Reading three books at the same time

Fantasy | Secrets of Goth Mountain | Gary J. Davies
Legal thriller | Reversible Errors | Scott Turow
Fantasy | Mad Ship | Robin Hobb

Here's the thing about reading three books at the same time: it's confusing. Which book do you really want to read? First. (You want to read all books if you're like me). I was going through a slow patch last month, and really, didn't feel like doing anything. Even reading. (Horrors!) So I picked up three books at the same time (never take medical advice from me).

Now, of the three, Gary Davies' book moves the fastest. Unfortunately, it's an ebook, and so not as amenable to being read in all sorts of places (it's weird to open your laptop and chuckle in a doctor's waiting room, for example). So it ended up being the only one of the three I haven't yet finished. You have in it Johnny Goth, who has special powers (like extra-keen super sight, hearing and strength), but who's been taken away from Goth Mountain by his mother, since she doesn't want him to disappear, like his father did. He's engaged to Angela because she wants it that way. He has a watch with his father's image engraved on it, along with his own. The images age.

In the meantime, near Goth Mountain, Fenster the logger wants to grab the mountain so that he can cut the old-growth forests. The native Americans on the mountain will not stand for it. There is the teacher, Elizabeth Winters (we all know she will end up with Johnny Goth instead of Angela), and Johnny's childhood friends, including Dooley Simple who convinces the bark of several trees to grow in smiley shapes, the shaman Two Bears, and the shape-shifting Ned. Ranged with the villains are Skunk Fenster, the goonish nephew of Fenster the logger, the Sheriff (owned by the logger) and Mr Dark, an evil entity that feeds on humans and other beings. Of course, given that the market is for white males, Johnny is not a native American. Duh.

Yep, shenanigans all around. A Wild West story with supernatural beings. Keep tuned. I'll write it up later.

Reversible Errors refers to the legal term that gets trials thrown out on appeal. Rommy Gandolph is about to be executed for three gruesome murders. The federal appellate court (I'll never understand the USAn legal system, so I'm careful to copy-paste the terms) has drafted corporate lawyer Arthur Raven to help him draft his last appeal. Arthur used to be a public prosecutor, then moved to the richer fields of corporate practice. He's a gone case, unattractive and sentimental, and has resigned himself to never marrying. He also has a schizophrenic sister to look after, which doesn't help. Ex-judge and ex-con Gillian Sullivan had judged the case originally. She's been disgraced as taking bribes for cases, blackmailed by lawyers who found her guilty secret. Larry Starczek the detective who ran the original case, is still trying to get somewhere with his true love, Muriel Wynn, the prosecutor. Both are married to other people whom they don't love. The reopening of the case throws them together.

The story see-saws between Arthur's team proving the client innocent, and Muriel's team proving their case was solid all along. Except that both sides are being played. As each side sees an ascendant in their case, so do the two couples, Arthur and Gillian and Muriel and Larry, seem to come together. As their cases slide downward, so do the relationships. Since I'm not going to spoil the end for those who want to read the book, let me say that one relationship survives, and the other crashes, exactly in tune with the respective cases. Yeah, wait for the last chapter. It's a decent whodunit as well; don't get misled by the author's emphasis on the relationships.

Mad Ship is the second book (of three) in 'The Liveship Traders' series. As usual, I hit a series in the middle (what's with me??). This book is the slowest moving as well as the fattest of the three books. Most series authors walk a line between writing the second book for the fans of the first, and writing it for new entrants like me. Robin Hobb, aka Megan Lindholm, takes you on a round of introductions of practically every character who populated the previous book, including the liveships, so I'm guessing she chose the first option. Liveships are constructed of wizardwood, and are 'alive'. They are characters, too. A liveship with a good relationship with the crew and trader family it belongs to, can outrun any other ship on the world. Bingtown, where the Traders live, pays rates and taxes to the Satrap of Jaimillia. Unfortunately, the new Satrap is a spoilt teenager who is tying up with the villainous Chalcedeans. Along the Rain Wild River are the Rain Wild Traders, a secretive and deformed group who are the only source of wizardwood. The river eats any other wood than wizardwood, so only Bingtown trades with them. There are also pirates, led by Captain Kennit, who wants to be King of the Cursed Shores, the only human-populated part of the planet.

Liveships need a family member aboard. Vivacia has been taken over by Kennit, but Althea, the daughter of its old captain, still hopes to wrest it from her brother-in-law, Captain Kyle Haven (not a Trader-born), who has turned slaver to save the family's fortunes. Kennit is trying to corrupt her nephew Wintrow, but she doesn't know that. Having proven her ability to run a ship on Ophelia, she is torn between her newly rediscovered love Brashen Trell and Ophelia's captain's son, Grag Tenira, who loves her unrequitedly. There is Amber the beadmaker and wizardwood carpenter, who is on the side of the slaves and also on the side of the mad ship Paragon. Althea's sister, mother and niece are wondering whether to let her niece, Malta, marry a Rain Wild trader, Reyn. Reyn's mind is being torn up by the dragon who lives in the last dragon egg (the shell of which is wizardwood), because she wants to be freed. Sea Serpents are trying to retain their sentience, and dying out all over the planet. The Elder Race, which lived alongside the dragons, died a long time back, and only the Rain Wild people have deciphered some of their secrets.

By the time I was finally engaged with the story, I was 6/7 of the way to the end. And it bugged me that the end of the story is in part 3. Fortunately, I can guess what will happen, muwahahaha.

It's not a bad book by any means, well written. A liveship is an interesting concept. But too slow. Also, as usual, I wonder why people have to revert to Victorian customs in fantasy lands. Especially when it's clear they came from Earth at some time in the past, and well into our future.

And, drat, I read two more books in between. So I'll write them up, too, before telling you all about Goth Mountain.

Read Reversible Errors if you like legal thrillers. Scott Turow writes well. This is not his best book, though. John Grisham fans will probably like Scott Turow books.

 

Read Mad Ship if you like complex stories with lots of characters who have emotional issues that they need to resolve. Anne McCaffery readers would like these books.

 

Read The Secrets of Goth Mountain if you like fantasy placed in modern settings. Light reading with happy endings. It reminds me of Disney's Hot Lead and Cold Feet. With Added Nature Powers. Oh, and it's free in July 2014.

Ian and the Dragon

Science Fiction | Neal Asher | Gridlinked

Like I mentioned in the last post, this book had me helplessly glued to it, and this is when it was a re-read, and also I'd had no intentions of re-reading the whole thing when I innocently picked it off the shelf to read a few pages. And this is Neal Asher's first novel. Whuff.

Gridlinked is the story of the fabulous Ian Cormac, described at one point in the book as 'the invention of fabulists', an agent for Earth Security in a universe where people travel from planet to planet via runcibles (Asher's name for the instant-elsewhere device variously called a gate, portal, etc in other fiction of the ilk). People live lives of luxury, mostly, and the tech is way up in the realms of magic. The only thing you cannot carry through a runcible is a proscribed weapon. And yet, there are those who want to leave the Polity, and drag their planet away from it. Separatists, particularly nasty multiple murderers get Cormac's goat, and he's awfully good at getting them to justice.

Early in the story, Cormac blows his cover by being too cyborg-like as a result of 30 years of being fully gridlinked with the AIs that run the cities, the runcibles, and Earth Security. Horace Blegg, the near-mythical head of ES, a 400 year old survivor of Hiroshima, suggests that he should get off the grid and take on a new assignment, to find out what caused one of the runcibles to fail, converting an incoming human into a 30 megaton bomb.

In this book, you meet the villainous separatist, Arian Pelter, who is as vicious a psychopath as you will ever meet in fiction; his sidekick, John Stanton, a boosted mercenary who prides himself on leaving separatist cells before they go fully bad, and misses the signs this time; Mr Crane, the broken Golem run by Pelter, and other assorted human villains. You also meet the dracomen, who may be alive, or not, probably created by Dragon, a series of four kilometer-diameter spheres with a touchy personality and an inexhaustible supply of lies and indirection. On Cormac's side, there are a team of four Sparkind, two of which are Golems, another Golem, a runcible expert, and assorted AIs and soldiers. Not to forget, the not-paranoid-enough smuggler captain, catadapt women and ophiadapt men. The augmentations that people do are satisfyingly futuristic, the different planets reminiscent of science fiction book covers down the ages. The spacecraft are marvels, the cars fly on anti-gravity, weird killer bugs and robotic spiders populate the shade under strange trees, and the weaponry is enough to start a movie series in itself.

All this and evocative writing too. Neal Asher actually makes you like the James Bond-ish Ian Cormac, and some of the lines are real gems. Sample:

He stretched himself out and was wondering if he would get any sleep, when sleep crept up and got him instead.

A whodunit with plenty of twists and turns, and a surprise ending.

And now, I wonder if a writer has to be ruthless with the characters, not just in setting up challenges for them, but even unto knocking them off when least expected, to get that extra 'grittiness' into fiction. You cannot be empathetic with your characters and create dyed-in-the-wool villains unless you are either psychopathic or have a ruthless grip on your imagination. At one extreme is I-will-gross-you-out-if-I-can't-horrify-you Stephen King and George RR Martin, who is inventively torturous with his characters. Certainly, these writers understand their characters, but they don't care for them, or they would not kill them so gruesomely. The taste has bitter notes all along, and sometimes strongly in the aftertaste, too. Even the chocolate in these is bitter choc. On the other end, you have Anne McCaffery, Catrina Taylor and Gord McLeod, who care deeply for their characters, and shy away from the real gore. There are tragedies and triumphs, but the overall taste is sweet. The villains are misguided and can be brought around, the aliens are understandable, and all problems can be solved if we all pull together. I know which world I'd prefer to live in, all right! And who doesn't like cake?

Yet, once in a while, your reading will go for the stronger and less expected tastes. Gridlinked is salty, pungent, with a hint of sour and an early overlay of bitter. More like eating a large burger with chilli than a bowl of chips. Satisfying.

OK, now I need to get back to Children of the Sky. Only, I'm taking a short story diversion through Aberrations, edited by Jeremy Shipp. I'm three short stories in already, which is blazing fast for a book I only downloaded today. (Oh, did I mention it's free on Amazon today?) Read it yourself, so that you can take issue with me in a few days when I comment on it. Please. :)