stoutfellow

Medalon, by Jennifer Fallon, was one of the freebie books I acquired at CascadiaCon; I doubt I would have picked it up otherwise. It's an acceptable story, nothing special but reasonably entertaining. I'm not going to do a genuine review, but some aspects of the history and cosmology of the world depicted interest me, and I'll talk about them under the cut.

( Medalon )

The book is the first of a series. (Sigh. Aren't they all, these days?) It's interesting enough that I'll probably continue, but the main thing I'm interested in is the resolution of the theological/metaphysical questions it raises.

The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s, by H. W. Brands, is an absolutely fascinating history of a remarkable (and, in some respects, very familiar-looking) period in USAn history. Brands weaves together multiple strands of story into a gorgeous tapestry; it's well worth reading, in my judgement. Topics range from the closing of the frontier to the rise of the giant trusts and from urban poverty to rural revolt, paying attention as well to questions of race, the Free Silver movement, and the decade-ending rush to imperialism.

( The Reckless Decade )

Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon is the first of a projected four-volume series. (It was published in 1999; I'm not sure how many volumes have appeared since.) It was drawn to my attention by a review in either Analog or Asimov's, and I think I'll give it a qualified thumbs-up.

( Gardens of the Moon )

It's a longish book, and not an altogether pleasant one, but Erikson has engaged my interest enough that I will at least consider continuing with the series.

I have a certain fondness for the SF of Timothy Zahn. I can't call him a great writer; his prose is usually pedestrian and his characterizations no more than adequate. But he's a capable craftsman, and occasionally shows flashes of something more. ("The Final Report on the Lifeline Experiment" is a very nice meditation on ethics and the demands of honesty, and there's one passage in the novel Warhorse that I think quite good. If you know the book, it's Chapter 23 - the encounter with the first shark, and with the second.) He plots well, specializing in that special subgenre of SF in which the interest lies in figuring out what's going on, and what to do about it.

The Green and the Gray is one of his recent works, and a good example. It tells the story of a - young? middle-aged? somewhere in between - married couple who, returning one evening from a play (she liked it, he didn't), are accosted by a mugger. The mugger, instead of taking anything from them, insists that they take charge of a young woman with a badly bruised throat. Events spiral outward; the two learn of the presence in New York City of not one but two alien races who had fled, separately, from a disastrous war between their peoples. Until just recently the two sets of refugees had been unaware of each other's presence; now, it looks as though the war will resume, with the people of New York City caught in the middle.

The truth that needs to be recognized and dealt with in this story is particularly intricate: the origins of the two races, the causes of the war, the maneuverings of the various factions... It's a bit talky at times, but there's enough misdirection and intrigue to make up for that. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

What pleases me most about the story is that, despite efforts on both sides to keep the crisis secret, the New York police do get involved. This isn't Sunnydale. The cops recognize that something is coming down; some of them figure out a good deal of the truth; and their presence is, as it should be, critical to the ultimate resolution.

I won't attempt a full-blown synopsis of Kinzer's All the Shah's Men, but instead offer, under the cut, a few comments general and specific.

( All the Shah's Men )

Some reviewers have blasted Kinzer's book as biased, and he certainly does approve of Mossadegh rather more than the British or Mossadegh's internal enemies. Kinzer does, however, attribute a substantial part of the blame for the crisis to Mossadegh (though not as much as to the British). Biased or not, the book is fascinating and more than a little disheartening. It is certainly worth reading.

I just finished reading Island of Ghosts, by Gillian Bradshaw. It's a historical novel, set in Roman Britain in the time of Marcus Aurelius, and centers on one of the leaders of a troop of Sarmatians who have been posted there, in the Roman service. It's the first book I've read by Bradshaw, and I found it quite enjoyable. She does a good job of presenting the culture clash between the Romans and the Sarmatians (and, to a lesser extent, the Britons as well); her hero, Ariantes, is intelligent and flexible enough to grasp the Roman way of doing things, at least partly, and to present the Sarmatian point of view in terms the Romans can understand.

Bradshaw's research is fairly solid, as far as I can tell. On the much-disputed question of the stirrup, she comes down on the side of early invention. In an afterword, she writes

I am fully aware that many scholars - principally medievalists - say that stirrups were invented by the Goths in the fourth century A.D. or the Franks in the seventh, or even the Normans in the ninth. I was flabbergasted to discover that they were wrong. If any scholars are reading this, may I beg you to go check the evidence?

Her principal reference on this point is Rostovtzeff's Iranians and Greeks in South Russia, although she also mentions a couple of later books by Tarn and Sulimirski. The Britannica seems to agree, in its articles on Sarmatia and on the spur, but Lynn White, in Medieval Technology & Social Change - yes, a medievalist - writes

N. Vesselovsky orally assured Rostovtzeff that he had excavated stirrups from Sarmatian graves in the Kuban region, but Rostovtzeff did not see these discoveries, nor were they ever published, despite their obvious interest

Now, Rostovtzeff wrote in the 1920s and White in the '60s (and Bradshaw in the '90s); I have no idea what evidence might have been discovered since, but I think Bradshaw is being unfairly harsh. (White, incidentally, credits the Chinese with the invention, though he notes possible unsatisfactory precursors from Central Asia and India.) Still, it's a historical novel, not a history, and a minor anachronism - if it is one - is forgivable.

Quibbles aside, I enjoyed the book and will probably look for more by the author.

I finished reading Guy Gavriel Kay's The Summer Tree this morning. I'd heard both good things and bad about the Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, but decided to give it a try, and so far I'm impressed. Since what I've read is only the first book of a trilogy, I'm not going to attempt a full-bore review, but I do want to make a few comments.

( Kay )

The Last Chronicle of Barset is the last and, to my mind, best book in Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire series of novels. It is considerably darker than the earlier books, and includes one of his finest and most complex creations in the person of Josiah Crawley, the Perpetual Curate of Hogglestock. Trollope intended it as the capstone of the series (as the very title indicates), and characters from each of the previous books - Septimus Harding, the Grantlys, the Proudies, the Thornes, Luftons, and Dales, and even Johnny Eames and Adolphus Crosbie - play significant roles.

( Review )

It's a wonderful book. Appreciation of its full richness probably requires familiarity with the rest of the series, but I suspect it would do well enough as a standalone.

Doctor Thorne is the third book in the "Chronicles of Barset" series, by Anthony Trollope. (The Warden, reviewed here, is the first; the second, Barchester Towers, is quite funny, but I have nothing in particular to say about it.) Its plot is, at bottom, one of the old standbys: two young people fall in love and must overcome various obstacles before they can marry. There isn't a lot of suspense, either; the reader learns fairly early just how those obstacles will be overcome. Nonetheless, the story is quite interesting, as a picture of social conditions in England in the early Victorian period.

( Details )

I only have one album by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Come On, Come On. She may, though, be my favorite female country singer. Patsy Cline had a better voice, I think, and Suzy Bogguss can gut-wrench with the best of them, but I enjoy Carpenter more than either.

One theme extends through several of the songs, with varying stances being taken. "The Bug" ("sometimes you're the windshield...") irreverently looks at the ups and downs of life, chalking things up to fate. "I Feel Lucky", though, puts more of the responsibility on the individual; one after another, omens and signs warn that she's in for a bad day and should stay home, but she defies them because, of course, she "feels lucky" - and she is. "Passionate Kisses" and "The Hard Way" turn from focusing on fate to demanding what the singer deserves. (The former song is humorously intended, but the second includes in its chorus the words "Everything we got we got the hard way.") The pendulum swings yet further in the defiant "I Take My Chances"; she sings "some people say that you shouldn't tempt fate... I say fate should not tempt me." This isn't the passive, reactive position taken by Tammy Wynette; this lady is out for what she can get.

Speaking of Tammy Wynette, it's interesting to contrast her "D-I-V-O-R-C-E", which focuses tightly on the event itself and on its sorrows, with Carpenter's "He Thinks He'll Keep Her", tracing the entire history of a marriage to its breakup and ending, oddly triumphantly, with "Now she's in the typing pool at minimum wage".

But there's another side to Carpenter, and one which actually appeals to me even more. Several of the songs on the list are soft, slow, and melancholy. The elegiac "I Am a Town" nostalgically evokes the heart of the rural South (and it may be my favorite song on the album), and "Only a Dream" and "Rhythm of the Blues" are mournful laments on breakup, filled not with the misery typical of Wynette, but with a grim acceptance and determination. Unlike the songs I named earlier, these feature only the sparest instrumentation - a softly strummed guitar, a gentle piano - and the singer's voice sometimes approaches speaking rhythms.

Rounding out the album are "Not Too Much to Ask" (a duet with Joe Diffie), "Come On Come On", and "Walking Through Fire". The first two are slow-paced love songs, more content than sad; in the last, the singer warns her lover of danger to their relationship, though she still is determined to maintain it.

In an earlier post, I said that the difference between Lesley Gore and Tammy Wynette was, at least partly, one of maturity, with Gore adolescent and Wynette adult. I'm tempted to extend the comparison further: the majority of Carpenter's songs are more mature yet. Where the emotions of the moment seem to swamp the singer in many of Wynette's songs, Carpenter holds steady in the storm. She can take the long view (which also enhances her nostalgic pieces), and she is more responsible, more grounded. I think that's why I like her. (You may point to "I Feel Lucky" as a counterexample, but then, that's probably my least favorite track on the album.)