Ahira's Hangar

Well, I should have been reading Anathem by Neil Stephenson, but I got sidetracked by an impulsive reread of Anne Mccaffrey's Harper Hall Trilogy instead. Good to meet up with Menolly and the gang from the Harper Hall again.

McCaffrey has always been at her best when writing stories filled with music and musicians.

I have finished up Dragondrums, and it was really nice to visit Pern again. Sure you have your occasional no-goodniks, but the majority of people there are decent at heart, even if sometimes conservative and/or hidebound.

I have been trying to read a book for a month now that Amazon sent me for free to review. It is called Carpentaria and was written by Alexis Wright. The language use is some of the most beautiful I have run into in quite some time - I keep wanting to read it aloud, as the language has such cool cadences and rhythems - almost like scat singing here and there. Whenever I can bring myself to pick it up, I have a hard time putting it down because I get so enthralled in the language and prose. But I have to literally force myself to pick it up. The author is an Autralian Aborigine, and she is writing about her people who live near a little Australian town in the middle of no where on the northern coast. The extreme racism and poverty in the story make me want to literally vomit. The book on the one hand is so beautiful - as when telling the myths of the author's people. But the contents of the story are just...very disturbing.

I do not think I will be able to finish this one, and will probably donate it to my local library - God knows they need to build up their collection of magic realism anyway.

Duchess, I don't know the book you are having such a difficult time making your way through. But perhaps that is the point? To force our gaze upon ugliness, phrased in magnificent language?

I know that you, of all people I know, don't need to be force fed anything about the abuses of this world. But you are the exception. To have someone like you review this book, if it winds up having a message that should be told, could possibly make or break it.

...in my opinion, anyway...

I finally finished up the last chapter of Carpentaria last night. Good God, what a depressing book, brilliantly written. I do not know whether to applaud the author for her evocative use of language or go have a toot of whiskey to help me deal with the horrible racism and racist violence in the contents of it.

Have now moved on to the second of the free review ARC's, while trying to figure out how to review a book that both enthralled and sickened me.

The second ARC is Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. It is OK so far, but I liked the world and characters in his Mistborn trilogy a lot more. But it is early going yet, and this world and these characters might well grow on me.

I am really looking forward to the third ARC, The City and the City by China Meiville. I have been hearing a lot of positive buzz about that book - supposedly it is some sort of cross between fantasy and a detective novel, and is supposedly brilliantly written. Hopefully there will be no sex between humans and giant sentient insects.

I'm proud of you for pushing on with Carpentaria, Duchess.

Carpentaria sounds awesome, if depressing. Tsotsi by Athol Fugard is the only book I've read that even remotely shares a resemblance, and that's minus the mythological element.

I finally got a chance to finish up China Mieville's The City and the City and it is really really good. We're talking should be nominated for next year's Hugo for best novel good. I am completely befuddled on how to review it, as word has it that Meiville does not want a huge story twist leaked before the book is released, and that twist is a huge and central part of the book. But in brief, it is a genre crossover between science fiction, fantasy, and detective noir set in eastern Europe with a police detective trailing down the murderer/s of a young American graduate student in archaeology across two cities. While there are no elves or magic users or farmboys on quests, there is still wonderful science fiction/fantasy on every page.

And despite it being a murder mystery, it is clean enough that tweens and teens can read it, too, as long as their parents do not mind the police officers' potty mouths. While there is violence, it is not particularly graphic, and no sex at all.

That is good to hear, Duchess.

I haven't read any China Mieville yet, and have found any books brought into this house make their way into Beorn's hands. He hasn't branched out to any new authors in several years; maybe this would be a good beginning to introduce him to Mieville. It is a stand alone novel?

It is a stand alone novel; anotehr good one for him might be the very charming YA Un Lun Dun. You might want to be careful with this author and your kids depending on age/maturity of kid - Perdido Street Station has a pretty graphic sex scene between a human male and ginormous sentient insect. I know I draw a line on bestiality.

Technically, it's a woman with an insect for a head.

Yeah, but as I remember it the Bas Lag novels are fairly graphic. Though I can't think of anything in particular in The Scar.

That particular race in China's novels are actually a reference to M. John Harrison's Viriconium stories, which feature insects as antagonists in a few of the stories and have the image of a woman with an insect head appear a few times (the only one that comes to mind right now is a scene where these are the figureheads on some strange ships). China certainly gives it an interesting twist (there is a never-made-explicit suggestion that this was some insect species from another reality that somehow had the females unnaturally fused with this neck-down human form at some point when they moved from their own place of origin to Bas-lag. The males are neither sentient nor humanoid).
I need to reread those novels, I've forgotten a lot of the little things about his world, which is quite rich in details in the form of small asides and brief pieces of description.


Duchess, do you happen to know the UK release date for The City and the City?