The trip out to SciFoo and back this past weekend involved a lot of time on airplanes, which meant a lot of uninterrupted reading time. As a result, I’ve finished five books in a bit less than a week; at one point in my life, that would’ve been unremarkable, but these days, it’s flat-out incredible. Anyway, here are some brief reviews of the things I’ve read:
Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham:
This is the first book in a new fantasy series by a guy who’s best known for being one half of “James S. A. Corey,” though he’s already got a couple of well-regarded fantasy series under this name (the Long Price quartet (which I haven’t read because the first one caught me at a bad time) and The Dagger and the Coin, which is excellent). He’s pretty much on the “automatic buy” list for me, and I started this a week or two before the trip and finished it on the first leg of the flight.
This is a secondary-world fantasy set in a sprawling multi-ethnic city on a river, whose ruling prince has just died. It follows four main characters: a couple of street kids from a bad neighborhood, a cousin of the dead prince, and the chief man-at-arms for the religious order headed by said cousin. They find themselves caught up in a tangle of magic and murder associated with the dark secret at the core of the ruling family’s power. Like a lot of his stuff, there’s a kind of pervasive melancholy to this, and some really nice reflections on loss; also, creepy magic and well-done action.
This is the first book in a new trilogy, but has a pretty satisfying ending in its own right. Highly recommended.
Tripwire by Lee Child:
This is another Jack Reacher book, and thus completely preposterous but also compulsively readable. I powered through most of it on the second leg of my flight to San Jose, and then finished it over beers in Palo Alto while waiting for my hotel room to be ready. I won’t attempt to explain the plot, because it’s kind of a you-like-it-or-you-don’t sort of genre: if you enjoy this character and the sort of stories he appears in, it almost doesn’t matter what the exact scenario is.
Stalking the Angel by Robert Crais:
This is the second Elivs Cole and Joe Pike novel, with the requisite first-person-smartass narration from Cole, a small-time private investigator in LA. He’s hired to track down a Japanese manuscript that’s been stolen from a rich businessman with a troubled family, and things quickly get complicated.
Plot-wise, this is surprisingly shaggy, with some of the character motivations remaining pretty opaque until quite late in the story. Most of the fun in this is the Cole voice, though, which is very enjoyable in that PI-novel way.
Forged and Risen by Benedict Jacka:
These are books 11 and 12 in the Alex Verus series of urban fantasies set in a modern-day UK where secret magical orders battle for control. Verus is a diviner, with the ability to see various futures, and at the start of the series was content to run a small magic shop in London, but he’s quickly drawn into larger problems, and by the time these books come around has become a person of considerable power.
I won’t attempt to explain the plot of these, because there’s soooo much backstory that it occasionally threatens to overwhelm everything. Jacka does a nice job of keeping the whole thing from tipping over into endless tedious recapping (*cough* Harry Dresden *cough*cough*), and these two tie the whole thing up in a reasonably satisfying way.
This is another series that must have sold reasonably well, because they did twelve books, but seems comprehensively absent from any of the bits of SF discourse that I still catch… These are quite dark and bloody, with people acting ruthlessly throughout, so not really for the faint of heart. The magic system is well-done, though, and Jacka finds ingenious uses for the ability to see a few seconds into the future. I enjoyed the series quite a bit, and again, would highly recommend it to people who like this sort of thing. I will definitely check out whatever he does next.
So, that’s my recent genre fiction reading. Next up is a new book from Brian McClellan, another author on my “buy automatically” list who is also oddly absent from genre discussion, given how many books he’s published and how large his name is on the covers. It’ll probably be a little while before I finish that, though, because I don’t have any more flights scheduled in the next few months… Anyway, if you would like more of this sort of commentary, here’s a button:
And if you have thoughts on any of these, or recommendations for similar stuff to seek out, the comments will be open:
Re. Lee Child, I am a big fan of the Jack Reacher character. Yes, he's a male wish fulfillment, a modern Conan (if you don't know, Conan is actually rather smart, more than cunning but just not book smart) but it works for me.
but it's true quite a few of the plots suck, Tripwire included. I haven't read every Reacher book but, fwiw, I liked Echo Burning (still not credible but better), The Enemy (really a notch above, actually believable). One Shot, I thought was fairly weak but the movie with Tom Cruise works well enough. The rest, I thought were weak (story wise, including The Killing Floor) or I haven't read them.
I love Abraham and _Age of Ash_ was great, but I got two books into the Alex Verus series (maybe 3?) and sort of left it. I enjoyed them well enough but just always had other things I preferred. Hearing that it's still going fairly well 12 books in makes me more confident about picking up at least a few more of them.