The Sharing Knife: Legacy by Lois McMaster Bujold

I stayed up late to finish this book, because I couldn't sleep not knowing how it finished.
This is the second book of a series. In the first book, Beguilement, Dag and Fawn survive fighting a malice and meeting her family. The ending was a pretty minor cliff-hanger – they set off to meet his family.

If we’d known more about his family and society at the end of book 1 however, we would have been more worried. Dag and Fawn come from two different societies that have very little respect or understanding for each other, and we learn more about what separates them in Legacy. Both groups have sensible enough rules and customs, given their world belief systems. Don't expect some wishy-washy paean to tolerance and niceness – the differences run a bit deep to be overcome in one book, if they ever will be.

To take a minor difference: on marriage, Fawn’s society expects her to go and live with her husband’s family, taking with her a dowry (her share of her family’s goods). Dag’s society expects him to go and live with his wife’s family, taking with him bride gifts.

Fawn’s efforts at settling in make interesting reading. But other events soon overtake this part of the plot, the ones which kept me up late, till we end on another minor cliff-hanger. This isn't my favourite Bujold by quite a few books, but I will be buying the next book as soon as it comes out in hardback, which is definitely not soon enough.

Legacy was first published in 2007

Cursed and Consulted by Rick Cook

Rick Cook had a possibly decent idea, but stretched it well past what it could carry. Mind you, I have started in Book 3 of a series.

I haven't read books 1 & 2, but they went like this - geek goes to another world where magic works, becomes powerful through his knowledge of computing, has adventures, gets the girl, settles down as local aristocrat while remaining endearingly democratic in appearance, if not in substance. This is another installment of adventures.

Cursed and Consulted is an omnibus. I read all of The Wizardry Cursed which is book 3, and started on the The Wizardry Consulted, but can't work up enough interest to finish it. The first book, which I haven't read, may have been interesting enough to carry the cliched plot, characters, and setting, the third isn't. Only the comic relief, which was the incompetent ninja dwarfs, kept me reading. Okay, the comic relief was a bit heavy handed and not brilliant, but still funny.

I don't mind a totally cliched plot if it is done in an interesting way or has other redeeming virtues, like a consideration of ethics or interesting characters or great prose. I won't be keeping this book, as it doesn't have enough extras to hide the cliches. And why did I buy it in the first place? It came as a pack of 4 books on eBay, and I wanted 2 of them.

The Wizardry Cursed was first published in 1991

Other reading in the last week

Some items I have read in the last seven days but not commented on: Winterfair Gifts and Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold, local newspapers, favourite web comics, some articles in Arts & Letters Daily, two blogs on making steam punk artifacts - note tizzied up flat screen monitor and keyboard! I want one. And some interesting articles in The Economist magazine's online Science and Technology section, especially the one on consciousness,which I hope is covered more fully in The New Scientist magazine eventually as the links weren't very helpful. I notice other news outlets headlined it as Scientists Create Out of Body Experience or some such similar misleading way.

Poetry and Kathleen Raine

There is a poem by Kathleen Raine called Spell of Creation in two of my books of poetry for children, which I have admired for several years, it speaks to me every time I read it. Today I decided to look for other poems by her, and found three on my shelves, my favourite being Envoi in The New Oxford Book of English Verse (the one edited by Helen Gardner). This is part of the second verse:

See how against the weight in the bone
The hawk hangs perfect in the air -
The blood pays dear to raise it there

And I found other poems on the internet at Old Poetry and PoemHunter, where I was particularly struck by Transit of the Gods and Change - here are 2 verses

Change
Says the moon to the waters,
All is flowing.
...
You must change said,
Said the worm to the bud,
Though not to a rose

I haven't read all the poems on the two internet sites yet. I also found a comment about her being in the poetic line of William Blake, which I can see. I didn't really like Blake when I was in my twenties except for the few famous poems like The Tyger that just about everybody likes, finding him a bit weird, but now I like his weirder poetry a lot.

Kathleen Raine 1908 - 2003

A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon

I borrowed this from the library. I find Gabaldon enthralling while I'm reading her, but have doubts whenever I put whichever book down. I was trying to think why yesterday, as she passes the Plot, Characterisation, Style test I usually apply to books - if the book gets a really high score in one element I'm inclined to forgive deficiencies in another element, though I insist on a conceded pass in style as a minimum. But when I thought about it again I wonder if she does pass the Plot element - her plots are a bit too much like life, just one damn thing after another*. I wonder if I mean no theme apart from survival?

However, she does very satisfactory endings and beginnings, she slides in information you need from previous books or history in a graceful and unobtrusive manner, and her past is a different country*, for example not at all full of eighteenth century women with feisty feminist attitudes. And I always have to keep reading to find out what happens next. So I will probably continue to read her books, though not buy them.

I saw the lady who runs the local second hand shop reading this book at her counter when it first came out in Australia - I had just seen it in new arrivals at Angus & Robertson Books on the next block. "Goodness, has someone brought in the latest Gabaldon already!" I exclaimed - "No," she said, "It will be far too long before someone brings one in, I bought it new today before I opened up." She wasn't planning on selling it once read, either.

*And for those of you who like to know the origin of quotes: Life is just one damned thing after another. Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915). The past is a different country; they do things differently there." L.P. Hartley in "The Go-Between"
A Breath of Snow and Ashes first published in 2005

Eric by Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is one of my favourite authors. Eric is rather shorter than most of his books, and even though it is about Rincewind (and Eric), it is still very funny. My husband really likes the Rincewind books, but I can do without them. So this is only the second time I have read it, and I discovered to my surprise there was more plot than I noticed the first time, when the humour and the tour of literary cliches and classics must have blinded me with amusement. Perhaps I had better re-read the rest of the Rincewind books...

Eric first published in 1990

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

This is a collection of short stories. I read the title story on the Internet when it was nominated for the Nebula novella prize, which it won. I loved it then and still love the story Magic for Beginners. I also loved the The Faery Handbag. Kelly Link has lots of fascinating sideways ideas.

But I didn't really like any of the other stories, except for thinking how interesting occasionally, especially in The Great Divorce. I actively disliked Stone Animals, I felt the ending was too abrupt and not nearly strong enough for the rest of the story, which I had enjoyed reading up till then.

Lull had interesting parts, though the opening section went on far too long, but I couldn't help wondering if the story in a story in a story format was chosen because she couldn't think of appropriate endings for all the stories. And Red Dwarf (the TV show episode and one of the books) did the idea of living backwards just as well, so I kept wishing for that bit to be over.

Catskin didn't really strike me as particularly interesting, but then I have read the unbowdlerised Brothers Grimm. And this is probably my problem in general with Kelly Link, she has lots of ideas but often not much plot, so if I have come across the idea before, the story doesn't work all that well for me.

I liked the black and white illustrations by Shelley Jackson in my copy (Harper Perennial 2005) - more books should be illustrated! Why should children have all the best illustrators? I expect to read my two favourite stories many more times, so on the whole I am pleased to own this book. I will also be on the lookout for other work by Link. In the collection Firebirds Rising I have another of her stories, The Wizards of Perfil, which I also liked a lot.

Magic for Beginners (the book) first published 2005 - stories first published 2002 to 2005

The Silent Pool by Patricia Wentworth

Usually I don't care that much about the state of the book I'm reading, only the words matter! As long as the pages are clean that is, underlining and notes in the margin are so annoying. They rarely underline or comment on the bits that strike me, and undoubtedly they don't have a mother-in-law who is a librarian. And other than giving me feelings of guilt if I so much as pencil my name in a book I'm loaning, she is a perfect mother-in-law I assure you.

But I did keep noticing this copy whenever I picked it up to read. I bought it cheap on eBay, and it smells very musty, even to my cold blocked nose. The carefully mended dust cover is very tatty and faded.

I still enjoyed the book though. I like Wentworth because of her characters, the way even minor characters seem such definite people who behave consistently, for example the vicar and his wife in this one. (The recurring characters however, the detective and the police, are not very interesting as characters at all, but usually only have a small part.) However in this book, the murderer and a murderee were definitely unbelievable as real people I thought. The love interest, where the girl worries he has a roving eye, was more interesting than usual as they were contrasted with another older couple where the bloke was a serial philanderer.

What I most like about Wentworth is the glimpse of a past mindset and society - the past is a different country, they thought differently then. This is often clearest for the recent past in those detective novels where they are trying to give you a sense of a whole group of people and the way they think as part of the essential clues for the reader. Not that I use them as clues, I am no good at picking who the murderer is, though my list of people who aren't the murderer is usually correct. A pretty short list in some cases.

The Silent Pool first published in 1954

A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold

I have just re-read this book, I meant to only read the section where Miles and Ekaterin talk about honour and breaking vows you intended to keep, but started at the first page and just kept going.

Bujold's character's frequently contend with their life not going in the direction they planned and intended.
On page 427 of my copy (Baen 2000 paperback, with a horrible cover of people I can't identify from the book) Ekaterin says

"I went from being the kind of person who made, and kept, a life-oath, to one who broke it in two and walked away."..." I am not who I was. I can't go back. I don't quite like who I have become. Yet I still - stand. But I hardly know how to go from here. No-one gave me a map for this road." ...

"In my experience," [Miles] said, "the trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonour, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into just two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn. It's a survivors problem, this one."

I am not sure why this an important point in the book for me; perhaps because it relates back to Ekaterin's concerns about her choices in Komarr, and the consequences of two bad choices of Miles in Memory. And in general I prefer characters and people who keep their promises. But it isn't always possible, and people don't always make the best possible choice. And then we all have to go on from that point, that not so good choice we have made. Some people can accept that they are a different person than they thought they were. Some twist the story so it makes it sound as thought they were always that person, or that the choice was forced on them - I listened to a friend do this once a week or two after her choice, a very educational experience - and no, I didn't point it out.

A Civil Campaign first published in 1999