Dilvish the Damned

by on September 17, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This… is pretty classic Zelazny. Well-written stories with a somewhat overpowered protagonist, and often a zany twist to them.

Not to say that Dilvish has it easy. Most of the stories put him in real danger, and he gets pretty beaten up during the longest short story of the set. But his constant companion is a demon in the form of a metal horse that is untiring, fast and nearly invulnerable. Dilvish has a supremely high pain tolerance (from having spent a couple centuries in the House of Pain in hell), boots of catfall, and of course is very good in a fight. But, the running thread of the series of short stories here is his hunt for revenge on the most powerful evil sorcerer in the world, so he’s going to need some advantages in the long run.

The chronology of the stories is fairly loose, but mostly consistent. Dilvish picks up an invisible sword early on, which is important in the next story… and then disappears. Some time passes in here, and other events outside the focus of the stories are put to rest, but I don’t see any reference to what happened to his special sword.

Past that nitpick, the stories are all good, though drift some in style, as they were written over a two decade period. The longer stories, near the end of the volume, are particularly good.

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Hexwood

by on September 13, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Hexwood starts off conventionally enough. Earth is an unwitting backwater in the galaxy when an ancient device activates, and the ruling junta’s efforts to stop the problem fail.

Life on Earth continues normally, except for our main character. She observes strange goings on right outside Hexwood Farm (the secret storage facility where this is going on), and gets drawn into the situation, and a rebellion against the cruel leadership of the House of Balance.

And already we’ve gone off the track, because despite appearances, that isn’t entirely true. The rest of the novel slowly goes down a rabbit-hole of increasing awareness of just how much everyone’s perceptions are being played with. It would be interesting to try and map out some of what’s actually going on, but a lot of it is deliberately obscure, and probably impossible to pinpoint exactly.

Despite the confusing mess that the novel tries to descend into, it’s very well written and engaging. I’m kind of disappointed in some revelations near the middle, and while there’s a definite case of characters popping out of the woodwork at the end, much of that is actually mentioned earlier. Worth a read, but be prepared for the plot not to be what it seems!

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Dealing With Dragons

by on September 1, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Patricia Wrede’s novel is basically a farce of fairy tales; this is something that’s been popular to do over the last few decades. There’s kingdoms in a land with magic, and fairy godmothers and curses and the like are part of daily life.

Jessica Day George mentions that this series was an inspiration for her, and I was thinking while reading that it reminded me much of Dragon Slippers, which was a book I enjoyed a lot. So, it was a great inspiration, and is indeed a lot of fun and very witty.

When she couldn’t stand [etiquette lessons] any longer, she would go down to the castle armory and bully the armsmaster into giving her a fencing lesson.

Wrede effortlessly makes sure you know just what the main character is like on the second page of the book. Cimorene is a great main character, and the rest of the cast are just as delightful. I have a few overall problems with the book, but they come of not being able to just take it for the simple farce it is, and trying to look around the corners. Taken on its own terms, it’s great all the way through.

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City of Fortune

by on August 24, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Crowley’s book on Venice is about the Stato da Mar, and as such, is exactly one of the things I’ve been on the lookout for.

The first section starts with Venice’s mercantile rise, and then goes into the story of the Fourth Crusade. He’s fairly neutral on everyone’s participation later on, but it’s interesting to see a version that’s sympathetic to Venice for the beginning of it all. He doesn’t quite out-and-out blame Villehardouin for it either, but his over-inflated request for transport to the Middle East is the beginning of it all. Crowley points out that Venice effectively stopped all trade for a year to gather and build sufficient transport for the promised crusading army, which put them in a profit-or-perish position when the bill came due.

The second part talks about the small empire Venice picked up from this… and the long series of wars with Genoa, including a fairly lengthy description of the War of Chioggia. This is even more the centerpiece of the book than the Fourth Crusade’s taking of Constantinople, and almost felt like it got a little drawn out, though I’m sure that’s nothing compared to how the Venetians felt. At any rate, the entire subject is one I wish I could find more on in English.

The last part of the book is on Venice’s thankless war against the Ottomans, and is every bit as interesting as the rest of the book. As ever, there are interesting missed opportunities, but here the entire conflict is one I don’t know much of. Certainly, the loss of Negroponte and the Battle of Zonchio aren’t anything I recall hearing of before. At any rate, Crowley concentrates on this part, and finishes in 1503, before things like the loss of Crete, and finishes with some prescient quotes from a couple of Venetians on what the Portuguese discovery of a route to India was going to do to trade.

As ever, this is a very engaging narrative history, and is full of anecdotes and quotes to help it all come alive. This time his subject is one that gets less attention in English, which makes even better.

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All Quiet on the Western Front

by on August 16, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This is less a novel, and more a fictional memoir. There’s no real plot, and a barebones structure. The entire story is told first person by a young German soldier in WWI who describes the horrors of the Western Front in detail.

It picks up with Paul, the viewpoint character, having already spent time at the front, and feeling alienated from his previous life. The novel then goes through a number of different things to present the full experience of a typical lower-rank soldier. Bombardments, attacks, rotations between the trenches and the reserve, leave, being wounded and spending time in a hospital. Remarque only spent a limited time at the front, but obviously absorbed much from his fellow soldiers as years of experience are recounted in here with a great sense being all too real.

The writing is direct, and extremely effective even in translation at conveying the tone and mood intended. It’s not (and is not meant to be) glowing prose, but to beats at you in the combat beats at Paul. Any sort of more elaborate writing would only dilute the message.

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