Book Log Backlog #24 - #32 - 28/08/10

I'm horribly behind with my booklogs, so this is an 8 books in one post attempt to catch up. Beware spoilers as usual.

24) Lauren Kate: Fallen
I've left it way too long to write up this book and in the six or seven weeks since I finished it, I've all but forgotten the major plot points, which is an indication of the impression it left on me. Luce is a fallen angel, locked into a 17 year destructive cycle of forbidden love, untimely death the instant she understands what she is and subsequent resurrection. Reborn into the present age, knowing nothing of her past human lives, she's a oddball who ends up at reform school after her boyfriend spontaneously combusts. (I had some questions about the American reform school system - it seemed pretty weird to me with it's voluntary prison kind of vibe, but what do I know?) Despite the fact that he's trying to avoid her she finds Daniel - the love of all her lives, also an angel - and the cycle begins again against a background of  southern-swamp, sultry heat, crumbling buildings, inadequate teachers and teen misfits. Not sure |I'll be rushing to buy the next one in the series.

25) Jeanette Winterson: The Battle of the Sun
Aimed at 9s – 12s. Set in an alternative London around 1600, this is the story of Jack, who is kidnapped by a Magus who believes him to be The Radiant Boy. Apprenticed against his will in a strange magical household, Jack encounters seven more kidnapped boys, the Sunken King, a Creature Sawn in Two (Wedge and Mistress Split) and The Knight Summoned. All the while he's looking for a way to escape the Magus and his strange alchemical experiments, his mother is trying to find him with the help of a local witch. This seems to be a standalone until part way through there's a character introduced – Silver -  who was the protagonist of the earlier 'Tanglewreck' and who has been brought back through time as The Golden Maiden. The Magus has a plan is to turn all of the city of London to gold and when he begins to succeed the city begins to starve. Golden food is not necessarily a good thing. With the help of Roger Rover, Jack's mother's employer, John Dee, the Keeper of Tides and Mother Midnight Jack frees his mother and defeats the Magus, but loses Silver back to her own future.

26) Karl Schroeder: Sun of Suns
The first book of Virga. Steampunky far-future tech and a high concept world of floating countries set inside a massive fullerene balloon 3000 metres in diameter, drifting in space. There's a (mostly) breathable atmosphere, but no gravity except where it's created locally, and it's deadly cold away from the artificial suns. Hayden Griffin is a dangerous young man, determined to murder Admiral Fanning of the nation of Slipstream, whom he believes to be responsible for the death of his parents as they tried to ignite a mini sun for their own small nation of Aerie. But things are more complicated than Hayden had ever dreamed possible. Fanning turns out to be a decent man and Hayden is caught up in events involving Fanning's scheming wife, Venera, Aubri Mahallan, a woman engineer from outside Virga, and a mission to Candace, the Sun of Suns, through the inside of the balloon a vast space encompassing floating rocks, some occupied, and with enemy ships out to stop them at any cost. Hayden's simple view of good and evil is overturned in short order. I found this a slow read. Vastly inventive ideas seemed to dominate the characterisation. In a way this seemed more like old school science fiction. I doubt that I'll follow on with more of the Virga novels.

27) Devon Monk: Magic to the Bone
Magic has a physical cost. Every act of magic extracts a price form the user, maybe a two day migraine, or the loss of an important memory. But some people can offload the cost onto innocents and that's where Allie comes in. She's a Hound who is able to identify and trace the rogue spellcaster. When she finds a child dying from a magic offload that has her prominent businessman's father's signature all over it Allie is thrown into and adventure with the somewhat untrustworthy but luscious Zayvion, man of a million secrets. A good read and satisfying ending.


28) Kristin Cashore: Graceling
Katsa carries the 'grace' (exceptional skill) of killing which makes her an enforcer to be used by her king over and over again until she is sick to her soul of it. She becomes part of a secret organisation trying to do good. When the King of Leinid's father is kidnapped she goes in search of the old man, uncovering a mystery and finding a soulmate in his grandson, Po, similarly graced.

29) Ann Aguire: Grimspace
I really liked this one. Telepathy, space travel, adventure, a damaged heroine and tormented telepathic hero. What's not to like? Sirantha Jax carries the J-gene that enables her to jump ships across space. It's a  talent that's likely to kill her. At 33 she's already survived all her classmates who've burned out and cracked up or died on the job. It makes her a navigator-star of the Corp until she's blamed for the accident that kills seventy people including her pilot and lover, Kai. Banged up in a psych facility her 'doctors' are setting her up to break her so she takes the fall for the crash and she looks all set to end up on a prison planet or in an asylum. And then March walks into her life – literally – and whisks her out of the lock-up into a desperate situation which becomes even more dire when he delivers her to a bunch of renegades who want to break the Corp's stranglehold on jump transport. Various adventures follow as the Corp hunts Jax down while she and March and their oddball crew race to find the source of the J-gene to establish a new breed of jumper. There are battles with bloodthirsty predators, rival clans, the deadly Morgut, one of march's old enemies, Corps goons and a shapeshifting bounty hunter that turns out to be not such a bad guy after all. And at the end there's a big showdown. March and Jax versus the Corps. No prizes for guessing who wins. It's an action adventure romance with a heroine full of attitude. Looking forward to the next one.

30) Ann Aguire: Wanderlust
This didn't disappoint. Once more Jax and March push things to the limit. The Corp has been discredited thanks to Jax and her cohort of misfits, but there's a power vacuum and the government can barely fill it. Jax is recruited to be an ambassador, tasked with the job of bringing a planet load of shapeshifting aliens into the Conglomerate fold. Accompanied by Velith, ex bounty hunter, Jax and March set off for new adventures but their course is nowhere near direct. They end up trapped on Lachion when war between the clans goes ballistic. Jax is sick. Each time she jumps her body becomes weaker, but there's no respite. March won't desert the people who once helped him, but Jax has a job to do and they separate despite the fact that she feels as though she's had her right arm cut off. By the ending of the book they are together again and back on the road to Velith's planet, but March is hair-trigger war damaged. More to come in the next book...


31) Harry Connolly: Child of Fire
This is the first 'Twenty Palaces' novel, but we never see the Twenty Palaces society. All we know is that it's a group of sorcerers who hunt and execute rogue magicians. Ray Lilly, one time car thief and small-time magic user in possession of one illegal spell, is living on borrowed time because he betrayed the powerfull Annalise Powliss. He's now become her driver and 'wooden man'. She's been foirbidden to kill him, but she's looking for an excuse to let someone else do the job. Annalise and Ray head out to stop someone who is sacrificing innocent lives in order to boost their own magic, but the mission goes wrong. Annalise is badly injured and Ray has two choices, either to help her or to get out of Dodge and try to disappear. He chooses the former, going up against the townsfolk of Hammer Bay on her behalf as he tries to find who is incinerating their children and then casting a spell to make them forget the children ever existed. Industrialist Charles Hammer is the obvious candidate, but he's not alone. There's something lurking in caverns below the town.

32) Nancy Kress: Steal Across the Sky
When an alien base appears on the Moon, the aliens, who call themselves the Atoners, approach mankind via the power of the internet with a confession that they have done the human race great wrong and now wish to atone for it. Twenty one young applicants are selected as witnesses (using criteria no one can fathom) and sent off to twin planets on which kidnapped humans have long ago been planted and formed societies. The witnesses are only told that they'll know what they are looking for when they find it. Cam, Soledad and Lucca are the team that is sent to witness on the twin planets of Kular A and Kular B. Soledad stays on board the Atoner craft as mission control and Cam and Lucca shuttle down to the planets. Cam finds a warlike society entrenched in slavery and slaughter where life is based on the results of the strategy game of kulith, something which she can barely grasp. Lucca's planet is peaceful to the point of indolence and he only gradually becomes aware that the people seem to be able to see their recent dead – those who are on 'the second road'. This is the big secret wrong the Atoners have done. They removed the gene from Earth-humans that lets them see the dead. But that's only the halfway point of the book. The main crux is how Earth society (and the witnesses) deal with the revelation. Are the Atoners actually going to 'atone' for their crime? Is this actually evidence of an afterlife? (Lucca witnessed it, but still doesn't believe). A swathe of suicides (people setting out prematurely on the second road) brings things to a head. Cam, Soledad and Lucca each deal with the aftermath very differently. The press are still chasing them, and there are various crank societies (some families of the suicides) out for their blood. We're left guessing until the end about whether the seeing-the-dead thing is real or not. There's a plot point close to the end which I can't actually fathom. Something happens but I can't find a logica reason for it. Too much of a spoiler to include here, but it somewhat spoilt my enjoyment of an otherwise good book.

Book Log Backlog #24 - #32 - 28/08/10

I'm horribly behind with my booklogs, so this is an 8 books in one post attempt to catch up. Beware spoilers as usual.

24) Lauren Kate: Fallen
I've left it way too long to write up this book and in the six or seven weeks since I finished it, I've all but forgotten the major plot points, which is an indication of the impression it left on me. Luce is a fallen angel, locked into a 17 year destructive cycle of forbidden love, untimely death the instant she understands what she is and subsequent resurrection. Reborn into the present age, knowing nothing of her past human lives, she's a oddball who ends up at reform school after her boyfriend spontaneously combusts. (I had some questions about the American reform school system - it seemed pretty weird to me with it's voluntary prison kind of vibe, but what do I know?) Despite the fact that he's trying to avoid her she finds Daniel - the love of all her lives, also an angel - and the cycle begins again against a background of  southern-swamp, sultry heat, crumbling buildings, inadequate teachers and teen misfits. Not sure |I'll be rushing to buy the next one in the series.

25) Jeanette Winterson: The Battle of the Sun
Aimed at 9s – 12s. Set in an alternative London around 1600, this is the story of Jack, who is kidnapped by a Magus who believes him to be The Radiant Boy. Apprenticed against his will in a strange magical household, Jack encounters seven more kidnapped boys, the Sunken King, a Creature Sawn in Two (Wedge and Mistress Split) and The Knight Summoned. All the while he's looking for a way to escape the Magus and his strange alchemical experiments, his mother is trying to find him with the help of a local witch. This seems to be a standalone until part way through there's a character introduced – Silver -  who was the protagonist of the earlier 'Tanglewreck' and who has been brought back through time as The Golden Maiden. The Magus has a plan is to turn all of the city of London to gold and when he begins to succeed the city begins to starve. Golden food is not necessarily a good thing. With the help of Roger Rover, Jack's mother's employer, John Dee, the Keeper of Tides and Mother Midnight Jack frees his mother and defeats the Magus, but loses Silver back to her own future.

26) Karl Schroeder: Sun of Suns
The first book of Virga. Steampunky far-future tech and a high concept world of floating countries set inside a massive fullerene balloon 3000 metres in diameter, drifting in space. There's a (mostly) breathable atmosphere, but no gravity except where it's created locally, and it's deadly cold away from the artificial suns. Hayden Griffin is a dangerous young man, determined to murder Admiral Fanning of the nation of Slipstream, whom he believes to be responsible for the death of his parents as they tried to ignite a mini sun for their own small nation of Aerie. But things are more complicated than Hayden had ever dreamed possible. Fanning turns out to be a decent man and Hayden is caught up in events involving Fanning's scheming wife, Venera, Aubri Mahallan, a woman engineer from outside Virga, and a mission to Candace, the Sun of Suns, through the inside of the balloon a vast space encompassing floating rocks, some occupied, and with enemy ships out to stop them at any cost. Hayden's simple view of good and evil is overturned in short order. I found this a slow read. Vastly inventive ideas seemed to dominate the characterisation. In a way this seemed more like old school science fiction. I doubt that I'll follow on with more of the Virga novels.

27) Devon Monk: Magic to the Bone
Magic has a physical cost. Every act of magic extracts a price form the user, maybe a two day migraine, or the loss of an important memory. But some people can offload the cost onto innocents and that's where Allie comes in. She's a Hound who is able to identify and trace the rogue spellcaster. When she finds a child dying from a magic offload that has her prominent businessman's father's signature all over it Allie is thrown into and adventure with the somewhat untrustworthy but luscious Zayvion, man of a million secrets. A good read and satisfying ending.


28) Kristin Cashore: Graceling
Katsa carries the 'grace' (exceptional skill) of killing which makes her an enforcer to be used by her king over and over again until she is sick to her soul of it. She becomes part of a secret organisation trying to do good. When the King of Leinid's father is kidnapped she goes in search of the old man, uncovering a mystery and finding a soulmate in his grandson, Po, similarly graced.

29) Ann Aguire: Grimspace
I really liked this one. Telepathy, space travel, adventure, a damaged heroine and tormented telepathic hero. What's not to like? Sirantha Jax carries the J-gene that enables her to jump ships across space. It's a  talent that's likely to kill her. At 33 she's already survived all her classmates who've burned out and cracked up or died on the job. It makes her a navigator-star of the Corp until she's blamed for the accident that kills seventy people including her pilot and lover, Kai. Banged up in a psych facility her 'doctors' are setting her up to break her so she takes the fall for the crash and she looks all set to end up on a prison planet or in an asylum. And then March walks into her life – literally – and whisks her out of the lock-up into a desperate situation which becomes even more dire when he delivers her to a bunch of renegades who want to break the Corp's stranglehold on jump transport. Various adventures follow as the Corp hunts Jax down while she and March and their oddball crew race to find the source of the J-gene to establish a new breed of jumper. There are battles with bloodthirsty predators, rival clans, the deadly Morgut, one of march's old enemies, Corps goons and a shapeshifting bounty hunter that turns out to be not such a bad guy after all. And at the end there's a big showdown. March and Jax versus the Corps. No prizes for guessing who wins. It's an action adventure romance with a heroine full of attitude. Looking forward to the next one.

30) Ann Aguire: Wanderlust
This didn't disappoint. Once more Jax and March push things to the limit. The Corp has been discredited thanks to Jax and her cohort of misfits, but there's a power vacuum and the government can barely fill it. Jax is recruited to be an ambassador, tasked with the job of bringing a planet load of shapeshifting aliens into the Conglomerate fold. Accompanied by Velith, ex bounty hunter, Jax and March set off for new adventures but their course is nowhere near direct. They end up trapped on Lachion when war between the clans goes ballistic. Jax is sick. Each time she jumps her body becomes weaker, but there's no respite. March won't desert the people who once helped him, but Jax has a job to do and they separate despite the fact that she feels as though she's had her right arm cut off. By the ending of the book they are together again and back on the road to Velith's planet, but March is hair-trigger war damaged. More to come in the next book...


31) Harry Connolly: Child of Fire
This is the first 'Twenty Palaces' novel, but we never see the Twenty Palaces society. All we know is that it's a group of sorcerers who hunt and execute rogue magicians. Ray Lilly, one time car thief and small-time magic user in possession of one illegal spell, is living on borrowed time because he betrayed the powerfull Annalise Powliss. He's now become her driver and 'wooden man'. She's been foirbidden to kill him, but she's looking for an excuse to let someone else do the job. Annalise and Ray head out to stop someone who is sacrificing innocent lives in order to boost their own magic, but the mission goes wrong. Annalise is badly injured and Ray has two choices, either to help her or to get out of Dodge and try to disappear. He chooses the former, going up against the townsfolk of Hammer Bay on her behalf as he tries to find who is incinerating their children and then casting a spell to make them forget the children ever existed. Industrialist Charles Hammer is the obvious candidate, but he's not alone. There's something lurking in caverns below the town.

32) Nancy Kress: Steal Across the Sky
When an alien base appears on the Moon, the aliens, who call themselves the Atoners, approach mankind via the power of the internet with a confession that they have done the human race great wrong and now wish to atone for it. Twenty one young applicants are selected as witnesses (using criteria no one can fathom) and sent off to twin planets on which kidnapped humans have long ago been planted and formed societies. The witnesses are only told that they'll know what they are looking for when they find it. Cam, Soledad and Lucca are the team that is sent to witness on the twin planets of Kular A and Kular B. Soledad stays on board the Atoner craft as mission control and Cam and Lucca shuttle down to the planets. Cam finds a warlike society entrenched in slavery and slaughter where life is based on the results of the strategy game of kulith, something which she can barely grasp. Lucca's planet is peaceful to the point of indolence and he only gradually becomes aware that the people seem to be able to see their recent dead – those who are on 'the second road'. This is the big secret wrong the Atoners have done. They removed the gene from Earth-humans that lets them see the dead. But that's only the halfway point of the book. The main crux is how Earth society (and the witnesses) deal with the revelation. Are the Atoners actually going to 'atone' for their crime? Is this actually evidence of an afterlife? (Lucca witnessed it, but still doesn't believe). A swathe of suicides (people setting out prematurely on the second road) brings things to a head. Cam, Soledad and Lucca each deal with the aftermath very differently. The press are still chasing them, and there are various crank societies (some families of the suicides) out for their blood. We're left guessing until the end about whether the seeing-the-dead thing is real or not. There's a plot point close to the end which I can't actually fathom. Something happens but I can't find a logica reason for it. Too much of a spoiler to include here, but it somewhat spoilt my enjoyment of an otherwise good book.