lot of people wonder whether they're safer with him dead.
55. Girl Genius 10, by Phil and Kaja Foglio, reread. This is up for the Hugo for Best Graphic Novel. I keep wanting to give my vote to Granville, Mon Amour or to Unwritten: Inside Man. I mean, Girl Genius has two awards already. But, that's not how the award process is supposed to go. The question is, "Which of the five graphic novels is the best?" And the other two are very good indeed. I haven't yet read Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, and I'll discuss the Fables novel below.
As for Girl Genius 10... dang, the pacing and timing are perfect. The small touches in the panels are great. I'm going to have a really tough time figuring out which of at least three, maybe four entries is the best.
56. Fables: Witches, by Bill Willingham, reread. This is another one up for Best Graphic Novel. I don't much care for the Dark Man as a villain, but there's a short introductory story that makes him more interesting. That said, this is the one graphic novel I have been able to rule out. This is no shame to it or the author, who was happily writing his comic book month to month, not thinking, "How can I best plan to win a Hugo?" The arc begins in the middle of things and ends in the middle of things, and there's another story in it that doesn't connect up, and none of the issues making up the novel are exceptionally strong, although there is a lot of interesting groundwork being laid. If you're reading Fables for its own sake, this is a respectable chapter made stronger than it originally was.
57. Unwritten Vol 2 Inside Man, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross, reread. There are some people who don't care for Unwritten, and, intellectually, I understand that. But, I got my Ph.D. in literature, and I did my dissertation on Modern Arthurian Literature. Unwritten is exactly the sort of book I live for. The Inside Man sequence stands alone well. Each issue tells me things about stories, their importance, their use and misuse and abuse as tools of entertainment, education, manipulation, and world shaping. Many of these are things I knew, but didn't know that I know.
58. Blackout/All Clear, by Connie Willis. This is one of the novels up for the Hugo. I'd like to read all of them this year so I can actually vote. Under normal circumstances, this isn't the sort of book I read, as it isn't to my taste. That said, it was better than I had feared, and it read fast.
That said, I have problems with it. I think it should have been cut by a third. This would have reduced another problem I have with it. The characters are not exactly stupid, but they are required not to make connections that are obvious to the reader. Okay, I understand that the readers are standing outside, much as the time travelers started off from a position of standing outside the time period they are observing. I understand that the characters don't know as much as the readers. Nevertheless, the longer the book goes on, the more things the characters don't catch, the more annoying it gets.
I also felt somewhat cheated by the explanation of what was going on. So, everyone starts off knowing that time travelers cannot change the past. It's been tried. But, it may be that this is not exactly an ironclad rule, that the more people travel in time, the more strain is on the continuum. And, after all, time travelers are interfering even if they just stand and breath, let alone interact with people, even before we factor in that they are interacting with people in World War II.
But, no, all is well. Indeed, time travelers are necessary to make things come out right. More: The time travelers have no agency. They can't not do their part, because the time continuum will protect itself. So, all that worrying was absolutely unnecessary.
That in itself makes me feel cheated. The entire potential threat on which hundreds of pages hang is nothing to worry about. And we couldn't possibly have the history we do without time travelers.
But, there's more. Apparently, WWII is so important that the entire continuum has to side with the Allies, especially Britain, to make sure that Germany loses.
Friend #1: Well, if it had sided with the Nazis, that would have been a lot worse.
Friend #2: Why does it have to side with anyone? Why can't it just not give a damn about anything?
And that is my question. I think this bothers me more in a work based in our world than in a made up world. For example, Cryoburn is not Lois McMaster Bujold's best Vorkosigan novel (though I do wish the last five hundred or so words had been up for Best Short Story, with 20-20 hindsight). But, I am just not as annoyed that Bujold's made up universe is on the side of her made up protagonist as I am that Willis's continuum is on the side of right for all that the author's (and my) culture hold dear.
It may be that part of this is that I haven't read any Willis before, and that if I'd read the rest of the novels set in this universe, I'd feel differently. I don't think so, but it's possible.
And then, there's a line that really, really annoys me, one that has nothing to do with the universe. It hits one of my buttons.
"To do something for someone or something you loved—England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history—wasn’t a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth."
Ew. Yuck. Ick.
Full disclosure: My father never understood why my brother and I were not willing to sacrifice ourselves to look after him, never mind the cost to ourselves (or, for that matter, his constant undermining any help anyone tried to give him). So, I am a tad sensitive on the subject.
First off, the moral is that one should make these sacrifices -- one's freedom, one's life, one's youth -- if one really loves someone or something. If you're not willing to do it, you clearly don't really love that person or thing.
Bullshit. I loved my father. I was not obligated to fuck myself over for him.
But, I am now being told that, not only should I have sacrificed my freedom, years of my life, and my mental health to take care of a verbally and psychologically abusive man, but it does not even count as a sacrifice. Not if I really love him.
Bullshit. I know a woman who sacrificed a year of her life to take care of a dying man. She is not a saint, and no one forced her to do this. But, no one can tell me that this was not a sacrifice.
My Significant Other sacrificed his Friday evening at a filking convention to go with me to the emergency room, to keep my spirits up, and to hold me when I howled in pain and tell me it would be all right. Would I have been horrified if he hadn't? Honestly, probably yes. But, do not tell me he gave up nothing. I know better. Did he do it with grace and love? Yes. And you know what? We would both have preferred this not to be necessary.
And then, I start looking at who sacrificed what in the novel, and I get even more annoyed. The man dies. The woman gives up her life to raise someone else's children. Yuck.
And these children? Well, they were horrible at first. And second, and third, but that's okay because that made the time continuum come out right by forcing the woman who eventually adopts them to stay in World War II England. And, hey, she cares about them, and no one else does, so she has to adopt them, right? It's her Duty! And not even a sacrifice, because she comes to love them. So pat, when one isn't the person taking care of the kids, or when one is reading a book and can fast forward past years of raising kids.
Now, the kids live in World War II England, so it's not like she can take them home to the world of 2060. That would mean letting them know she's a time traveler. Oh wait! They know this already -- they have figured it out. I'm not quite clear on how, but let that pass. They saw her return from a shimmery beam of light, never mind that, if I understand the mechanics of time travel correctly, the shimmery beam should not have been able to exist where there were any witnesses. Never mind how another character somehow figured out on first seeing a woman come into a shelter that she was a time traveler. I mean, isn't that the first assumption everyone makes on seeing a stranger enter your bomb shelter?
No, let's just go back to this: The children know she's a time traveler. She has discussed this with them. She dies of a cancer that is treatable in 2060. Why is this necessary? Oh, wait, she has to sacrifice her life. But, it's not really a sacrifice, even though she's dead, and her children would, presumably, have preferred to have her live. Why can't they all come through to 2060 and started helping with... well, whatever it is we're doing this time travel for?
Okay, I get it's an academic discipline, but you're telling me time traveling historians wouldn't love to discuss a time period with the people who lived through it without having to pretend they're from that period?
Well, but... she has to stay, because, as it turns out, she's the ancestress of the boy who's in love with her friend, the boy who sacrifices years of his live to rescue that friend, proving once and for all that he loves her and that she can't ignore that. Just what I need, more books peddling the message that a woman is obligated to love a man who loves her, and that she can't actually rescue herself, because that's his job. Her job is to tell the Wise Old Man in Despair that All Will Be Well.
But, okay, so the woman who stays in the past must give birth to whoever it is who gives birth to whoever, for however many generations, until this young man is born. And then? What about when she's past childbearing years? And childraising years, because she has to NotSacrifice her freedom, years, and life to raise the children she is obligated to love. Why does she have to die when enough people are in the know?
Well, because... everyone made sacrifices in World War II? Because it's a sort of character growth thing? I mean, yes, there is an element of comeuppance for the time travelers so righteously annoyed that the folks of World War II won't cooperate and parade themselves before the time travelers, showing whatever virtues the budding historians want to do their papers on. But, I'm not buying it. This is supposed to be a happy ending. After all, what single woman of the future wouldn't realize it was her happy destiny to NotSacrifice herself living in the past and raising difficult children?
It isn't that I object to the choice per se. But I object to making it a universal thing that everyone should do, to the stereotypical gender roles, and to the claim that, where there is love, one isn't really making a sacrifice.
59. The Habitation of the Blessed, by Catherynne Valente. This is the first in her Prester John trilogy, and I've been a while reading this. I read her books aloud to myself, and that slows the reading process down. This book is particularly lush. So, I decided that I'd have a lot more fun if I gave myself permission to put it down and pick it up for small doses, which is how I read the first third to half. Even without my issues with the Willis book, I would have needed something of a very different style, and the lush language was exactly what I craved. And, hopefully, this means that I'll have a bit less of a wait for the next one in the trilogy.
53. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne Valente
54. A Madness of Angels, by Kate Griffin
55. Girl Genius 10, by Phil and Kaja Foglio
56. Fables: Witches, by Bill Willingham
57. Unwritten Vol 2 Inside Man, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross
58. Blackout/All Clear, by Connie Willis
59. The Habitation of the Blessed, by Catherynne Valente
52. The Big Hoodoo, Bill White. This is a lovingly written Trail of Cthulhu Scenario that is pure pulp, and also a homage to the science fiction writers of the 1940s and 1950s. I got to play Robert Heinlein in this one at Dreamation. Now, I want to run it.
53. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne Valente. This is the online version, not the print version. It's beautifully written and morally complex, asking hard questions, providing no easy answers, and sometimes, no answers at all. When I read it to my mother, who may not have absorbed a word of it, I got as far as September claiming her mother's sword, and that was just perfect. When I got to the climax at the end, I was thinking, helplessly, "No! You cannot make me feel sorry for the evil marquess! That's just not fair!" But that was, after all, the point.
54. A Madness of Angels, by Kate Griffin. This is the first in a series recommended by Seanan McGuire, and it gets really good on page 44. That's a problem. If it hadn't been for Seanan's recommendation, I would have stopped reading on page three or so. I'm not sure what it was that I found boring about the first 43 pages. I mean, it opens with a bang and a flash, and immediately goes into an extended action scene. And, I found myself bored.
Fortunately, after that, it got really good. It joins China Mieville's Kraken as books an aspiring Unknown Armies GM should read. It is also good source material for the Sorcerer RPG. It is not as good as Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, but I do see why it was called a Neverwhere for the digital age. I've got the sequel in my to read queue. (The third one's out in hardback.)
The protagonist gets pounded on a lot, but doesn't seem to get quite as battered as Harry Dresden does, and seems to kick more ass, but I'd need to do some rereading to double check that. And, while my sympathies are with the protagonist, I do see why a lot of people wonder whether they're safer with him dead.
55. Girl Genius 10, by Phil and Kaja Foglio, reread. This is up for the Hugo for Best Graphic Novel. I keep wanting to give my vote to Granville, Mon Amour or to Unwritten: Inside Man. I mean, Girl Genius has two awards already. But, that's not how the award process is supposed to go. The question is, "Which of the five graphic novels is the best?" And the other two are very good indeed. I haven't yet read Schlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel, and I'll discuss the Fables novel below.
As for Girl Genius 10... dang, the pacing and timing are perfect. The small touches in the panels are great. I'm going to have a really tough time figuring out which of at least three, maybe four entries is the best.
56. Fables: Witches, by Bill Willingham, reread. This is another one up for Best Graphic Novel. I don't much care for the Dark Man as a villain, but there's a short introductory story that makes him more interesting. That said, this is the one graphic novel I have been able to rule out. This is no shame to it or the author, who was happily writing his comic book month to month, not thinking, "How can I best plan to win a Hugo?" The arc begins in the middle of things and ends in the middle of things, and there's another story in it that doesn't connect up, and none of the issues making up the novel are exceptionally strong, although there is a lot of interesting groundwork being laid. If you're reading Fables for its own sake, this is a respectable chapter made stronger than it originally was.
57. Unwritten Vol 2 Inside Man, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross, reread. There are some people who don't care for Unwritten, and, intellectually, I understand that. But, I got my Ph.D. in literature, and I did my dissertation on Modern Arthurian Literature. Unwritten is exactly the sort of book I live for. The Inside Man sequence stands alone well. Each issue tells me things about stories, their importance, their use and misuse and abuse as tools of entertainment, education, manipulation, and world shaping. Many of these are things I knew, but didn't know that I know.
58. Blackout/All Clear, by Connie Willis. This is one of the novels up for the Hugo. I'd like to read all of them this year so I can actually vote. Under normal circumstances, this isn't the sort of book I read, as it isn't to my taste. That said, it was better than I had feared, and it read fast.
That said, I have problems with it. I think it should have been cut by a third. This would have reduced another problem I have with it. The characters are not exactly stupid, but they are required not to make connections that are obvious to the reader. Okay, I understand that the readers are standing outside, much as the time travelers started off from a position of standing outside the time period they are observing. I understand that the characters don't know as much as the readers. Nevertheless, the longer the book goes on, the more things the characters don't catch, the more annoying it gets.
I also felt somewhat cheated by the explanation of what was going on. So, everyone starts off knowing that time travelers cannot change the past. It's been tried. But, it may be that this is not exactly an ironclad rule, that the more people travel in time, the more strain is on the continuum. And, after all, time travelers are interfering even if they just stand and breath, let alone interact with people, even before we factor in that they are interacting with people in World War II.
But, no, all is well. Indeed, time travelers are necessary to make things come out right. More: The time travelers have no agency. They can't not do their part, because the time continuum will protect itself. So, all that worrying was absolutely unnecessary.
That in itself makes me feel cheated. The entire potential threat on which hundreds of pages hang is nothing to worry about. And we couldn't possibly have the history we do without time travelers.
But, there's more. Apparently, WWII is so important that the entire continuum has to side with the Allies, especially Britain, to make sure that Germany loses.
Friend #1: Well, if it had sided with the Nazis, that would have been a lot worse.
Friend #2: Why does it have to side with anyone? Why can't it just not give a damn about anything?
And that is my question. I think this bothers me more in a work based in our world than in a made up world. For example, Cryoburn is not Lois McMaster Bujold's best Vorkosigan novel (though I do wish the last five hundred or so words had been up for Best Short Story, with 20-20 hindsight). But, I am just not as annoyed that Bujold's made up universe is on the side of her made up protagonist as I am that Willis's continuum is on the side of right for all that the author's (and my) culture hold dear.
It may be that part of this is that I haven't read any Willis before, and that if I'd read the rest of the novels set in this universe, I'd feel differently. I don't think so, but it's possible.
And then, there's a line that really, really annoys me, one that has nothing to do with the universe. It hits one of my buttons.
"To do something for someone or something you loved—England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history—wasn’t a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth."
Ew. Yuck. Ick.
Full disclosure: My father never understood why my brother and I were not willing to sacrifice ourselves to look after him, never mind the cost to ourselves (or, for that matter, his constant undermining any help anyone tried to give him). So, I am a tad sensitive on the subject.
First off, the moral is that one should make these sacrifices -- one's freedom, one's life, one's youth -- if one really loves someone or something. If you're not willing to do it, you clearly don't really love that person or thing.
Bullshit. I loved my father. I was not obligated to fuck myself over for him.
But, I am now being told that, not only should I have sacrificed my freedom, years of my life, and my mental health to take care of a verbally and psychologically abusive man, but it does not even count as a sacrifice. Not if I really love him.
Bullshit. I know a woman who sacrificed a year of her life to take care of a dying man. She is not a saint, and no one forced her to do this. But, no one can tell me that this was not a sacrifice.
My Significant Other sacrificed his Friday evening at a filking convention to go with me to the emergency room, to keep my spirits up, and to hold me when I howled in pain and tell me it would be all right. Would I have been horrified if he hadn't? Honestly, probably yes. But, do not tell me he gave up nothing. I know better. Did he do it with grace and love? Yes. And you know what? We would both have preferred this not to be necessary.
And then, I start looking at who sacrificed what in the novel, and I get even more annoyed. The man dies. The woman gives up her life to raise someone else's children. Yuck.
And these children? Well, they were horrible at first. And second, and third, but that's okay because that made the time continuum come out right by forcing the woman who eventually adopts them to stay in World War II England. And, hey, she cares about them, and no one else does, so she has to adopt them, right? It's her Duty! And not even a sacrifice, because she comes to love them. So pat, when one isn't the person taking care of the kids, or when one is reading a book and can fast forward past years of raising kids.
Now, the kids live in World War II England, so it's not like she can take them home to the world of 2060. That would mean letting them know she's a time traveler. Oh wait! They know this already -- they have figured it out. I'm not quite clear on how, but let that pass. They saw her return from a shimmery beam of light, never mind that, if I understand the mechanics of time travel correctly, the shimmery beam should not have been able to exist where there were any witnesses. Never mind how another character somehow figured out on first seeing a woman come into a shelter that she was a time traveler. I mean, isn't that the first assumption everyone makes on seeing a stranger enter your bomb shelter?
No, let's just go back to this: The children know she's a time traveler. She has discussed this with them. She dies of a cancer that is treatable in 2060. Why is this necessary? Oh, wait, she has to sacrifice her life. But, it's not really a sacrifice, even though she's dead, and her children would, presumably, have preferred to have her live. Why can't they all come through to 2060 and started helping with... well, whatever it is we're doing this time travel for?
Okay, I get it's an academic discipline, but you're telling me time traveling historians wouldn't love to discuss a time period with the people who lived through it without having to pretend they're from that period?
Well, but... she has to stay, because, as it turns out, she's the ancestress of the boy who's in love with her friend, the boy who sacrifices years of his live to rescue that friend, proving once and for all that he loves her and that she can't ignore that. Just what I need, more books peddling the message that a woman is obligated to love a man who loves her, and that she can't actually rescue herself, because that's his job. Her job is to tell the Wise Old Man in Despair that All Will Be Well.
But, okay, so the woman who stays in the past must give birth to whoever it is who gives birth to whoever, for however many generations, until this young man is born. And then? What about when she's past childbearing years? And childraising years, because she has to NotSacrifice her freedom, years, and life to raise the children she is obligated to love. Why does she have to die when enough people are in the know?
Well, because... everyone made sacrifices in World War II? Because it's a sort of character growth thing? I mean, yes, there is an element of comeuppance for the time travelers so righteously annoyed that the folks of World War II won't cooperate and parade themselves before the time travelers, showing whatever virtues the budding historians want to do their papers on. But, I'm not buying it. This is supposed to be a happy ending. After all, what single woman of the future wouldn't realize it was her happy destiny to NotSacrifice herself living in the past and raising difficult children?
It isn't that I object to the choice per se. But I object to making it a universal thing that everyone should do, to the stereotypical gender roles, and to the claim that, where there is love, one isn't really making a sacrifice.
59. The Habitation of the Blessed, by Catherynne Valente. This is the first in her Prester John trilogy, and I've been a while reading this. I read her books aloud to myself, and that slows the reading process down. This book is particularly lush. So, I decided that I'd have a lot more fun if I gave myself permission to put it down and pick it up for small doses, which is how I read the first third to half. Even without my issues with the Willis book, I would have needed something of a very different style, and the lush language was exactly what I craved. And, hopefully, this means that I'll have a bit less of a wait for the next one in the trilogy.