Qualified Perceptions

This is the second sequel to Hands of the Emperor, this one the one that I was hoping for, with the second book as a differently-flavored middle of the sandwich. At least we are finally done with "Kip's family gives him grief because they don't understand his job" and have moved on to different sources of angst. (We cannot have no angst; that is not how these books work.) It does about as good a job as one might hope for stitching the differing narratives together, though they are so different that it is still not perfect. (In particular, the third person omniscient relationship described in books 1 and 3 does not match the relationship portrayed in (or, nearly left out of!) the first person internal narrative of book two.) There are some ways in which my objections are kind of written into the foreground in book three as things to be angsted about, so that's something. And some of the themes are about absolutely loving someone who is not absolutely perfect, so the fact that I absolutely love the story but it's still not perfect... also fits. I am deducting half a star for what I feel to be an unjust sillification applied to Ser Rhodin, ending with four stars.

This is a generally adequate zombie fantasy, which I enjoyed way more than the book warranted because it was narrated by Moira Quirk, who does the narration for the Gideon the Ninth audiobooks. So hearing her talk about creepy dead things warmed my heart. It's a Welsh-ish fantasy (name checking Arawn and the Cauldron of Rebirth, hence zombies), but there's not a ton of depth to the world, it's one of those settings that has "the village" and "the forest" and "the prince's city" and that sort of thing. The bits that are adventure-y are fine but nothing stands out (and there are some odd errors, like there's a whole scene early on where protagonist Ryn goes to break the legs of a bone house because chopping their heads off doesn't stop them - but then in the fighting at the end she's chopping heads off all over the place and it seems to work fine). The bits that have to do with the risen dead that are not ravening zombies, are surprisingly sweet and moving. (An early example: the pet goat of the younger sister is killed early on but helpfully follows the adventurers along whenever it rises at night.) Why are the zombies called "bone houses"? I DO NOT KNOW. I honestly couldn't get past that. I kept trying to make it fit something like "the bone house of the soul after the soul has left" but there's quite a lot of evidence in the book that the soul hasn't left. I just couldn't do anything with "house" and it's one of the few times that I couldn't properly suspend disbelief at the beginning. Dunno. Two and a half stars.

I failed to finish this, even before getting to what is apparently the most horrific chapter of the book, based on the Rape of Nanking. The main character starts as abused, and evolves to both abused and ambitious, such that her character veers quite a lot between cringing and apologetic and rage-filled and power-hungry. This could well be realistic, but if I'm reading unsympathetic characters I want more humor or cleverness. Ah well.

Dr. Silas Coade is the physician on Demeter, a sailing ship that's exploring a strange fjord in Norway. We meet the other crew members, and the people on board who commissioned the expedition. In his spare time, Dr. Coade is writing a story, about the crew of a steamship exploring somewhere frightening. The Demeter reaches the wreckage of a previous ship to have gone on this expedition - did the expedition's patron know? Treachery! And then the Demeter is lost, to the same peril.

Dr. Silas Coade is the physician on Demeter, a steamship that's exploring a mysterious inlet in Patagonia. We meet the other crew, and those who commissioned the expedition. Dr. Coade also writes in his spare time, about the crew of a submarine exploring somewhere frightening. The Demeter reaches the wreckage of a previous ship...

It was short, though maybe only in comparison to Reynolds' usual tomes, but it felt like the right length, and I quite enjoyed both the surface narratives and the underlying one. Four stars.

This was strangely enjoyable for what it was. An Army vet takes a job as a butler for an old guy who "thinks he's a wizard". Yup, he's a wizard, though wizardry is super low-key: he can open and close doors with a wave of his hand, and the pixies do the dusting. The villain is his niece, who thinks her uncle is suffering from dementia (with good reason, between the wizard thing and that he keeps forgetting who she is (or pretending to, depending)) and wants to sell the house. The main character finds being a butler strangely enjoyable. It's... pleasant and comfy, in a way that reading about pleasant rich people can be. Lots of not very much happens. There is an entire chapter devoted to installing the internet. I realize that this is by the same author as wrote the Quarter Share series, which I described as a spaceship procedural on easy mode - I guess this is a butler procedural on easy mode.

This reminded me a lot of Glen Cook's Black Company - the gritty grimdark soldiers trying to survive and keep people safe in a world shaped by the battles of greater powers that are less like gods and more like mad wizards (the Nameless versus the Deep Kings). The world-building feels real - the monsters are creepy and are about the right combination of familiar and unfamiliar to the protagonists (that is, some things are recognizable as "Those are terrifying and you don't want to mess with them unless you have a full platoon" and others are "what the hell is *that*?" and still others are "these are really disconcerting but not a threat unless you're asleep"). The tying together of magic and politics works well, with, more or less mana has to be produced in sweathouses. The main character, Ryhalt Galharrow (good name, that!), is a pretty classic Cranky Bastard with buried/broken ideals, and is a good version of the archetype - he starts as the boss of a group of bounty hunters who go after people who have been turned to the side of the Deep Kings, and he's also under obligation to the Nameless Crowfoot, so once in a while a crow claws itself out of his tattoo to give him some orders. This is apparently the first of a trilogy, but it stands alone pretty well. Four stars.

This is a very ambitious start of a series - after the Empire has fallen, the king of one of the kingdoms is trying to re-Empireize them together by military conquest and assassination. A motley crew of rogues runs a confusing mission for him. The heirs to several of the other kingdoms do their best to hold things together and stand against the invader. Swordsmen from the fallen swordsman-kingdom lurk around hunting for their six-fingered men. Mysterious assassins of various flavors follow their bosses. The various characters go off on various threads and meet each other and break up again. There's a lot of good banter. All in all, it's well done, and the different characters are surprisingly well-fleshed-out, but... I think probably I would have done better to read it rather than listen to the audiobook, because there were just so many characters that it was hard to keep everyone straight, and almost none of the umpteen plots got really resolved, or in some cases even started. (For example, the Missing Prince of Issamira is missing at the beginning of the book, and still just as missing at the end, though we've had several flashbacks of him, and several conversations about hos Issamira is in a kerfuffle because of their missing prince.) The whole trilogy is out, and I don't doubt that it holds together across the whole thing, but oof, it feels like an investment and I seem to be focusing more on fluffy comfort. I'll probably come back to this when I'm less tired.

Mike gave me the first several of these for my birthday, and I found them a really good thing to listen to while recovering from surgery. They're "litRPG", that being narrative from the point of view of a character in an RPG, or a character who has RPG mechanics foregrounded. The RPG mechanics here are interesting, but I don't find the narration of character sheet spreadsheets quite as mesmerizing as Mike does. The thing that I found most interesting was tht they are so Mike, that it was a little bit like listening to an internal narrative of his perfect combination of role-playing and mechanic and empire-building. There's something about interacting with someone else's art that is strangely compelling even if it isn't quite the art for me. Anyway, it seems like it's a pretty good example of the with-mechanics litRPG, if that's something you want to test out.

It's a You've Got Mail romance in a fascinatingly undead-water-based-western world. (Not cowboys riding hippopotamuses, though). The romance was a little exasperating, but the weird landscape was compelling enough to keep me going. Having gotten Jerry hooked on Ursula Vernon's paladin romances, I keep trying to find something else that I enjoy as much; alas, this wasn't really it.

Hey! This is a Kindle Unlimited book that I really liked! I do always have a soft spot for supervillain fiction, and this was a pretty good example. Anna Tromedlov (why?) is a professional henchman, which is not a great job. She gets brutalized by a superhero when her boss's caper goes sideways, starts calculating the overall cost in human lifespan that superheroes wreak (answer: the one with the most casual disregard is about equivalent to a cataclysmic earthquake), and then gets recruited by one of the more major supervillains. The plot is a little bit meandering rather than a focused arc, but that kind of feels right for a henchman as opposed to a major villain or hero.

I liked the main character's combination of bitter determination and bent ideals, and the flaws she recognizes but can't break. I quite liked the supervillain Leviathan - scary along multiple axes, and with his own ego-based flaws. I liked the dynamic between Anna and her team once she got one. Lots of things to like. A snippet of dialogue between Anna and another henchman, when she starts losing friends:

We were both quiet for a bit. Keller drained his glass, refilled it, rubbed the back of his neck. Finally, he said, "You'd think people would be much more afraid to hang out with heroes and kicks."

"Why's that?"

"Well, they have a much higher mortality rate. You date a hero? You're their best friend? Their mom? The uncle who raised them? You're getting kidnapped three times a week, easy."

I chuckled. "True."

"Course it is. When's the last time a villain's fiancee was spirited away from their engagement party and tied to the front of a speeding train for ransom?"

I actually barked out a small laugh at that. "They really should step up their game."

"You know why they can't get to our loved ones?" Keller asked.

"Because they'd never stoop to it?" I answered.

"Because we don't have any."

I made an awful choking noise, like he'd punched me in the throat. Now it was Keller's turn to stare at the table.

Four and a half stars

These are three cozy-ish mysteries that I found really really charming. The premise is a retirement community, where some of the locals have a Thursday get-together where they try to solve murders. One is an ex-spy, one is an ex-labor unionist, one is an ex-psychiatrist, and one is an ex-nurse; they're all in their seventies now. The first book has deaths that arise naturally (or in the past) from the setting, and the second two books kind of result from the first book; the author said he didn't want it to be like Jessica Fletcher bumping into new random corpses left and right. That mostly works, though it does make the later ones a bit more spy and a bit less murder-mystery (spy plots beget more spy plots; personal-reasons murders not so much). There's a lot of humor (very good banter), and there's a lot of making friends and building a found family (not that anyone involved would call it that), and there's also a lot of melancholy surrounding widows and widowers, and grief for spouses with dementia, and so on. The combination of sadness and humor worked surprisingly well; the books are overall cheerful but the grief keeps it from being cloying. Here's a bit of banter from book two - Ron is sulking because he missed out on some excitement last night:

Ron has skipped breakfast for this and is even more furious than usual. He has spent some time looking at the large bloodstain on the bedroom carpet, and he now inspects the bullet hole in the bedroom wall.

"I've seen liberties taken," says Ron. "God knows, they've all tried it on with me over the years, but this takes the whassname. When did you find the body? Half eleven? was probably still up. I could have slipped on my shoes and been straight over. I swear, it's not often I'm speechless, but I'm speechless. I wish I could speak, I wish I had words."

Ron has had all the fun he's going to have with the bullet hole, and starts pacing.

"Ron, don't pace over the bloodstains, please," says Elizabeth.

"But no, who gets the call? Joyce. Of course, Joyce. Everybody loves Joyce."

"I don't know about that," calls Joyce from the living room.

"Including you, Ron," says Elizabeth.

"I haven't interrupted the two of you, so don't interrupt me," says Ron. "There's a dead body. A dead body, geezer shot in the head, and what do you do? You ring Joyce. You don't ring Ron, dear me, no. Why would you ring Ron? He wouldn't want to see a corpse, would he? Old Ron? Last thing he'd want to see. A bloodstain and a bullet hole will be enough for Ron. I've heard it all now."

"Are you finished?" says Elizabeth, looking into her bag.

"Take a guess, Elizabeth? Take a guess if I'm finished. Use those powers of deduction. No, I'm not finished. I would have loved it. Loved it."

"Come with me," says Elizabeth.

Elizabeth walks into the living room and takes the armchair opposite Joyce. Ron follows her through. Elizabeth takes a folder from her bag and places it on her lap. Ron has a speech to make.

"Here's my promise to you," he begins. "With Joyce as my witness--and it's not a promise friends should have to make-if ever find someone shot, I will call you. will call you because you're my mate, and that's what mates do. Two in the morning, I don't care,- find a corpse, pick up the phone: Elizabeth, there's a corpse on the landing, on the bowls lawn, doesn't matter where, slip on a pair of shoes and come and take a look.' I am absolutely fuming."

"Are you finished now, Ron?" asks Elizabeth. "I've got something need to talk to you about."

"Oh yeah? Well, what if I've got something to talk to you about? About friendship?"

"As you wish," says Elizabeth. "But we don't have an awful lot of time. We have a job to do."

"I've made you both a cup a of tea," says Joyce. "Don't be angry, but it's herbal."

Ron hasn't finished, though. "No apology, no 'Sorry, Ron, spur of the moment, I panicked.' You think I see corpses every day of the week? Is that it? I've been in the hospital three nights, I et home, and this is my reward. You see a dead body, Joyce sees a dead body, and I'm sat at home, watching some documentary with Portillo on a train. That is insult to injury, I'm sorry but it is. I thought we were friends."

Elizabeth sighs. "Ron, I like you. It is a huge surprise to me, but I do. I respect you too, in a number of areas. But listen to me, dear. I was in an operational situation. I had a man who had been seconds from death, a young girl who had just shot someone for the first time, I had a crime scene, and I had MI5 arriving any time. So I felt I needed another pair of hands. I knew that both of you would want to see the corpse, that was a given. So I was left with a simple choice between a woman with forty years of nursing experience and a man in a football top who would bang on about Michael Foot the moment MI5 arrived. Granted, thirty-odd years ago the job would still have gone to the man, but times change, and I rang Joyce. Now, what can we do to calm you down?"

I loved these, every single moment. Four and three quarters stars, the deduction of a quarter star because I might have liked one more twist to the mysteries.

A very nice haunted-ship-in-space mystery, set in future corporate dystopia. Atmosphere, good. Spookiness, good. Investgating-the-haunted-ship room by room dungeon crawl, good. Alas, the mystery was a little less than ideal - too many clues, not enough red herrings, so most of the answer was pretty clear way before the characters figured it out, and I only missed the final "why" bit. I didn't highlight anything to quote, and nothing jumps out in retrospect to talk about, but it's just a darned good example of atmospheric SF horror. Call it four stars, overall.

Another of the Nine Worlds books by Goddard. I was absolutely not expecting to discover, however many books in I have gotten, for the Nine Worlds to turn from fictional world to fictionalized real world, for one of the worlds to be more or less the Neil Gaiman version of London. Of the Goddard books I've read, I think this one was the one that left me least impressed - not because of the setting (I've read more fictional London than you can shake a stick at, and I quite like it as a location), but because the plot is all about the ending of the millenia-long Great Game Aurieleteer, and, having finished the book, I still don't really understand either the mechanics or examples of play (other than that it has a duel at the end). Two and a half stars, and I wish I liked it better.