Fiction - Eric Garcia - The Repossession Mambo (2009)

I told you the next review wouldn't be fantasy. But of course that meant I had to read it, and let me tell you up front, it wasn't fun. I actually read most of it yesterday, in one sitting. Not because it was really good, but because I didn't want to be sitting on it for a long time because I didn't like it.

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

I bought the book in my last shopping trip too; I don't know why I keep reading these books that haven't been in my house for very long, but there you go. If the title sounds familiar, it might be because the movie Repo Men was based on this book (which is a lie, but I'll get to that later). I never watched Repo Men, primarily because I didn't give a shit, and also because, after Sherlock Holmes, how can Jude Law be anything but an awesome Watson?

I mentioned that it was a lie to say that that movie was based on this book. The Wikipedia page can tell you some, but the author's note at the end describes the process in more detail: he wrote a short story, then a manuscript of a novel on the idea, and then the script and movie was started before it was published. Then, once the movie was pretty far into production, he decided to publish the book with very few of the edits made to the plot for the movie.

And dear God, it reads like it.

In the author's note, one of the things that Garcia mentions he kept was "the unruly structure". His words, not mine. But they are apt; it was a pain in the ass to keep track of which section was referring to which time in his life. He flips frequently between the past and the present, focusing a lot on his military experience, the parade of wives he traipsed through, and his being on the run. It doesn't even get to the parts we care about, why he got an artificial organ and why he didn't pay for it, until the second half of the book. And it flips randomly around between these subjects. It's not like he goes into the military stuff, then the wife stuff, then the present, or anything like that. Fuck, he doesn't even talk about these things chronologically! The whole thing reads more like a stream of consciousness diary than a novel.

And that's not even going into the fact that the premise is suspect as well. People get artificial organs with usurious loans, and when the default, they die. Seems simple enough, I guess, until you start to think about the changes this would make to the world, and how unbelievable it gets the more you think of it.

For instance, the economic destruction that comes afterwards. These aren't just people getting artificial organs to replace the ones that fail. They are getting them with tons of unnecessary features, features that serve no real purpose other than convince people with healthy organs to get artificial ones as well. And then, when they can't pay the loan on them (and most of them go for as much as a house), repo men are sent out to reclaim the organ so that they can sell it again. They don't mention whether or not the organs cost that much to make, or if they are just overpriced. If they are overpriced, do you happen to remember the housing crisis of the past few years? The only thing saving this Credit Union from going belly-up is the fact that people are lined up around the block to try to get a loan to buy an organ.

On the same note, they mention that sometimes people just can't afford it, and fall delinquent on their loan in order to pay for food and rent. If the price of not paying is death (which it always is), why wouldn't you pay that first? The book tries to explain it away by saying that the bills run up to several thousand a month, and you pay mostly interest anyway. So the whole system is set up to fail. Awesome. How is that legal?

And why wouldn't the government get involved? It has things that each side of the aisle hates: death panels and preying on the poor. It sounds to me like there would be a lot of congressional hearings with whoever is in charge of the Credit Union, possibly every day based on what the book describes as gross negligence on the part of their repo department. Allow me to explain.

There is a described incident in which a repo man repossesses an organ from a guy while his wife is trying to convince him that they are all paid up. The repo man goes back to the office to find that oh, she was right. He just killed a guy for no reason. Where are the legal repercussions? The murder charges, the wrongful death lawsuit, the arguments on pundits' shows that these men have too much power? Nothing. Nada. They pay her some cash and that's it. Yeah, I don't think so.

There are also multiple incidents that someone's nonessential organ is repossessed, but because they do not receive any medical care whatsoever afterwards, they die, usually of blood loss. There is a character with a gall bladder. He could have lived! They even mention that there are some other organs that are repossessed with the same deadly results, such as eyes and tongues. You can live without both. Why do they die? Because nothing is done. This is why they should be paying through the nose in settlements and lawsuits.

For a book that I didn't like, it certainly gave me a lot to talk about. Mostly because the premise is okay, but horridly handled. There was a lot of opportunity for great world-building and even philosophical questions, such as if a person is mostly artificial parts, are they still human? But the author didn't even try.

There were two, and exactly two, saving graces to this novel, and that is why this book gets such a low score:

1. The opening sentence.

The first time I ever held a pancreas in my hands, I got an erection.

2.   The reason he quit his lucrative job as a repo man, even with an artificial heart.

1.5/10

Fantasy - C.S. Friedman - Feast of Souls (2007)

I wasn't lying when I said that I read a lot of fantasy. It is my preferred genre, after all, despite how much I hate high fantasy. I promise that the next review will not be another fantasy novel.

I got this book and The Adamantine Palace during my last book shopping trip. It isn't super often that I get around to reading the books I buy so soon after purchasing them, but what're you going to do? With my job being gone now, I won't be going out to buy books as often as I used to.

Man, I am getting off track easily this morning.

I went into this book expecting to like it. Not love it; if you go into a book expecting to love it, you may only be disappointed. And for the vast majority of the book, I did like it a lot. I've read C.S. Friedman before, in the form of  This Alien Shore, which still stands as one of my favorite science fiction novels. This one had an author I liked and a premise I adore: the cost of power in a land with magic. That's one of the themes I seriously love in fiction in general, the cost of power.

The cost of power here is that magic feeds off life energy, and where that energy comes from depends on what kind of magic user you are. For witches, who can be male or female, that life energy is your own. For Magisters, who can only be male, that life energy is that of another person, usually one you don't even know. The story opens up to present this idea in the form of a dying witch, but also quickly introduces the main character, Kamala, a girl who is determined to become a Magister, despite her uterus. I don't think it would be spoilery to tell you that she succeeds: if she didn't, she'd be dead before the first hundred pages are up, and that makes a shitty main character.

The writing and premise got me reading for a while without pause, even though Kamala reads like a Mary Sue, with her hair and eye coloring reiterated often, along with her tomboyishness and desire to dress like a boy. All that plus the fact that she is the first female Magister makes one groan whenever the points in her favor are pointed out again and again. But I guess it's a good price to pay for some of the other characters, who are richly developed peoples. Colivar, Gwynofar, and Siderea stand out in particular. Especially the last: her set up where she has sex with Magisters so they will do her magical dirty work is an interesting concept that I wish could be explored longer.

About a third of the way into the book, the plot turns sharply away from Kamala trying to find her way as a Magister and her consort trying to find her to what is essentially a manhunt, because she accidentally kills a Magister, which is like the only rule Magisters have. I actually stopped reading for a few days because of this. It was not what I wanted to read.

But it just as quickly swung away from that plot line to that which included monstrous Souleaters, which look like dragons with dragonfly wings. They do exactly what they say, feed off life energy, but in hoards, like locusts. They quickly become the major concern for the rest of the book and probably the rest of the series. I don't know exactly how I feel about it. I didn't really like how the plot took on an inconsistent color that maybe a little more lingering on the transitions would have helped.

It also required a more careful editor. There were some obvious typos and formatting issues that the editor could have caught. It all kind of smelt like there was a looming deadline and it was published at the wire.

That isn't to say that the book isn't worth a look. For the magic system alone, I would recommend it. And I certainly will be getting the next book in the series.

8.0/10

Fantasy - Stephen Deas - The Adamantine Palace (2009)

Did anybody else catch Game of Thrones on HBO last night? I had been looking forward to that for like a year, and it totally did not disappoint. Mostly for hardcore Song of Ice and Fire fans, though. Not a lot of names for characters for the uninitiated. But Bryan liked it, primarily because of the sheer quantity of breasts. Whatever floats his boat.

Is that even here or there? Probably not. Anyway, The Adamantine Palace.

It took me a while to get into this. Which sucked because it was the kind of fantasy that I normally prefer: society and politics, plus how the fantastic changes the world. In this case, the fantastic takes the form of dragons, but if you can't figure that out from the cover, you must be reading the Braille version.

With as many ravings all over the covers about how awesome the dragons are, I was very disappointed at the outset because they were essentially fancy horses. There are hunting types and warring types, and they get stabled and traded and have zero personality. At first I thought it would just be like in Dragonriders of Pern, where the dragon-riders perform a service or something that allows for the dragon-kings and -queens to enjoy a heightened status. No. They're just dragons. Domesticated ones. What? You want something more? Fuck you, says Deas.

Until about a third of the way through with Snow and Kailin. It turns out that the domesticated state of dragons is a balance of drugs to dragon, and if the dragon tips the scales (see what I did there?) in his favor, shit hits the fucking fan. Snow "wakes up" and is hungry to kill. Mostly indiscriminately, I mean, she's really pissed, but later she focuses almost entirely on the alchemists that create the dragon soma that make them all the fancy horses they are at the beginning. She is also focused on waking up the other dragons she encounters.

Meanwhile, there are political machinations aplenty. An asshole marries a brutal queen's daughter, and they has sex with another immature queen. There is also the fact that the Speaker, kind of like a one-man UN for the nations, is retiring and has to choose his successor from among the kings and queens that are really just a hair away from warring. That's more like it. It even makes up for the sellswords that I hate, Sollos and Kemir.

Sollos and Kemir are lame. I'm not just saying that because they swear a lot, but they sound very modern. If their dialogue was placed in, say, contemporary New York, you would think they were just a little odd. Here, it stands out like a sore thumb. It's not good.

While the reviewers of this book loved how the dragons turned into vicious slaughter machines about halfway through, I was still disappointed by it. I may be a traditionalist in this way, but I like my dragons to be treasure hoarders, have distinct personalities beyond "I'm real mad!", and just a step below gods. I never really liked Dragonriders of Pern because why should dragons be ridden by people? People should be cowering before dragons. I especially like the dragons of Elizabeth Haydon's Symphony of the Ages series, because they have that majesty and terrifying aspect, but they can also take on a human form that still betrays the draconic nature beneath the skin. Dragons should want jewels and precious things, not whole scale genocide because they were enslaved by drugs.

8.0/10

Young Adult - Richie Tankersley Cusick - Starstruck (1996)

Yeah, I know, posts two days in a row? Don't get used to it. ;)

This book was a reread, obviously, and the little "Thank You" stamp inside makes me think that I bought it at a book fair in middle school. I bought a lot of books of this type when I was that old at book fairs, so it's not outside the realm of possibility. I reread it primarily because I couldn't remember a damn thing about it.

I read it pretty quickly in the past day or so because it was horrifically short in comparison to that thousand-page monster I had just gotten through. Only about two-hundred fifty pages. It is a YA novel after all, in the same vein as those Fear Streets I have sitting in my hallway bookshelf.

The basic plot is that Random Girl (a thin disguise for a Mary-Sue) wins a magazine contest where she gets to spend a week with her favorite celebrity, along with two other winners, vying to be the female lead in his next movie. Because that's totally how movie casting works. :p Anyway, turns out that the celebrity is being threatened by a crazy fan known as Starstruck and is causing all kinds of accidents at the celebrity's house in the whopping three days the girls stay there.

I was actually surprised with who the killer ended up being. Yes, it's a killer; a bodyguard is stabbed to death and the publicist is found dead in the hot tub after she spent the whole book being a raging bitch. I don't think you'll read it, but I still don't want to give it away. I thought throughout the whole book that it would be Jo, the nerdy magazine winner. She went out of her way to say that she didn't actually care for Byron Slater and had an elaborate alibi before something happened every time. It seemed like a really sloppy way to make you think it's not her only to find out that it is at the end. But she isn't. Huh.

Anyway, the main character, Miranda Peterson, is a Mary-Sue. No fucking doubt about it. Byron has a thing for her throughout the whole thing, and his buddy-driver Nick does too? And she's such a victim. All the bad stuff happens when she's around. Oh poor pitiful her. Fuckin' A.

Also, noticeably, there is the traditional "adults just don't understand" stuff when Miranda gets to the mansion. Do you guys remember The Dollhouse Murders? The main character there had a little sister that was just a little bit special, enough that she needed constant supervision, but her parents were always making her watch her and not let her have a social life? Remember? Of course you remember how frustrated you were with her parents for bitching at her for trying to do her own thing at the mall instead of bowing to every whim of her special sister. The same kind of thing happens with Miranda. She arrives in California late because planes get delayed, her suitcase is lost so she has no clothes, and the publicist is a total bitch to her and blames her for the airline's mistakes. And won't let up about it. All it does is serve to make Miranda seem like SUCH A VICTIM OMG.

A lot of stuff didn't make much sense either. If the tiger gets out, you don't go back to the party and let yourself get drugged. If you almost get crushed to death by a broken statue, and then almost have your car careen off a cliff, you don't then go out to have dinner and see a movie. And if a guy dies, you don't then go out shopping the very next fucking day. And of course the cops never get called about stalkers or death threats. It's "bad publicity". What about a dead guy, huh? Why do you lie to the media and say it was his heart? Yeah, it was his heart. It couldn't take a knife for some reason. The nerve of some people, huh?

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that the book is ridiculous. And not just because they constantly assume Byron is a rapist or that Miranda is trying to seduce him out of his fat stacks of cash. And also not just because the phrase "dark black" is literally written in there.

1.0/10

Alternate History - Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004)

This was the book that I stopped reading in order to devour Twilight's Dawn, but don't get me wrong. That doesn't mean that it's a bad book. I certainly wouldn't call it bad. What I would call it is hard.

I got this book for some Christmas or another from my parents. I usually end up with a book haul, because books are cheaper than video games. I didn't read it for a long time because I kept being preoccupied reading other things and with my actual life. In fact, so much time passed between getting it and reading it that I thought it was a very different book than it was. I had created its story in my head, and then was confused when it wasn't it at all.

But that's neither here nor there.

I actually started reading this a couple of times. I just didn't seem able to absorb the first chapter, mostly because a lot happened in a single chapter. I'm not super used to that. But what're you going to do? It took me a while to really get into it, and I fell out of touch with it several times, and not just because I had to look up a word.

This book is hard. I said that at the start. But it's a very high reading level, is what I mean. That isn't to say that you have to reread a sentence in order to figure out what it's saying, but it can be very time-consuming. I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say. It was difficult for me because if I missed a single word, I felt like I was going to miss something, which was an honest concern. For instance, there is a recited prophecy in Chapter 13 that, after finishing the book, I flipped back to and was surprised that it told the entirety of the climax. Vague, of course, and incomprehensible until you went through the events at the end of the novel, but a well-executed use of prophecy nonetheless.

I put the novel down several times because the language was hard, the novel was long, and the plot didn't seem to be going anywhere. None of these things make it a bad book. The language being hard actually lent an air to all of the events that a generally modern way of writing would not have been able to convey. The novel was long, but in retrospect, I realize that every chapter served a specific purpose in the story and no piece could have been removed. The only problem is the pacing, in my opinion.

The beginning section introduces you to Mr. Norrell, and then goes out of its way to color him as a horrible little old man. He performs an influential act of magic that introduces the book's main antagonist, but then that antagonist is just bugging a small circle of people for most of the rest of the book. Jonathan Strange is introduced and quickly shipped off to show how magic was used in the Napoleonic Wars. When he comes back, the antagonist sets his sights on Mrs. Strange, and that's when the book finally makes the bad guy seem like a bad guy. But not before some magical dickery from Norrell on the publication of Strange's book.

The vast majority of the book is used to describe the relationship between Norrell and Strange, when I would have appreciated more about the gentleman.

There was a distinctive chapter that led me to put the book down for a week: Chapter 52. It talks rather randomly about a mad old woman with fifty cats living in the Jewish ghetto of Venice. I obviously understand now why the chapter was there, but it seemed like such a random story in the novel at the time that I couldn't bring myself to sit down and continue. If it had had any hooks in previous chapters, I may have been okay with it and continued to read the book without taking a break.

The ending is the best part. I literally sat on the couch and read the last ten chapters enraptured. It was those last ten chapters that made me think (especially with the descriptions of Strange's mad visions) that made me want this book to be made into a movie. While reading it, I didn't understand all the reviews at the front that said that the book, my copy over a thousand pages long, felt too short. That ending was great. It felt like a cut scene in a video game, an epic showdown in a movie. It was awesome. But I wonder if it was the tromping through the rest of the book that allowed for the ending to be so good? Like, if I hadn't felt so frustrated and exhausted through the book, would I have been as engaged in the ending?

I am not denying that this book had a lot to say, the least of which had to do with magic. But the act of reading it is not like a dessert. It isn't sweet and delicious and something to look forward too. It's more like vegetables. (This is where the metaphor falls apart; I regularly prefer vegetables to dessert, but I'm an outlier.) You may or may not enjoy it at the time, but the health effects, the thinking it inspires in you afterwards, makes it seem worth it.

6.5/10

Fantasy - Anne Bishop - Twilight's Dawn (2011)

Before I begin, please understand: I love the Black Jewels series. For that reason alone, Anne Bishop is my favorite author. I don't particularly care for the Tir Alainn trilogy that much, I haven't read the Ephemera duology yet. But this is my favorite book series. So this book was a shoe-in for a ten... if it hadn't been for that last story.

I got the first Black Jewels book, Daughter of the Blood at a used bookstore. I read it in a day, and later got the rest of the trilogy and Dreams Made Flesh. After Dreams, I got every subsequent book in hardcover for my birthday, because the books would always come out in March, and my birthday's in April. In fact, it was a couple of days ago. So when I got this one, which I understand is the last one, because of that last novella, I dropped the book I was reading and read this one, in proper Black Jewels tradition, in a day. Yesterday, even. I used it as a reward for myself in cleaning the house and doing stuff. Awesome, right?

There are a lot of things I love about Black Jewels that I want to get into before I tell you about this book, mostly because then I can reference it. The series is, and has always been, unapologetically violent. That isn't to say that I need a story to be steeped in gore for me to love it, but I would much prefer truthful violence to vague squeamishness in a story. If that's what really happened, then just say it. Don't beat around the bush. And the imagery included in it... you can believe that a man's skeleton can be pulled out of him and lit ablaze while he is still alive. You can believe that a man can be magically exploded so the largest bit of him left are globules of frozen blood on the walls. It has its own beauty.

Related to that is another aspect of these books I love. They go whole-hog with their magic. I know that some people shy away from making a person powerful in their stories out of fear of people saying the person is a Mary-Sue, but why have magic if you can't really show what it does. Black Jewels isn't afraid to have an all-powerful being that is still fragile. It isn't afraid to show you what can really, really do with magic. It isn't afraid to show you illusions, storms that destroy populations, the ability to remove from existence an entire land.

But with that comes a rigid society that I love. Primarily because it doesn't pretend that the Blood are no different from everyone else. They have their own castes and have to be ruled in layers of courts and Queens. And when that society extends in Heir to the Shadows to include kindred, magic-using animals, the politics involved are just delicious.

But what I love most about the Black Jewels series is the relationships between the characters. The trust that is built, crushed, and rebuilt, the interactions that just show how much they have all become an amalgam of relations and family... Even if there were no underlying conflict like an enemy and such, if there was a book of just these characters that I love going about their lives and visiting each other, and threatening each other while declaring that they would guard that person with their life, I would read the shit out of it, and love it forever.

All of that said, Twilight's Dawn. I'm going to do my best to not give away things, but it's probably only going to be a problem when I get to the last story.

Winsol Gifts is the first, and relates the story of Daemon and Jaenelle's first real Winsol. I say real, because it's their third, but during the first, Daemon was too far gone, and the second, Jaenelle was too far gone. In this one, they have to deal with parties, planning, family, and a hectic holiday season. It is essentially all that I want, relationship-wise. It sets a great precedent for the rest of the book, because it is, as I said before, delicious.

Shades of Honor is the second, and probably my favorite. It explores Falonar's chafing in his role as Lucivar's second-in-command, and the results thereafter. Falonar is super dumb. Lucivar was placed as the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih by the Queen of Ebon Askavi. Just rallying a bunch of like-minded Eyrien's isn't going to depose him. It also allows for more resolution after the events of Tangled Webs than the actual book allowed for.

Family is the third, and takes place ten years after Shalador's Lady, but does not include any of the Terreille cast from that book. It primarily closes the book on Queen Sylvia of Halaway and her family. I'm guessing it was also an indulgence to fans, especially those of the relationship between Sylvia and Saetan.

The High Lord's Daughter is the last. And this is where my review falls apart. Up until this story, I loved it. Ten out of ten. This story explores what happens after Jaenelle dies at nearly a hundred years old. But not in any way that I was hoping. If you intend on reading this book and series, which I still highly recommend, I would suggest not reading the next paragraph. After the bold you can read again.

The last story was not very good. It felt rushed, and the way it spanned a lot of time without really acknowledging how much time between chapters was confusing. It was also confusing because they kept naming their kids after established characters. I didn't know if Titian in that story meant the Queen of the Harpies or the little Eyrien girl. And that shit with Jaenelle Satien and Twilight's Dawn? What horseshit. Trying to make her more than she could be. She's not Jaenelle reincarnated, for fuck's sake. But the primary shittery was how Daemon fell in love with Surreal. No. Wrong. It felt like an exercise to satisfy shippers, much like the epilogue to Harry Potter. Daemon waited hundreds of years for Jaenelle. He's not suddenly going to start boning other girls just so Surreal could get jealous and he's not going to love Surreal. At least it acknowledged how Daemon could never love anyone like Jaenelle. But that whole last story should have been more than an exercise for shippers. It should have explored immediately after Jaenelle passed. The scene in Queen of the Darkness when Daemon breaks down after the witch storm was the most powerful scene in a series full of powerful scenes. We could have had more of that. And what about Kaeleer without its Heart? More times should have been spent on that.

Spoilers over, sorry guys.

Don't get me wrong. I still love the characters and the series. I put it on the same mental shelf as Final Fantasy X and Watchmen. But that last story left a bad taste in my mouth, and the fact that this was what I assume the last book in the series makes me wish the last story wasn't included, for the same reason I hated the epilogue in Harry Potter.

Again, don't take my hating one story as a reason to not get it, or to not dive into the series. I still love it. I occasionally even reread it, and I've tried to lend out Daughter of the Blood many times. Buy it, read it. After all, this book is still going to score high, and I am super glad I got it, if only for Shades of Honor.

9.5/10