Aurora, by Kim Stanley Robinson
New science fiction from Kim Stanley Robinson! HOORAY.
(This book was provided to me by the publisher. You can get it from Fishpond.)
PRETTY excited to get this book. Enough that I actually started reading it the day it arrived – and would have finished it that day too had I not decided to Be An Adult and stop reading at a somewhat sensible hour in order to sleep. And overall I was very happy with it – some nice big ideas, characters fairly good, some action and good plot twists. My delight is not unalloyed, but the issues I had are not enough to stop me from being happy about Aurora‘s existence.
The non-spoilers should-you-read-it: did you like Robinson’s 2312? Do you like Alastair Reynolds books? Then probably yes: don’t read more here, just go get it.
…
Slightly more detail: the book opens with Freya and her family living what appears to be a normal life. Her mother, Devi, is kept very busy dealing with issues of algae and salt and oxygen, because they live on a generation ship that is heading to what they hope will be a habitable world. I love a good generation ship story: Elizabeth Bear’s Jacob’s Ladder series was awesome, I enjoyed much of Beth Revis‘ Across the Universe stories (although the relationships were wearing by the end), and Stephen Baxter’s had a go at it too (plot taking precedence over character, usually). So this is already a good premise for me.
We join the crew within years of arriving at Aurora – of course, because it’s hard to do a good story about the middle of the journey, unless something is going drastically wrong. Anyway, they do eventually get to Aurora, and Things Happen (it’s approaching 500 pages in trade paperback; you didn’t think it was going to be all sunshine and roses, did you?). The Things That Happen are logical and consistent with the characters as revealed; they also give insights into how Robinson views humanity which, while not earth-shattering revelations, are nonetheless poignant and worthy of consideration. How do humans cope with setbacks? How do humans cope with disagreement? What price progress?
For a ship of 2000-odd, the cast of central characters is relatively small. Freya is the central human character, so there’s an element of the coming-of-age story – she’s becoming an adult as the ship completes its quest, there’s dissension within the family, and so on. I wasn’t entirely happy with Robinson’s description of Freya at some points; he suggests things about her nature and then never builds on it or challenges it. Nonetheless I found her a useful focus for the narrative; being young she’s out and about learning and meeting people, rather than stuck in a job. And given that the novel covers a fair amount of time, Freya gets to age and I think that’s often a really great thing in a character.
Interestingly, the other point of view character is the ship’s AI, thus allowing Robinson to have intimate knowledge of humanity and show the broader sweep of actions, decisions, and ramifications. I liked, too, that the AI developed and changed. There’s a little section that tickled the Arts student in me pink: the computer learning about how to construct a narrative. So meta, very wonderful.
However… issues. I had a couple.
Firstly, it surprised me that a book set in the 26th century would talk about the Old and New Worlds. Really? Maybe this is an American thing because it’s not something we in Australia say – and surely in 500 years that will be even less relevant? If the builders of the ship (who lived around Saturn, making this demarcation even weirder) insisted on some Earth-analogue in splitting up the two Rings, why not make it Northern and Southern Hemisphere? It does at least have some basis in geography, rather than an old and surely irrelevant socio-political perspective.
Secondly, the ending. SPOILERS. (Other spoilers follow, too.)
WHY? I presume Robinson is trying to say something about physicality and Earth being the right place to be? I dunno. To me it came across as ‘if you don’t surf you don’t understand the world.’ It felt out of place in the story overall and disappointed me given how much I liked the rest of it. I would have liked a bit more from Freya’s arc.
Thirdly – and something that I’m not sure, overall, whether I’m entirely on board with – the decision to go back to Earth. It’s only feasible, in the end, because they get the hibernation thing worked out, although I guess when they leave Aurora the situation didn’t look so dire. But… it’s been seven generations. Most people haven’t been paying attention to any of the news feeds from Earth for years, if ever. Would they really feel such a deep call to go back, when Aurora is a failure? I guess most of them would just have been thinking they’d be staying on the ship (all they’d ever known), and their children’s children etc would be the ones to arrive in the home solar system… but still. I’m really not sure. It feels like Robinson is suggesting there’s a deep feeling of attachment to this ball of mud that doesn’t just rely on personal experience.
All Men of Genius
Rosen takes a large dose of Shakespeare (As You Like it, specifically); adds a liberal dose of mad science and a pinch of Ada Lovelace; shakes gently, and decants the resulting mixture in fairly smooth prose to produce a generally enjoyable book, with a somewhat abrupt and disappointing finish.
The first thing to know about me and this book is that with one exception (Much Ado About Nothing, thank you Kenneth and Emma), I basically loathe Shakespeare’s comedies. I do not like twins. I do not like mistaken identity. I do not care. I will not go and watch a comedy if I have a choice do not even try.
Rosen, however, made me care, because finally there is a good reason for identity swapping rather than just the amusement of seeing a man in a skirt pretending to be a man (oh HA HA geroffthastage). But taking your brother’s identity in order to get into the most prestigious science academy in London in order to make crazy beautiful science with the full intention of revealing yourself as a lady at the end of your first year? VIOLET I LOVE YOU.
The fact that your brother is gay and you don’t have a problem with that is just extra cute and an additional bit of sticking it to the establishment.
I liked it. If you like slightly artificial prose (not as jaunty as Gail Carriger but that sort of thing) and some seriously mad science, this is a fun book. There are lots of gears. And talking rabbits. No really, it’s funny, if lacking in ethics. Also invisible cats, difficult decisions, and cranky professors.
Thoughts for people who’ve read the book: SPOILERS AHOY!
I really enjoyed Violet’s interactions with the other students, overall; it’s a slightly grown-up version of boarding school romps, basically (like, the drinking is legal). I was really pleased that Rosen allowed Jack and Violet to be and remain good friends – I guess it helped that Jack had his sights firmly fixed on Cecily – and that it turns out Drew knew she was female for a while and it just didn’t matter. Hooray for cross-gender friendships!
I generally liked Cecily. I liked that she was good at science, and wanted to be good at science. I was bemused by her attachment to the rabbit, since it made this intelligent young woman seem like she was about six. I also generally liked Miriam, and I was fascinated by her status as a dark-skinned, widowed, Jew… but it did feel a bit tokenistic. That is, I am perfectly fine with her being all of those things, but Rosen begins to explore the ramifications of those aspects of her identity aaaaaand doesn’t fulfil the promise.
Other things that didn’t work so well:
The relationship between Violet and the duke is a bit ugh. The age difference is icky. The ‘but I don’t think I’m an invert!’ (Rosen’s word, presumably – I hope! – historically appropriate) attitude from the duke after kissing Violet-as-Ashton skirted, and may have fallen into, problematic (I’m cis, I’m no judge).
The switching of voices. What for, Rosen? The fact that it doesn’t properly start until well into the book makes it particularly weird. I liked Fiona well enough but I really didn’t need her perspective, nor that of the duke, nor Cecily or Miriam’s, unless they were all going to be as thoroughly explored as Violet’s. Which they’re not. And Ashton is distinctly left out, really, which makes no sense.
The ending. The marriage happens waaay too fast – or it could have happened in as few pages but there needed to be a bit more about how it all got resolved, and wait a minute isn’t she a bit young??
Incandescence
Another in my long slog towards Reading Everything By Greg Egan, Dammit.
When I started this last week, I was completely thrown: it was familiar. Like, I had definitely read this before. Yet I had definitely got it from the TBR shelf, so… wha? I thought about it, and I didn’t remember the ending, but let’s be honest – that’s not exactly unusual for me. So I read a few more pages – still familiar. I read ahead 20 or so pages – getting less familiar. Eh; I decided just to keep reading, and see what happened. Turns out that at some point, I read the first 50 or so pages, and then gave up. I have no idea why I would have given up at that point, because it’s not even like this is a particularly hard book as Egans go.
That is to say, if you don’t like entire pages of dense scientific discussion and you’re not the sort of person who is happy to skim that to get back to the plot, do not read this book. It’s ok; it’s no reflection on you; it’s just not going to be a happy match-up between the two of you and it’s not worth your time getting annoyed.
Even more than any other Egan until the Orthogonal books (The Clockwork Rocket and Eternal Flame), half of this book is unashamedly working through a scientific revolution. In a society where things just are the way they are and curiosity isn’t rewarded – cooperation and teamwork are, hormonally – one misfit manages to co-opt a fellow worker into being curious about the way weight changes in different parts of their habitat, and… from there, you get an explosion of scientific discoveries. How does that even work? What sort of questions do you even need to ask in order to discover basic principles of gravity, for instance? Egan throws himself, and the reader, into these issues – without forgetting that they occur in a vacuum, and therefore also incorporating discussions of social change and disruption and, because this is Egan and it’s just what he does, a bit of gender role discussion as well.
Seriously. This man.
The other half of the book is a slightly more straightforward SF plot, where the far-future equivalent of a bored early-20-something seems to handed the puzzle of a lifetime and he sets off on a joyride around the galaxy, complete with sidekick. Well, not quite, but close. You could definitely take these chapters and have a fairly good SF novel, anyway, about the differences between living in the disk of the Milky Way and living in the bulge, and how you might go about being a detective with all sorts of cool gadgets (wait til you read about the telescope they construct). The reference to the sidekick is a little unfair; Parantham is not just along to have ideas bounced off. He/she is an undeveloped character in many ways; not descended from DNA but rather – to put it crudely – from AI, Parantham allows Egan to suggest issues around body perception and suchlike but doesn’t do that issue justice. The not-quite adolescent, Rakesh, verges on petulant and annoying and just manages to avoid being such, most of the time. Their interactions are interesting enough and certainly add a different dimension to the novel overall.
In the end, I enjoyed this. It’s not Egan’s greatest, by any stretch. It’s a clever way of thinking through some scientific issues, and it has some nice character moments. Probably not the place to start with reading Egan, though.
SPOILER –>
I really thought this was going to end with Rakesh helping the people of the Splinter, and with a discussion of the role of the Aloof. As the pages kept turning and there was no actual contact, I just could not figure out where Egan was going with it. When I got to the last page, I admit I was flummoxed at first. But then I realised: Rakesh had been interacting with much later generations of the Splinter. They weren’t happening at the same time, at any point! Not that Egan had ever suggested they were, of course. I quite liked this.
The Book of Strange New Things
Importantly, I am a Christian.
Also, this is a complicated book and my reactions are complicated, so I may not always be completely coherent….
Overall:
A company called USIC has established a base – a colony in all but name – on a habitable planet they’ve called Oasis. It already has a sentient species living there. Peter, a Christian minister, gets the job to go and evangelise to these aliens. How is there even a question about whether this is science fiction?
The novel has a straightforward structure, with one intriguing aspect: the ‘title’ of each chapter is the last line, or sentence, of the chapter. This is… weird, and adds some remarkable suspense, and it means each chapter feels circular; it ends up where it began. I’m not sure whether this will turn out to have some greater significance than I currently perceive over the course of the novel.
Now, spoilers… Continue reading →
Ancillary Sword
Spoilers for Ancillary Justice (first review and second review).
I loved this second book possibly not quite as much as the first, for which my love burns for its originality as well as its characters and action; but it’s a true love nonetheless, for a book once again dealing with complex issues without making them un-complex, and for characters who aren’t cardboard, and a plot that – stripped back – is really very straight forward but that kept me reading voraciously.
The issues are similar to Justice, as you would expect, although with a different emphasis. Of course the gender aspect is still there; yes I still found myself wondering whether that deadbeat was female or male, that that leader a man or a woman, and so on. A little bit less than when reading Justice, I hope, since I read this immediately after my re-read and I was a bit more in practise of just reading ‘she’ and remembering that genitalia is irrelevant. More importantly, and indeed driving the action to a much greater extent than in Justice, are the twinned notions of imperialism and colonialism. How does an empire genuinely make sure all of its new citizens are treated like the old ones? How does an empire deal with pre-existing racial and other tensions that are going to manifest even though you’re all now officially the same? And then you add corruption to the mix and of course things will not be pretty. And THEN, into that mix, you add someone new – someone with a powerful sense of justice – and you watch how things fall, and which things blow up.
It amazed me to discover that Leckie is an American, what with her Radchaai obsession with tea.
Breq continues to develop across this novel. Justice saw her get some form of justice, and then has her direction changed by Mianaai herself. She has more time, here, to reflect on the pain of losing Awn, and the pain of losing the majority of herself; there are some intriguing moments where Leckie thinks through what it would be like to be that one, remaining, very small part of something previously so large. How does that one small segment develop an identity? Does that experience bestow compassion or impatience with others experiencing similar issues of dislocation?
I was pleased to have Seivarden sticking around, and not be so whingy as in the first. I am very pleased with the new characters introduced; they provide neat foils for Breq and Seivarden. One baby lieutenant with issues (oh how I love the discussions of baby lieutenants and how they are brought up by ships and crews)
My prediction for the third book: it will have to deal with the alien Presger, as well as the outcome of the civil war within Mianaai herself. In fact, I don’t really see how this can be resolved in just one more book. MOAR BOOKS, LECKIE.
Ancillary Justice
This is my second time around in reading this book. I knew I needed to reread it before reading Ancillary Sword. You can read my original review over here.
Multiple spoilers ahead!
I still found the almost exclusive use of ‘she’ to be quite disconcerting, and I feel like I noticed those few times that someone is ‘properly’ gendered more than I did the first time I read it. I still found myself trying to pick gender clues from behaviour and descriptions, which of course says something about me… and also quite a lot about Leckie, since I really don’t think she enables such a reading of anyone. I have absolutely no clue what sort of genitalia Lieutenant Awn had.
Because I wasn’t so staggered by the gender issue this time I believe I felt the imperialism/colonialism aspect more. The Radch is a monumentally arrogant civilisation – and I felt very keenly those discussions about how such a sentence would be constructed in their language, since the word for ‘civilised’ IS the word FOR their civilisation, and for themselves: Radch. So this arrogance, this narrow vision, is constructed into their language – while I’m not a complete subscriber to the notion that language creates reality, it certainly has an impact on our perception of such. Leckie herself notes the similarities between the Radch and the Roman Empire, which is useful both for the yes and the no. Make new peoples citizens, subsume/ align their gods with your, but use ‘corpse soldiers’ to help make it work and have a bunch of apparently random cultural hang-ups.
I loved the gloves thing this time. I could drive myself mad trying to figure out how a culture develops a horror of bare hands except in the most intimate of circumstances.
I’m not sure I noticed the descriptions of skin colour last time (oh the advantages of being white). Much like the people of Earthsea, the Radch are dark-skinned… which is neither here nor there in the book’s greater scheme of plot and character and theme, but is nonetheless important in the greater scheme of, you know, the world.
Another aspect I feel I appreciate more deeply this time around is the religion. Everyone, basically, is religious. All of the ships are named after religious figures; all of the decades of soldiers likewise. There is an expectation that senior soldiers will pray and cast the omens each morning. Each new planet has their own religion whose parallels with the Radch’s own must be found – and there’s even discussion of a problematic, exclusively-monotheistic bunch who have caused issues in the past, who basically appear atheist to the Radch: either horrifying or bemusing, depending on your attitude. Not everyone is especially devout, but there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that religion belongs in humanity and in space and everywhere there are humans. This is refreshing.
Finally, the plot. Even though I did have some memory of how everything was going to play out (that notorious memory of mine), I still found it gripping. The massacre of civilians to the death of Awn, the gradual change in Seivarden, the drama at Omaugh: it’s not the most fast-paced space opera I’ve ever read, but it is definitely compelling and in no way just a vehicle for discussing Important Issues.
Guns of the Dawn
This book was provided to my by the author at no cost.
The main problem, for me, with Guns of the Dawn is that I thought I was getting a book based on the French Revolution, with a bit of magic. So I was expecting it to actually be about the French side, and I was excited to try and find familiar faces or at least familiar issues. However, that is not what I got. The extent to which this is based on the French Revolution is that Denland has had a revolution, and now has no king, and is at war with one of its neighbours. The Goodreads outline tells me that it’s pseudo-Napoleonic, and the era feels about right for that, but still there’s nothing obvious to connect them except the regicide bit and the war-with-neighbours bit (I’m not a Napoleonic Wars expert, so I’d be interested to hear from others who see closer resemblances). I freely admit this is a problem with my expectations and not a problem with the book, but it did colour my reading of it a lot and – well, that’s just the reality.
In attitude, this novel feels far more closely aligned with World War 1, reflecting its having been written (I presume) and published around the centenary anniversary. There’s a lot about the futility of war, and the horrendous conditions where most of the action takes place has thunderous echoes of trench warfare (and of jungle warfare too, from later wars). There’s also issues of new technology, mimicking some of the developments of WW1 (and the recount of a cavalry charge being mown down by artillery parallels the story often told about Poland and the Germans in WW2).
The book opens with the protagonist, Emily, in her first battle in an area known as the Levant. After that, the first third is mostly about Emily’s life before being called up as a soldier, and I guess it’s a story of manners: the family are gentry but poor, there’s three sisters and only one married and no parents; there’s a jumped-up, venal bureaucrat and problems with how to keep the estate going while the men are gradually drained off to go fight Denland. This section felt too long by about half. I understand that Tchaikovsky is trying to show how genteel and simultaneously how resourceful Emily is, but it really just dragged on and without the knowledge that she was soon going to be fighting, and that then something different would happen, I may have stopped. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with that sort of book when I know what I’m in for. But the title doesn’t give any clue that one third of the book will be Austen-esque, and neither does the blurb. And even if I did anticipate it – Too. Long.
Most of the rest of the story is a fairly relentless meditation on the unpleasantness of war. Lots of people die. There are terrifying battles where finding the enemy and negotiating the ever-shifting swamp are equally difficult. There’s some of the difficulties you’d expect from having women in a man’s army. Tchaikovsky also includes those moments of camaraderie that every war-story needs, both for verisimilitude and to break up the unrelenting horror. Again, I found this part of the story too long. There was too much floundering in the swamp, too much focus on problems in the camp. It ended up losing some of its impact because I got impatient.
Is the book well written? Yes, the prose is entirely readable – after all, I read something like 650 pages (ebook) even though I wasn’t entirely convinced by the whole set up. Are some of my issues with the book entirely my own and not the book’s? Indubitably. But I still think it would have been better if it had been cut by a third.
The Other Wind
And then I finished the Earthsea series and I was simultaneously overjoyed and despondent.
Spoilers for the entire series.
This is a great and wonderful novel, full of death and life and love and loss and powerful changes and the steadiness of hope. It’s a spectacular way of bringing all the threads of the past five books of Earthsea together, and addressing most (perhaps all) of the issues raised in them: men’s and women’s magics, dragons and humanity, the necessity and fearfulness of change.
The plot: a witch’s son has been having dreams about the place of death. The dead are able to call him and even touch him across the wall that separates that place from the living, and this is a fearful thing indeed. He goes to Roke for advice, from there is sent to Sparrowhawk as a man who has crossed the dead lands, and from there is sent on again to the new king, Lebannen, since that’s where Tehanu and Tenar are. Coming to Havnor, Alder finds himself in the most court intrigue Le Guin has ever shown: a princess has been sent from the Kargad Lands with the clear intention that she should wed Lebannen; Lebannen is all petulant about being forced into something, plus he finds it hard to accept her cultural differences. Then there’s the dragons who have come to ravage the inner lands of Earthsea – although not killing humans… and then they all – bar Sparrowhawk – end up on Roke, where the changes that were suggested in the world back in The Farthest Shore, and the ideas of death and shadows and Old Powers from the earliest books, all come together in a mighty crescendo.
It’s a captivating plot, and it’s one of the most plot-driven of the Earthsea stories, but the characters are absolutely still the essence of the book. I love that Sparrowhawk is an old man in this book. He has been in previous stories too, but I love how generally comfortable he is with his new station. He still mourns for wizardry but it’s an accustomed thing rather than a gaping wound. His happiness with Tenar is comfortable and comforting. Their adoption of Tehanu and their respect for her oddness is a lovely example of Family. Doing the hard things, and ensuring that your family does the hard but necessary things and supporting them in it… it’s strong and honest and inspiring. There may have been a tear at the very end, for Tehanu. And I love Tenar; she is an awesome example of old women doing what old women can do: say the truth, get things done, not care about perceptions – she’s the fictional example of Le Guin’s essay “The Space Crone.”
I was so excited to have Irian/Dragonfly back! To know that she has found her place in the world with the dragons is very satisfying. She’s another character who agrees to do the hard thing – come back and deal with the humans for a short time – even though she doesn’t especially want to. I like that aspect of her character. And her passion.
Seserakh, the Kargish princess, is the most intriguing of the new characters (Alder is vital for the plot, but he’s still just a man with an unfortunate manner of dreaming). I’m a little uncomfortable about the fact that she wears a red veil, and that going bare-faced is a really big deal – the women who made fun of her at home were “bare-faced whores” – because I can’t figure out whether this is a dig at Islam or not. Seserakh herself is a strong, vulnerable, determined and passionate character… but she does end up removing the veil to be accepted. So I don’t know whether to be disappointed by this aspect or not.
Basically everything about this novel (with exception above) is wonderful and I’m so sad that it’s the end of Earthsea.
Tehanu
It’s official. I like the Tenar-focussed books more than the Sparrowhawk-focussed ones. Don’t get me wrong – I adore Ged, and I love the quests and the excitement of A Wizard and The Farthest Shore. But there’s something wonderful about Tenar as a character, and there’s something wonderful about the more inwardly-focussed and (is this silly?) more relatable stories of Tenar’s life, that makes my heart ache with joy.
I can only imagine the wild joy that Tehanu must have been greeted with when it was released in 1990, 17 years after The Farthest Shore. Intriguingly, it begins before that story has finished – there is a problem with magic, and eventually Ged is delivered to Gont by the dragon Kalessin, but that’s not even the start of the story.
The story really begins with The Tombs of Atuan, and more even than The Farthest Shore continues A Wizard this is basically the second half of Tenar’s story. We skip the bits about being a wife and a mother… I don’t believe that’s because Le Guin sees those bits as unimportant, but perhaps because this bit – the being a widow stage – allows for more freedom of story, and even perhaps because this bit is told less often. There’s an ironic comment at some point about how once she got old, Tenar disappeared to men’s eyes. I adore how much this story is about being old, and getting on with life, and old =/ dead.
So Tenar is a widow, and she’s in charge of her dead husband’s farm because her son is off being a sailor, and she takes in a young girl who has been left for dead after being severely burnt. There’s a lot in the story about perceptions of physical appearance – whether through age or this sort of physical impairment. There’s also a lot about why men (humanity in general I suppose, but the major focus is on men) do what they do, and the child’s situation is emblematic of all of this. As is Tenar’s steadfast, generous, stubborn heart in caring for Therru as her own. Ged does turn up, eventually, but he doesn’t take Tenar on adventures. This time, he is drawn into her world, in an inversion of their first encounter. This time, it’s he that’s struggling with his identity and his purpose in life, and Tenar who takes him in hand.
There is adventure, of a sort – nasty men and even an encounter with the king – but they’re blips in an ordinary life, a brush with celebrity. The very end of the story is a different matter (which: !!!), but still the resolution is in keeping with Tenar’s desire for an ordinary life. There’s more interest in goats, and spinning; in peach trees; in small-town relationships – especially between women – and understanding changed-but-the-same friends. I have to say that in writing in this I experienced a twinge of concern, that perhaps I’m not selling this to – yes, you guessed it – male readers. And then I realised how I was feeling and nearly despaired. Of course I think men should read this, in the sense that I think everyone should because it’s saying such deep things about life and because it’s written so gorgeously. If men – and indeed women – choose not to read this because they think they only enjoy adventures, well, their loss.
Because Le Guin is saying a great deal about ‘real life’ in this book. In her discussion about where power lies, and what power is; about the relationship between men and women in terms of power and trust; about motherhood and what it means; about the nature of knowledge; and perhaps even a suggestion of how to live ‘the good life’.These themes are another way in which the continuity between this and The Tombs is evident. I don’t particularly like some of what she has to say about men’s and women’s power, and I’m not sure that I’m even meant to agree with or like it, but it’s still intriguing.
I adore this book.
Comment on revelation about Ged: SPOILER!!
I am deeply fascinated and intrigued by Le Guin’s revelation that wizards are essentially sexless – neutered in some way by magic. Hmmm, the terminology here may get me in trouble. At any rate, he’s basically not experienced adolescence. I can only imagine that she was asked whether Tenar and Ged had had sex in the boat en route to Havnor, and this is her explanation of why not! It’s a very cunning way of helping to partly explain the lack of women on Roke – that is, no wives or girlfriends – as well as reassuring the readers about wizards not using their powers for manipulation.
Waistcoats and Weaponry
I received this book from the publisher.
There are spoilers ahead for the first two books of this series, Etiquette and Espionage and Curtsies and Conspiracies. I’m also going to talk about the very end of this book, but I’ll let you know when that’s about to happen.
I continue to be impressed by the fact that the problem set up in the first book, about the mysterious crystalline valve, has continued to be a significant plot point across the three books of the series so far. Aside from a simple continuity of characters, this makes the series feel more cohesive than it otherwise might and it’s something I especially did not expect from an adventures-at-school book. Sorry for doubting you, Carriger. It does of course continue to develop, until here we start to see how the valve might actually be used nefariously. The other intriguing, if fleeting, piece of continuity is Professor Braithwope’s mental instability, caused either by the snapping of his vampiric tether or his experience in the aether. It would have been nice to see a bit more resolution of this, but I’m glad he hasn’t simply been abandoned.
The focus of the series, of course, is the growing friendship of the girls – Sophronia and Dimity especially, but Agatha and Sidheag as well. (Sophronia is the central protagonist throughout; Dimity got a starring role in C&C; Sidheag has her turn in this book… which surely means that the fourth book will finally give us some Agatha love? She’s absolutely the most mysterious at this point – apparently from great wealth, there’s no hint about why she’s at Miss Geraldine’s, and given her apparently mouse-like character how could she ever survive as an intelligencer? So that’s something to hope for.) Sophronia and Dimity continue to be inseparable; I was concerned that Dimity was just going to be the slightly dopey sidekick, but again I should have trusted Carriger; she’s definitely got a mind of her own, and although she doesn’t try that hard to stop Sophronia being mad, she doesn’t just go along blindly. I was glad to see more of Sidheag, while feeling sorry for the reason behind it. Solid female friendships are a lovely lovely thing.
One of my disappointments with this book is the same as in Curtsies and Conspiracies: the boys. There’s a lot of anguishing over Lord Mersey and Soap. Felix is a useful person to know but he’s a right pain in the butt and I got pretty sick of him, it must be said; his overly familiar and pushy attitude towards Sophronia was irritating and bordering on offensive. I like Soap. I can appreciate the we’re-just-friends narrative, as well as everyone rolling their eyes at the idea that Sophronia is so naive. I really appreciate that this is a cross-race and – perhaps even more pertinently – cross-class friendship/might-be romance. Felix vs Soap isn’t much fun, though, bordering on possessiveness sometimes. Sophronia doesn’t really put up with it, which is good, but it still bugged me.
But not as much as the ending… thus SPOILERS NOW. (So skip the next paragraph or just know that I did enjoy it and still look forward to the fourth book later this year.)
I knew that there was going to be some drama involving werewolves and Soap wanting to change from about the middle of the book. As soon as there were guns pulled at the end I got that sinking feeling and yup, then Soap got shot right while Lord Slaughter happened to be standing there. Oh what a surprise. At least it wasn’t in protecting Sophronia directly. I did like that Sophronia saved her friend, and was wonderfully gallant in standing up to Slaughter and demanding he try – and that she stood by her promise to be indentured to him (HOO BOY). But… there’s still something about this turn of events that makes me uncomfortable. I’m glad Soap was saved, and yes he wanted to be a werewolf, but this is not on his terms. I can’t express it much better than this: it just wasn’t quite right.
I did like it, I really want to find out where Sophronia goes now, and I REALLY want a book featuring Agatha. You can get this one from Fishpond.
Randomly Yours, Alex 