I meant to start posting regularly again, but didn't quite muster the energy. Hopefully this year will be a return to normality, or at least something close to it.
Despite being laid up over half of 2025, I didn't spend much time reading. I mostly attribute it to the fact that I fell down the YouTube rabbit hole and it became my go-to for "I'm not feeling well but I need entertainment," and I'm far more familiar with various YouTube channels than I ever was before. When I did feel well enough to do more, I ended up gaming instead, which was good for my gaming backlog, but not so much my reading one!
So I only read one book for 2025, but at least I'm getting closer to finishing Legend of the Galactic Heroes! You can consider this one recommended even though I won't be doling out any asterisks for a top pick when it's my only pick.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 8: Desolation by Yoshiki Tanaka
We finally get what looks to be the final face off between Reinhard and Yang as Yang's forces are bottled up in Iserlohn Fortress and Reinhard himself arrives to take out the last remaining holdouts from the Free Planet Alliance. I won't get into spoilers, so unfortunately this write-up is going to be shorter than the myriad thoughts I actually had, but I definitely did not see what would happen midway through the book. In the hands of a lesser writer I could see this event substantially taking the wind out of the series' sails, but I think there's a lot of material left to mine here and I'm interested in seeing how the remaining two books will handle this.
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Monday, January 26, 2026
Monday, January 13, 2025
My Favorite Books of 2024
I didn't end up reading much in 2024 for reasons I'll eventually post about at some point, but suffice to say there's a reason I stopped posting on my blog for months and the only reason these 2024 wrap-ups are coming out now is because I work on them throughout the year so I did not have to spend much time writing or editing them.
Normally I would list the twelve books I enjoyed the most, and mark my three favorites with an asterisk (*), but this year because I didn't read that much, I'm just listing the four I finished and will not be marking any of them.
Krieg by Steve Lyons
I'm not a Warhammer 40,000 player, nor am I really a reader of the franchise's numerous books, but when I found out they had a faction inspired by World War I trench warfare, and they had a book based on these fanatical soldiers who were willing to hurl themselves into certain death in the name of the God Emperor, I realized I had to read it and the book did not disappoint. I still have little interest in any other Warhammer material, but I think I would be inclined to pick up another book about the crazy yet oddly mysterious soldiers of Krieg.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 6: Flight by Yoshiki Tanaka
Yang continues to be my favorite character in this series as he ends up retired due to circumstances of the last book and he goes about doing exactly what he wants to do with his pensioner's lifestyle. But of course things can't remain that way and there are still too many people who misunderstand him and what he would actually do versus what they think he'll do. Reinhard has his problems too, but I didn't find his side of the volume as compelling as Yang's.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 7: Tempest by Yoshiki Tanaka
I found this to be a pretty exciting volume, with relationships starting to fracture on Reinhard's side and Yang's crew making a play to keep the Free Planet Alliance alive even if the FPA isn't exactly their biggest fan. We also get to see the payoff for a gambit Yang set up back in Volume 5.
Baccano!, Vol. 11: 1705 The Ironic Light Orchestra by Ryogho Narita
One of the one-offs set in one of Baccano's non-1930s settings, this time following Huey Laforet and how he came to meet and reluctantly become friends with Elmer Albatross. Set in 1705 Italy, it's an unusual story about what seems to be a serial killer targeting children, but ultimately leads to a much bigger conspiracy about how their small town functions. Likely skippable if you don't want to read every volume since Huey tends to be a distant figure in the main 1930s setting, Elmer hasn't shown his face except in flashbacks, and prominent third character Monica has not been seen at all until this point.
Normally I would list the twelve books I enjoyed the most, and mark my three favorites with an asterisk (*), but this year because I didn't read that much, I'm just listing the four I finished and will not be marking any of them.
Krieg by Steve Lyons
I'm not a Warhammer 40,000 player, nor am I really a reader of the franchise's numerous books, but when I found out they had a faction inspired by World War I trench warfare, and they had a book based on these fanatical soldiers who were willing to hurl themselves into certain death in the name of the God Emperor, I realized I had to read it and the book did not disappoint. I still have little interest in any other Warhammer material, but I think I would be inclined to pick up another book about the crazy yet oddly mysterious soldiers of Krieg.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 6: Flight by Yoshiki Tanaka
Yang continues to be my favorite character in this series as he ends up retired due to circumstances of the last book and he goes about doing exactly what he wants to do with his pensioner's lifestyle. But of course things can't remain that way and there are still too many people who misunderstand him and what he would actually do versus what they think he'll do. Reinhard has his problems too, but I didn't find his side of the volume as compelling as Yang's.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 7: Tempest by Yoshiki Tanaka
I found this to be a pretty exciting volume, with relationships starting to fracture on Reinhard's side and Yang's crew making a play to keep the Free Planet Alliance alive even if the FPA isn't exactly their biggest fan. We also get to see the payoff for a gambit Yang set up back in Volume 5.
Baccano!, Vol. 11: 1705 The Ironic Light Orchestra by Ryogho Narita
One of the one-offs set in one of Baccano's non-1930s settings, this time following Huey Laforet and how he came to meet and reluctantly become friends with Elmer Albatross. Set in 1705 Italy, it's an unusual story about what seems to be a serial killer targeting children, but ultimately leads to a much bigger conspiracy about how their small town functions. Likely skippable if you don't want to read every volume since Huey tends to be a distant figure in the main 1930s setting, Elmer hasn't shown his face except in flashbacks, and prominent third character Monica has not been seen at all until this point.
Monday, December 27, 2021
My Favorite Books of 2021
2021 was a year of reading comfort fiction, mostly because I was in cancer treatment for so much of the year that I just wanted to read what I already knew I would enjoy. Hence, a lot of later volumes in various series.
Normally I list the twelve books I enjoyed the most, but this year because of all the series' reading and because I mostly read volumes back to back, I'm just going to group everything by series and include book/volume numbers. I didn't start any new series. This is all ongoing stuff.
My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 4: Strategem by Yoshiki Tanaka
We finally see all the politicking in the previous volume pay off as the Dominion of Phezzan makes its move and Reinhart decides to make use of their subterfuge, bringing him one step closer to claiming the imperial throne for himself. He feels a lot better in this book, less distant, perhaps because he's getting over his grief. Yang's chapters aren't quite as good this time around, perhaps because he has less to do. This isn't a particularly space battley volume and while his grand strategy insight is as good as ever, his government doesn't like to hear what he has to say, as usual.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Roads Lead to Doom! Vols 2-3 by Satoru Yamaguchi
In Vol 2 Katarina continues her quest to avoid getting a "bad end" as the villainess of the otome video game she's been reincarnated into. Now that she's a teenager she finally goes off to the magic academy, beginning the game proper, but this time around due to her bond with her potential adversaries it's clear the story will play out differently. There is surprisingly a "bad guy" character who shows up to give the story a little oomph in the finale, but otherwise it ends just about the way you'd expect.
Vol 3 is a little stranger since Vol 2 wraps up the premise of the series, but it was clearly popular enough that the author or his editors wanted to continue so what we get is a stand alone volume of Katarina meeting new people, getting into more trouble, and causing more people to be smitten by her. It's all right, but feels a bit like filler.
Baccano! Vols 8-10 by Ryohgo Narita *
Baccano volumes 8-10 cover the 1934 Alcatraz storyline as well as Nebula Corporation shenanigans in Chicago. For anime-onlies, this arc covers where Ladd Russo wound up after he was pulled off the Flying Pussyfoot and finally puts Huey Laforet's plans into action. Firo gets some pretty awesome moments as he has to operate solo inside Alcatraz for much of this arc and he really gets to put his alchemic knowledge to good use. The best mostly new to us characters are probably the twin homunculi, Sham and Leeza, who have been mentioned before, but get to finally take the stage in this arc.
Shadow of the Fox Vols 2-3 by Julie Kagawa
Soul of the Sword and Night of the Dragon are the second and third books in the Shadow of the Fox trilogy, continuing and concluding Yumeko's journey to stop the summoning of the dragon god in a pseudo-medieval Japanese setting. We get more POVs as characters previously denied a spot in the narrative limelight get their own stories to tell, but I found I didn't like the diluted focus as much. The ending was similarly mixed for me. Parts I liked, parts I didn't, though the journey towards getting there was very good.
The Protectorate Vols 1-3 by Megan E. O'Keefe *
Velocity Weapon, Chaos Vector, and Catalyst Gate are the three books in the trilogy. If you like action sf with careful worldbuilding, this is an excellent choice. It's got spies, military operations, government conspiracies. The two timelines running through the first book are amazing as I couldn't help wondering how they were going to resolve. I love Sanda and Tomas, they have great chemistry together, even when things aren't working out, and Bero is possibly one of my favorite AI characters ever. (There's nothing quite like a sulky warship.) It's all quite good.
The Murderbot Diaries Vol 3 and 4 by Martha Wells *
Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy are the third and fourth novellas in the The Murderbot Diaries, bringing the titular Murderbot full circle with the decisions it's made since the end of the first novella. It still hates caring about people, because oftentimes people are stupid and caring makes this hard, but it still cares anyway, making Murderbot highly relatable.
Normally I list the twelve books I enjoyed the most, but this year because of all the series' reading and because I mostly read volumes back to back, I'm just going to group everything by series and include book/volume numbers. I didn't start any new series. This is all ongoing stuff.
My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 4: Strategem by Yoshiki Tanaka
We finally see all the politicking in the previous volume pay off as the Dominion of Phezzan makes its move and Reinhart decides to make use of their subterfuge, bringing him one step closer to claiming the imperial throne for himself. He feels a lot better in this book, less distant, perhaps because he's getting over his grief. Yang's chapters aren't quite as good this time around, perhaps because he has less to do. This isn't a particularly space battley volume and while his grand strategy insight is as good as ever, his government doesn't like to hear what he has to say, as usual.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Roads Lead to Doom! Vols 2-3 by Satoru Yamaguchi
In Vol 2 Katarina continues her quest to avoid getting a "bad end" as the villainess of the otome video game she's been reincarnated into. Now that she's a teenager she finally goes off to the magic academy, beginning the game proper, but this time around due to her bond with her potential adversaries it's clear the story will play out differently. There is surprisingly a "bad guy" character who shows up to give the story a little oomph in the finale, but otherwise it ends just about the way you'd expect.
Vol 3 is a little stranger since Vol 2 wraps up the premise of the series, but it was clearly popular enough that the author or his editors wanted to continue so what we get is a stand alone volume of Katarina meeting new people, getting into more trouble, and causing more people to be smitten by her. It's all right, but feels a bit like filler.
Baccano! Vols 8-10 by Ryohgo Narita *
Baccano volumes 8-10 cover the 1934 Alcatraz storyline as well as Nebula Corporation shenanigans in Chicago. For anime-onlies, this arc covers where Ladd Russo wound up after he was pulled off the Flying Pussyfoot and finally puts Huey Laforet's plans into action. Firo gets some pretty awesome moments as he has to operate solo inside Alcatraz for much of this arc and he really gets to put his alchemic knowledge to good use. The best mostly new to us characters are probably the twin homunculi, Sham and Leeza, who have been mentioned before, but get to finally take the stage in this arc.
Shadow of the Fox Vols 2-3 by Julie Kagawa
Soul of the Sword and Night of the Dragon are the second and third books in the Shadow of the Fox trilogy, continuing and concluding Yumeko's journey to stop the summoning of the dragon god in a pseudo-medieval Japanese setting. We get more POVs as characters previously denied a spot in the narrative limelight get their own stories to tell, but I found I didn't like the diluted focus as much. The ending was similarly mixed for me. Parts I liked, parts I didn't, though the journey towards getting there was very good.
The Protectorate Vols 1-3 by Megan E. O'Keefe *
Velocity Weapon, Chaos Vector, and Catalyst Gate are the three books in the trilogy. If you like action sf with careful worldbuilding, this is an excellent choice. It's got spies, military operations, government conspiracies. The two timelines running through the first book are amazing as I couldn't help wondering how they were going to resolve. I love Sanda and Tomas, they have great chemistry together, even when things aren't working out, and Bero is possibly one of my favorite AI characters ever. (There's nothing quite like a sulky warship.) It's all quite good.
The Murderbot Diaries Vol 3 and 4 by Martha Wells *
Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy are the third and fourth novellas in the The Murderbot Diaries, bringing the titular Murderbot full circle with the decisions it's made since the end of the first novella. It still hates caring about people, because oftentimes people are stupid and caring makes this hard, but it still cares anyway, making Murderbot highly relatable.
Monday, January 4, 2021
My Favorite Books of 2020
My 2020 reading year didn't go off as planned, particularly in regards to picking up new reading material, but with all the staying at home that had to be done, I ended up mostly reading backlogged physical and ebooks.
These are the twelve books I enjoyed the most, and in the order I read them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
I picked this up for Kindle a while ago when it was on sale for a quarter (!), figuring I'd never get it cheaper short of going to a library. It's one of those books I'd always heard about, but never read while growing up, and while the Vietnam allegory is pretty apparent once you get to the middle section of the book, a lot of the societal changes come off as insensitive as best and homophobic at worst. Though the protagonist tries to be a decent guy and avoids being a jerk to any of the numerous gay characters that appear later in the story, he never gets comfortable with the thought that a queer society could be just fine even if it's not for him. If you can ignore all that (and it's all over the later parts of the book), it's not a bad story about a soldier just trying to find his own piece of heaven, but it hasn't aged well.
Baccano! Vol 6: 1933 <First> The Slash -Cloudy to Rainy- by Ryohgo Narita
More Baccano! The series works much better in the 1930s than the 2001 of the last installment, and we get to return to the woes of our favorite mobsters. In particular, this book focuses on Tick and Maria, who were minor characters previously, when Luck Gandor sends them to negotiate with some new hoodlums in town, who happen to be Jacuzzi Splot and his gang! Dallas is finally pulled out of the river, Firo has to deal with the psychological burden placed on him by inheriting Szilard's memories, and Ronny from the Martillo family gets to hint at his true colors. There's a lot going on as usual and Narita's sense of comedic timing is on point, knowing exactly when to turn the worst tension into an incredible joke.
Baccano! Vol 7: 1933 <Last> The Slash -Bloody to Fair- by Ryohgo Narita
The second half of the Slash arc ramps up with Vino being called into back into action after having been a non-appearance most of the previous book, and we get to see him and Chané as a romantic couple for the first time, which is a bit weird if you haven't watched the anime, because the specifics of how they became a couple are skipped over for another time in the books themselves. Tick and Maria go through their own bit of character development making them worthwhile additions to the pre-existing cast. Though they're clearly as morally impaired as most of the cast, I can't help rooting for those two.
The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
I'd been wanting to read this ever since I heard this was Sherlock Holmes in space and Watson is a spaceship. I'm not sure I see the parallel between The Shadow's Child and Watson, other than through being a detective's partner, but Long Chau is definitely a far future Holmes; prickly personality, eccentric habits, and all. This was a really swift read and The Shadow's Child is a fantastic narrator, but the mystery was solved a little too easily for me. Still, I'd definitely be interested in a sequel.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Roads Lead to Doom! Vol 1 by Satoru Yamaguchi
If you need a light and fluffy read, this is a surprisingly short first volume that serves as a sort of extended prologue to Katarina's plans to avoid getting either exiled or killed. Katarina is initially the spoiled daughter of a duke until she hits her head one day and realizes that in her previous life she used to be a teenager in our world until she got into a car accident while riding her bike. More than that, she seems to have been reborn as the rival character in the last video game she was playing, the otome Fortune Lover, and the rival doesn't have a single happy ending in the game! Now that she's armed with knowledge of her future, Katarina puts plans in motion to change her fate, but she's also prone to overthinking things and/or making strange jumps in logic, making multiple characters wonder just what happened to the duke's daughter.
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
Murderbot continues to be a fantastic narrator, though I wasn't sure where the story was going considering the ending for the first book. Being a construct of few wants (other than good entertainment), Murderbot didn't seem like one to go off on unnecessary adventures, and the answer is searching for what really happened that caused it to start thinking of itself as Murderbot in the first place. The soul searching was worthwhile, but I wished that had been the climax of the story instead of the other plot thread, which I was much less invested in. ART was the highlight of the book though and I'm disappointed the research vessel and Murderbot parted ways at the end.
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 3: Endurance by Yoshiki Tanaka
Though I enjoyed the previous two LoGH volumes, the first third of Endurance was aptly named, spending an enormous amount of time on setup and political maneuvering before getting to the central conflict (the worst part being that the setup ends up being for a future book and not the current one). Yang's chapters continue to be a highlight, given how politicians and enemy combatants alike really don't know what to make of the guy. Reinhard's chapters are unfortunately more distant. Emotionally he's suffered a great loss since the end of the last book, but his loss is also the audience's loss as it makes him a much harder character to relate to. No doubt some of that is intentional, but I found I just didn't like his chapters as much.
86 Vol 1 by Asato Asato *
The first book of the 86 series is surprisingly weighty for a light novel series and was originally conceived as a stand alone so there's no need to commit anything further. Though it's primarily a war story following a remote commanding officer of the ethnic majority and her squadron composed of the oppressed minority, it's laced throughout with an exploration of government sanctioned racism and how privilege can blind otherwise "nice" people. Lena's growth over the course of the story, and realizing that it may be impossible for her to ever truly become a comrade to her soldiers, is quite frankly a conclusion I didn't expect to be reached. The combat and war segments are good too, but it's really the interpersonal relationships between Lena and her squad that make the book sing.
The Daedalus Incident by Michael J. Martinez
There are essentially two stories in this book; one following a mining operation on 22nd century Mars with a strong hard science fiction slant, and a one following the crew of the 18th century sailing ship the Daedalus, which is pursuing pirates and a rogue alchemist across the solar system with a golden age science fantasy feel. (Think of the animated Treasure Planet movie or the D&D Spelljammer setting.) The sub-genre mixing is fun and unusual, but I developed a strong preference for one storyline over the other, and the two take a long time to meet, so reading was an uneven experience. I kept wanting to hurry up to get back to the team I liked better.
The Venusian Gamit by Michael J. Martinez
The third book in the Daedalus Trilogy and the one with the best pacing. You can really see how Martinez's craft improved since the first book, and there are fun moments like the two dimensions meeting up again. I wasn't surprised to read in the notes at the end of the book that Martinez wrote the trilogy for Weatherby. You have to really like sailors on 18th century ships to write this stuff! It was an exciting read all the way up until the end when I realized that not all of my questions were going to get answered. But if you don't sweat the details, it's satisfying enough.
The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart *
Set in an East Asian themed island nation, The Bone Shard Daughter mostly follows the struggles of Lin, the imperial princess who is desperate to prove herself worthy of being her father's heir, and the smuggler Jovus, who is looking for his missing wife. The world building is quite good, particularly the imperial constructs, and I'm really interested in seeing Lin's path forward after all the upheaval at the end of the book. It's not going to be an easy one!
Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa *
Really impressed by this Japanese-inspired fantasy that introduces just enough Japanese language that the culture comes across, without overindulging. Yumeko and Tatsumi work well as the dual narrators with their differing attitudes and points of view, and they're distinctive enough that they can be told apart by narrative voice alone. This is the first in a trilogy and the end of the book is very much a break before starting another story arc rather than a complete ending.
These are the twelve books I enjoyed the most, and in the order I read them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
I picked this up for Kindle a while ago when it was on sale for a quarter (!), figuring I'd never get it cheaper short of going to a library. It's one of those books I'd always heard about, but never read while growing up, and while the Vietnam allegory is pretty apparent once you get to the middle section of the book, a lot of the societal changes come off as insensitive as best and homophobic at worst. Though the protagonist tries to be a decent guy and avoids being a jerk to any of the numerous gay characters that appear later in the story, he never gets comfortable with the thought that a queer society could be just fine even if it's not for him. If you can ignore all that (and it's all over the later parts of the book), it's not a bad story about a soldier just trying to find his own piece of heaven, but it hasn't aged well.
Baccano! Vol 6: 1933 <First> The Slash -Cloudy to Rainy- by Ryohgo Narita
More Baccano! The series works much better in the 1930s than the 2001 of the last installment, and we get to return to the woes of our favorite mobsters. In particular, this book focuses on Tick and Maria, who were minor characters previously, when Luck Gandor sends them to negotiate with some new hoodlums in town, who happen to be Jacuzzi Splot and his gang! Dallas is finally pulled out of the river, Firo has to deal with the psychological burden placed on him by inheriting Szilard's memories, and Ronny from the Martillo family gets to hint at his true colors. There's a lot going on as usual and Narita's sense of comedic timing is on point, knowing exactly when to turn the worst tension into an incredible joke.
Baccano! Vol 7: 1933 <Last> The Slash -Bloody to Fair- by Ryohgo Narita
The second half of the Slash arc ramps up with Vino being called into back into action after having been a non-appearance most of the previous book, and we get to see him and Chané as a romantic couple for the first time, which is a bit weird if you haven't watched the anime, because the specifics of how they became a couple are skipped over for another time in the books themselves. Tick and Maria go through their own bit of character development making them worthwhile additions to the pre-existing cast. Though they're clearly as morally impaired as most of the cast, I can't help rooting for those two.
The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
I'd been wanting to read this ever since I heard this was Sherlock Holmes in space and Watson is a spaceship. I'm not sure I see the parallel between The Shadow's Child and Watson, other than through being a detective's partner, but Long Chau is definitely a far future Holmes; prickly personality, eccentric habits, and all. This was a really swift read and The Shadow's Child is a fantastic narrator, but the mystery was solved a little too easily for me. Still, I'd definitely be interested in a sequel.
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Roads Lead to Doom! Vol 1 by Satoru Yamaguchi
If you need a light and fluffy read, this is a surprisingly short first volume that serves as a sort of extended prologue to Katarina's plans to avoid getting either exiled or killed. Katarina is initially the spoiled daughter of a duke until she hits her head one day and realizes that in her previous life she used to be a teenager in our world until she got into a car accident while riding her bike. More than that, she seems to have been reborn as the rival character in the last video game she was playing, the otome Fortune Lover, and the rival doesn't have a single happy ending in the game! Now that she's armed with knowledge of her future, Katarina puts plans in motion to change her fate, but she's also prone to overthinking things and/or making strange jumps in logic, making multiple characters wonder just what happened to the duke's daughter.
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
Murderbot continues to be a fantastic narrator, though I wasn't sure where the story was going considering the ending for the first book. Being a construct of few wants (other than good entertainment), Murderbot didn't seem like one to go off on unnecessary adventures, and the answer is searching for what really happened that caused it to start thinking of itself as Murderbot in the first place. The soul searching was worthwhile, but I wished that had been the climax of the story instead of the other plot thread, which I was much less invested in. ART was the highlight of the book though and I'm disappointed the research vessel and Murderbot parted ways at the end.
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 3: Endurance by Yoshiki Tanaka
Though I enjoyed the previous two LoGH volumes, the first third of Endurance was aptly named, spending an enormous amount of time on setup and political maneuvering before getting to the central conflict (the worst part being that the setup ends up being for a future book and not the current one). Yang's chapters continue to be a highlight, given how politicians and enemy combatants alike really don't know what to make of the guy. Reinhard's chapters are unfortunately more distant. Emotionally he's suffered a great loss since the end of the last book, but his loss is also the audience's loss as it makes him a much harder character to relate to. No doubt some of that is intentional, but I found I just didn't like his chapters as much.
86 Vol 1 by Asato Asato *
The first book of the 86 series is surprisingly weighty for a light novel series and was originally conceived as a stand alone so there's no need to commit anything further. Though it's primarily a war story following a remote commanding officer of the ethnic majority and her squadron composed of the oppressed minority, it's laced throughout with an exploration of government sanctioned racism and how privilege can blind otherwise "nice" people. Lena's growth over the course of the story, and realizing that it may be impossible for her to ever truly become a comrade to her soldiers, is quite frankly a conclusion I didn't expect to be reached. The combat and war segments are good too, but it's really the interpersonal relationships between Lena and her squad that make the book sing.
The Daedalus Incident by Michael J. Martinez
There are essentially two stories in this book; one following a mining operation on 22nd century Mars with a strong hard science fiction slant, and a one following the crew of the 18th century sailing ship the Daedalus, which is pursuing pirates and a rogue alchemist across the solar system with a golden age science fantasy feel. (Think of the animated Treasure Planet movie or the D&D Spelljammer setting.) The sub-genre mixing is fun and unusual, but I developed a strong preference for one storyline over the other, and the two take a long time to meet, so reading was an uneven experience. I kept wanting to hurry up to get back to the team I liked better.
The Venusian Gamit by Michael J. Martinez
The third book in the Daedalus Trilogy and the one with the best pacing. You can really see how Martinez's craft improved since the first book, and there are fun moments like the two dimensions meeting up again. I wasn't surprised to read in the notes at the end of the book that Martinez wrote the trilogy for Weatherby. You have to really like sailors on 18th century ships to write this stuff! It was an exciting read all the way up until the end when I realized that not all of my questions were going to get answered. But if you don't sweat the details, it's satisfying enough.
The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart *
Set in an East Asian themed island nation, The Bone Shard Daughter mostly follows the struggles of Lin, the imperial princess who is desperate to prove herself worthy of being her father's heir, and the smuggler Jovus, who is looking for his missing wife. The world building is quite good, particularly the imperial constructs, and I'm really interested in seeing Lin's path forward after all the upheaval at the end of the book. It's not going to be an easy one!
Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa *
Really impressed by this Japanese-inspired fantasy that introduces just enough Japanese language that the culture comes across, without overindulging. Yumeko and Tatsumi work well as the dual narrators with their differing attitudes and points of view, and they're distinctive enough that they can be told apart by narrative voice alone. This is the first in a trilogy and the end of the book is very much a break before starting another story arc rather than a complete ending.
Monday, October 12, 2020
Spice and Wolf Light Novels Series Review (Vols 1-17)
Light novels are growing in popularity in the US, but are still a bit niche. I don't know too many people who read them, even though many of those who are anime fans have watched numerous anime based on them. Most reviews only cover the series on a volume by volume basis, which makes it hard to see whether a series is worth getting into given that these can get pretty massive.
They're essentially YA serials, aimed at a similar age in Japan as YA is in the US. Generally each book has its own story (though sometimes there are multi-parters) and the characters keep moving forward as long as the series lasts. It's not uncommon for popular series to go on for a dozen plus volumes, but this means sticking with a series can be a serious time investment.
Spice and Wolf by Isuna Hasekura is the first light novel series that I can say I've "finished." It was one of the first translated for American audiences, and the earliest editions even had removeable Americanized covers in an attempt to reach a crossover audience. It's also been around long enough that all seventeen volumes of the original series have been completely translated. I put "finished" in quotations because the series picked up again and there are more installments in the form of Volume 18 and beyond, but Volume 17 is clearly the end of the original story and the Spring Log sequel books seem to be forming their own ongoing subseries.
This review will have some general spoilers, since I want to be honest about the direction the series goes, but it will be light on specifics since I'd like more people to read this series. Though I may complain about parts, I enjoyed it enough that I've spent seventeen books with these characters!
Probably like most English speakers, I became interested in Spice and Wolf through the anime, and though I like Holo, the character I actually fell in love with was Lawrence, who is so different from the usual male protagonist. Lawrence is weak, he's no good in a fight, and while his best asset is his head for economics, he's not perfect about using it and gets himself in trouble when he can't see the forest for the trees. He understands that he's a traveling merchant with meager assets, and his dream is to one day make enough money to settle down somewhere and open a shop. He's simple, but realistic for the time and place he exists.
Of course, what isn't simple is meeting Holo, the erstwhile harvest goddess of one of the towns he routinely visits in his travels. Tired of being taken for granted by the locals, Holo decides to stow away in his wagon and convinces him to take her back to her homeland in the north. Though she was worshipped, in actuality she is more of a very large and ancient wolf from older times when beasts like her were common. She's been gone from her home so long she doesn't remember how to return, nor does she know what happened to her former packmates, but she promises Lawrence that traveling with her will be good business and she will earn her keep.
From there, the series is largely a tale of Lawrence and Holo's misadventures in the various cities and towns they visit along the way. They are rarely in any physical danger (because what danger could possibly stand up to Holo) and there are a lot of details about medieval economics that other authors gloss over. Hasekura makes that his focus, and quite a few of the books are "solved" by Lawrence coming up with an economic scheme that will pan out for all parties involved.
Holo and Lawrence also have good chemistry with each other. Lawrence is tight with his money out of necessity. He doesn't have much of it. But Holo is fond of the finer things in life, particularly good food and drink. While she often helps Lawrence get a good deal, she also eats her way through much of the fortune she brings him, leaving it unclear just how much money he has at any given time in the series.
Despite their differences, as they travel together they realize they're growing fond of each other, but their journey by its nature is designed to be a temporary one. Once they reach her home, Lawrence has other things to do, and there's no reason for her to venture away. Aside from that, Holo is painfully aware that Lawrence is only human and will pass away long before she ever does.
The anime skips the Vol 4 story and uses Vol 5 as its finale, which makes for a good ending for Season 2 since it ends with Lawrence confessing to Holo that he loves her and he's made a choice that puts her well being over his chance to make a profit. It also was a good time for the anime to end in general, because there clearly came a point when Hasekura realized that this series was going to end sooner than the fanbase would like, given that there was a world map and we know the general vicinity of Holo's homeland. Vol 5 puts the end of her journey close enough that it could end in weeks.
Volume 6 begins what I call "the detour." Lawrence and Holo decide to chase after the perpetrator of a business deal gone wrong as an excuse to avoid going to her home right away so they can extend their time together. Eventually they do a lot more than that. Between the three short story collection volumes and the detour itself, the main story is on hold until about Vol 14.
To be fair, I think you could skip from the end of Vol 5 to the start of Vol 14 and the only thing you'd be confused about is the occasional mention of a non-human character from the middle volumes and the fact that Lawrence and Holo obtained a third traveling companion in the form of the boy Col.
And Col never really worked for me. I felt like he upset the Lawrence and Holo dynamic since he was obliviously third wheeling everywhere they went and Holo would use him to try making Lawrence jealous (which wasn't really that effective since Col is clearly underage and ignorant of his part of any of it). If Hasekura added Col expressly to stop Lawrence and Holo from getting any closer, he did a fair job of it, as I feel their relationship didn't go anywhere during those middle volumes.
Volume 14 puts them back in Lenos, the town of Vol 5, which is why it's an excellent place to pick up the series again, and Lawrence is once again confronted by whether he'd rather follow Holo or his livelihood. Unlike most series where characters fall in love and expect everything to work out, over the last few books, Lawrence comes to realize what being in a commitment really means, and sometimes that means giving things up. It's not that he has to stop being a merchant, but he can't pursue every opportunity willy-nilly like he used to, and sometimes it might mean taking a loss.
Volumes 15 and 16 comprise the Coin of the Sun duology and series finale, and while Lawrence and Holo's devotion to each other is clearer than ever and they understand that they will not part at the end of their journey, it's rather dampened by the fact their journey actually isn't over. It also hurts that the second half of this duology focuses more on the needs of other characters than our two leads.
Fortunately, there is Volume 17 to provide the epilogue and the proper ending to the series, because I would have been rather upset if it seriously ended at Vol 16. Hasekura calls Vol 16 the final book in his afterward for it, but really, it's incomplete without Vol 17, which provides the closure the previous volume is missing. Unfortunately there is still one glaring omission in Vol 17, which will no doubt annoy a fair number of people (even my friend who has only watched the anime series was in disbelief about it), and Hasekura brings it up in the narration so it's in no way an accidental omission, but at least it's clear that the pair are settling into their happily ever after.
I still enjoyed the series. There aren't many I'd read seventeen volumes of, but it's more for the journey and the characters involved.
Spice and Wolf continues in both the spin-off series Wolf and Parchment, following a now-adult Col and Myuri, the daughter of Lawrence and Holo, and the main series under the Spring Log arc name. I haven't read either yet.
Part of this is because Spring Log assumes some familiarity with Wolf and Parchment and I'm not sure if I want to read Wolf and Parchment. Col was mostly inoffensive, but also terribly bland as a hapless kid along for the ride. He had an dream about restoring the lost lore of the northlands while also being in service of the church, which could be interesting as an adult, but it would depend a lot on what his adult persona ended up being like.
They're essentially YA serials, aimed at a similar age in Japan as YA is in the US. Generally each book has its own story (though sometimes there are multi-parters) and the characters keep moving forward as long as the series lasts. It's not uncommon for popular series to go on for a dozen plus volumes, but this means sticking with a series can be a serious time investment.
Spice and Wolf by Isuna Hasekura is the first light novel series that I can say I've "finished." It was one of the first translated for American audiences, and the earliest editions even had removeable Americanized covers in an attempt to reach a crossover audience. It's also been around long enough that all seventeen volumes of the original series have been completely translated. I put "finished" in quotations because the series picked up again and there are more installments in the form of Volume 18 and beyond, but Volume 17 is clearly the end of the original story and the Spring Log sequel books seem to be forming their own ongoing subseries.
This review will have some general spoilers, since I want to be honest about the direction the series goes, but it will be light on specifics since I'd like more people to read this series. Though I may complain about parts, I enjoyed it enough that I've spent seventeen books with these characters!
Probably like most English speakers, I became interested in Spice and Wolf through the anime, and though I like Holo, the character I actually fell in love with was Lawrence, who is so different from the usual male protagonist. Lawrence is weak, he's no good in a fight, and while his best asset is his head for economics, he's not perfect about using it and gets himself in trouble when he can't see the forest for the trees. He understands that he's a traveling merchant with meager assets, and his dream is to one day make enough money to settle down somewhere and open a shop. He's simple, but realistic for the time and place he exists.
Of course, what isn't simple is meeting Holo, the erstwhile harvest goddess of one of the towns he routinely visits in his travels. Tired of being taken for granted by the locals, Holo decides to stow away in his wagon and convinces him to take her back to her homeland in the north. Though she was worshipped, in actuality she is more of a very large and ancient wolf from older times when beasts like her were common. She's been gone from her home so long she doesn't remember how to return, nor does she know what happened to her former packmates, but she promises Lawrence that traveling with her will be good business and she will earn her keep.
From there, the series is largely a tale of Lawrence and Holo's misadventures in the various cities and towns they visit along the way. They are rarely in any physical danger (because what danger could possibly stand up to Holo) and there are a lot of details about medieval economics that other authors gloss over. Hasekura makes that his focus, and quite a few of the books are "solved" by Lawrence coming up with an economic scheme that will pan out for all parties involved.
Holo and Lawrence also have good chemistry with each other. Lawrence is tight with his money out of necessity. He doesn't have much of it. But Holo is fond of the finer things in life, particularly good food and drink. While she often helps Lawrence get a good deal, she also eats her way through much of the fortune she brings him, leaving it unclear just how much money he has at any given time in the series.
Despite their differences, as they travel together they realize they're growing fond of each other, but their journey by its nature is designed to be a temporary one. Once they reach her home, Lawrence has other things to do, and there's no reason for her to venture away. Aside from that, Holo is painfully aware that Lawrence is only human and will pass away long before she ever does.
The anime skips the Vol 4 story and uses Vol 5 as its finale, which makes for a good ending for Season 2 since it ends with Lawrence confessing to Holo that he loves her and he's made a choice that puts her well being over his chance to make a profit. It also was a good time for the anime to end in general, because there clearly came a point when Hasekura realized that this series was going to end sooner than the fanbase would like, given that there was a world map and we know the general vicinity of Holo's homeland. Vol 5 puts the end of her journey close enough that it could end in weeks.
Volume 6 begins what I call "the detour." Lawrence and Holo decide to chase after the perpetrator of a business deal gone wrong as an excuse to avoid going to her home right away so they can extend their time together. Eventually they do a lot more than that. Between the three short story collection volumes and the detour itself, the main story is on hold until about Vol 14.
To be fair, I think you could skip from the end of Vol 5 to the start of Vol 14 and the only thing you'd be confused about is the occasional mention of a non-human character from the middle volumes and the fact that Lawrence and Holo obtained a third traveling companion in the form of the boy Col.
And Col never really worked for me. I felt like he upset the Lawrence and Holo dynamic since he was obliviously third wheeling everywhere they went and Holo would use him to try making Lawrence jealous (which wasn't really that effective since Col is clearly underage and ignorant of his part of any of it). If Hasekura added Col expressly to stop Lawrence and Holo from getting any closer, he did a fair job of it, as I feel their relationship didn't go anywhere during those middle volumes.
Volume 14 puts them back in Lenos, the town of Vol 5, which is why it's an excellent place to pick up the series again, and Lawrence is once again confronted by whether he'd rather follow Holo or his livelihood. Unlike most series where characters fall in love and expect everything to work out, over the last few books, Lawrence comes to realize what being in a commitment really means, and sometimes that means giving things up. It's not that he has to stop being a merchant, but he can't pursue every opportunity willy-nilly like he used to, and sometimes it might mean taking a loss.
Volumes 15 and 16 comprise the Coin of the Sun duology and series finale, and while Lawrence and Holo's devotion to each other is clearer than ever and they understand that they will not part at the end of their journey, it's rather dampened by the fact their journey actually isn't over. It also hurts that the second half of this duology focuses more on the needs of other characters than our two leads.
Fortunately, there is Volume 17 to provide the epilogue and the proper ending to the series, because I would have been rather upset if it seriously ended at Vol 16. Hasekura calls Vol 16 the final book in his afterward for it, but really, it's incomplete without Vol 17, which provides the closure the previous volume is missing. Unfortunately there is still one glaring omission in Vol 17, which will no doubt annoy a fair number of people (even my friend who has only watched the anime series was in disbelief about it), and Hasekura brings it up in the narration so it's in no way an accidental omission, but at least it's clear that the pair are settling into their happily ever after.
I still enjoyed the series. There aren't many I'd read seventeen volumes of, but it's more for the journey and the characters involved.
Spice and Wolf continues in both the spin-off series Wolf and Parchment, following a now-adult Col and Myuri, the daughter of Lawrence and Holo, and the main series under the Spring Log arc name. I haven't read either yet.
Part of this is because Spring Log assumes some familiarity with Wolf and Parchment and I'm not sure if I want to read Wolf and Parchment. Col was mostly inoffensive, but also terribly bland as a hapless kid along for the ride. He had an dream about restoring the lost lore of the northlands while also being in service of the church, which could be interesting as an adult, but it would depend a lot on what his adult persona ended up being like.
Monday, April 6, 2020
Baccano - The Slash
One of my favorite anime series is Baccano!, the overlooked cousin of the more popular Durarara!! (the author clearly loves his exclamation points). I was introduced to it by dumb luck. Simulcasting was not yet a big thing, and I was just digging through online anime catalogs to find something that looked interesting, and an anime set in the 1930s with gangsters was right up my alley.
It ended by being one of the few anime series in my adult life where after I finished it I immediately turned around and rewatched it; though I did switch dub languages from Japanese to English for my second viewing. And in this particular case I prefer the English dub because 1) they attempt appropriate regional accents for the time period, and 2) for a story set in the United States featuring a cast that is primarily white, it's really weird hearing Japanese honorifics.
What enchanted me about Baccano is how the story unfolds. You have three different storylines taking place in three different years, but the way the scenes were laid out, outside of chronological order, is simply brilliant because you learn things at the point when they matter most even if the situation was actually set up the previous year.
I was a bit disappointed when I started reading and discovered the anime was primarily drawn from the first four books of the novel series (which are short since they're light novels, roughly the equivalent of YA in the US, but heavily serialized). The novels are set by year, so you don't quite have the same jumps in the anime, but it quickly became apparent to me that author Ryohgo Narita likes chaos.
Reading Baccano! is like watching someone set up five lines of dominos that are on a collision course with each other. He jumps POVs a lot and characters are constantly moving. What happens in one scene might not make sense initially, but then he'll revisit it later from a different POV and suddenly it'll mean something. He also takes advantage of those jumps to play with readers' expectations. We know someone's coming, so when the doorbell rings we expect it's them, but it's not. And it isn't the second time either. It is the third time, but then who's ringing the doorbell the fourth time? Isn't everyone here already?
And this is a long winded way to say I've finished reading The Slash arc. The anime covered up to Vol 4 (and the OAVs that make up episodes 13-15 are Vol 14, which is not in English yet) and Vol 5 was strange for being a stand alone volume set in 2001, so it really couldn't have been added to the anime in any sensible fashion, especially since the majority of the 1930s characters aren't even in it.
Vol 6 and 7 comprise The Slash though, and it's too bad Baccano didn't get a second season because this would have been a fun addition, and it follows up right where the anime and OAVs left off. Jacuzzi's gang has set up shop in New York, Eve has finally dredged her brother out of the river, and Claire and Chané are an item. We also get introduced to our latest misanthropes, Tick and Maria, who previously made animated appearances, but were limited to a single scene each.
Most of the characters in Baccano! are a bit messed up, which isn't unexpected for a series that focuses on gangsters and immortal alchemists, but I've never met a more heartwarming duo of torture expert and assassin. I don't know that I could call either Tick or Maria sane, but when Maria begins to doubt the usefulness of her katana, Tick is the most supporting ray of sunshine he can possibly be. And Tick, who doubts the existence of anything he can't physically cut, finally finds a human bond in Maria.
There's definitely a lot of cutting in The Slash; with scissors, with katanas, with spears, and less conventional weapons too. We finally see what Huey Laforet's plans are, given we see very little of him in the anime, and the demon responsible for giving out the immortality elixir is formally revealed as part of the preexisting cast. Heck, even the senator who has a bit role in the anime turns out to be a person quite knowledgeable about many of these ostensibly secret events.
This wraps up the year 1933 for the Baccano series and it moves to 1934 with an arc set on Alcatraz next. Huey is already imprisoned there and we know that Ladd Russo from The Grand Punk Railroad arc is being transferred there, so things are sure to be interesting.
It ended by being one of the few anime series in my adult life where after I finished it I immediately turned around and rewatched it; though I did switch dub languages from Japanese to English for my second viewing. And in this particular case I prefer the English dub because 1) they attempt appropriate regional accents for the time period, and 2) for a story set in the United States featuring a cast that is primarily white, it's really weird hearing Japanese honorifics.
What enchanted me about Baccano is how the story unfolds. You have three different storylines taking place in three different years, but the way the scenes were laid out, outside of chronological order, is simply brilliant because you learn things at the point when they matter most even if the situation was actually set up the previous year.
I was a bit disappointed when I started reading and discovered the anime was primarily drawn from the first four books of the novel series (which are short since they're light novels, roughly the equivalent of YA in the US, but heavily serialized). The novels are set by year, so you don't quite have the same jumps in the anime, but it quickly became apparent to me that author Ryohgo Narita likes chaos.
Reading Baccano! is like watching someone set up five lines of dominos that are on a collision course with each other. He jumps POVs a lot and characters are constantly moving. What happens in one scene might not make sense initially, but then he'll revisit it later from a different POV and suddenly it'll mean something. He also takes advantage of those jumps to play with readers' expectations. We know someone's coming, so when the doorbell rings we expect it's them, but it's not. And it isn't the second time either. It is the third time, but then who's ringing the doorbell the fourth time? Isn't everyone here already?
And this is a long winded way to say I've finished reading The Slash arc. The anime covered up to Vol 4 (and the OAVs that make up episodes 13-15 are Vol 14, which is not in English yet) and Vol 5 was strange for being a stand alone volume set in 2001, so it really couldn't have been added to the anime in any sensible fashion, especially since the majority of the 1930s characters aren't even in it.
Vol 6 and 7 comprise The Slash though, and it's too bad Baccano didn't get a second season because this would have been a fun addition, and it follows up right where the anime and OAVs left off. Jacuzzi's gang has set up shop in New York, Eve has finally dredged her brother out of the river, and Claire and Chané are an item. We also get introduced to our latest misanthropes, Tick and Maria, who previously made animated appearances, but were limited to a single scene each.
Most of the characters in Baccano! are a bit messed up, which isn't unexpected for a series that focuses on gangsters and immortal alchemists, but I've never met a more heartwarming duo of torture expert and assassin. I don't know that I could call either Tick or Maria sane, but when Maria begins to doubt the usefulness of her katana, Tick is the most supporting ray of sunshine he can possibly be. And Tick, who doubts the existence of anything he can't physically cut, finally finds a human bond in Maria.
There's definitely a lot of cutting in The Slash; with scissors, with katanas, with spears, and less conventional weapons too. We finally see what Huey Laforet's plans are, given we see very little of him in the anime, and the demon responsible for giving out the immortality elixir is formally revealed as part of the preexisting cast. Heck, even the senator who has a bit role in the anime turns out to be a person quite knowledgeable about many of these ostensibly secret events.
This wraps up the year 1933 for the Baccano series and it moves to 1934 with an arc set on Alcatraz next. Huey is already imprisoned there and we know that Ladd Russo from The Grand Punk Railroad arc is being transferred there, so things are sure to be interesting.
Monday, March 30, 2020
Revisiting Legends of Lone Wolf
After I started my nostalgia-filled binge of the Lone Wolf game books, I decided I'd also revisit the novelization, or at least what I had of it. Being a kid on allowance money at the time I couldn't buy everything I wanted, and at the time I didn't really have a concept of books actually going out of print.
So as it turns out, I only have the first two volumes of Legends of Lone Wolf by Joe Dever and John Grant. The series ran for four installments in the US (though from my understanding the UK's Book 2 was broken into Books 2 and 3 in the US), but ran for twelve in the UK. Eventually, about ten years ago a small publisher actually reprinted them in a set of three omnibuses, but they are once again out of print and the publisher's web presence has disappeared, so they are likely defunct. With the recent passing of John Grant, and Joe Dever's own passing in 2016, I'm afraid it's unlikely we'll see these again unless their estates are active about working something out.
Which is too bad.
It's not that the books are amazing reading, now that I'm older I can better understand why sales were poor enough that the series dropped off here, but there were attempts to better flesh out the world in ways the game books couldn't. And Dever, who seemed to really like other people playing in his world (friends and fans being able to write sanctioned spin-off game books like World of Lone Wolf and Autumn Snow), handed off a lot to John Grant.
Grant builds up a lot of the cosmology of the Lone Wolf series, so we know more about the deities and the inner workings of the Darklords. Things that we can't know from the game books themselves because Lone Wolf has no need to consider them or because he's in no position to know himself. And since Legends of Lone Wolf was written while the Grandmaster series was in production, it's not surprising that a lot of the worldbuilding in Legends ends up being imported into the series proper.
It's possible a lot of this worldbuilding was also Dever's work, but the character Alyss was definitely Grant's creation, and she too was eventually imported into the main series.
Legends also makes a number of changes in perspective since we're no longer trapped within Lone Wolf's point of view. Vonotar, who is a minor recurring villain in the series, is built out as a villain equal to Zagarna, the leader of the Darklords when the story begins. Banedon is expanded into a deuteragonist role and gets tons of page time for his own mission.
Though the game books never present their female characters as less capable than their male counterparts, you're also hard pressed to see one even show up. Legends fixes that with lots of women in all walks of life; from the obvious peasant roles to being sentries in the king's army to Kai Lords in their own right. Most of the random soldiers with speaking roles are still male, but at least it's clear that women can and do fight. (Special nod to the king's clerk who carries on his duties in the strategy meeting while also dealing with the grief of losing his wife on the battlefield. It's a role reversal I didn't expect.)
Okay, so there are these good things. Why didn't Legends of Lone Wolf work?
I think part of the reason is that the overlap between people willing to read Legends and also play the game books was smaller than anticipated. If you already read the game books, why would you want to read someone else's playthrough? The first novel, Eclipse of the Kai, is a prequel, which was a good way to start, so we can see how the series' defining events came to pass, but the second book is weaker when Lone Wolf is going through a series of events that the reader may have already experienced, especially since they don't serve much narrative purpose other than to delay Lone Wolf from getting to Holmgard to warn the king.
It's something that's fun to play—dodging Kraan attacks, encountering the prince, crawling through old ruins—but outside of the game environment, one Lone Wolf segment reads much like another Lone Wolf segment and you probably could rearrange the middle ones without much consequence.
The books don't appear to be targeted to outside readers either. Even though I think they are friendly to new readers from a lore perspective, they're written like a grimdark fantasy story, but published at a YA length. There's a fair amount of blood and guts, descriptions of organs coming out of wounds. Sex is probably the only thing the series draws the line at (though nudity still happens to both genders).
What happens in the story is fine for books aimed at adults, and it's certainly tame compared to more modern grimdark, but YA traditionally deals with issues relevant to teenagers, particularly issues with coming of age, taking on responsibilities, and finding a place in life.
That's not to say that Lone Wolf and Banedon don't have these issues (or even new character Qinefer), and they're teenagers, but they're also in a warzone and their personal issues are not given much space since arguably they have bigger things to worry about. So even though the books star teenagers, and the books' length tilt them towards YA, they don't read like intended for that market. I think if these had been fatter volumes geared towards an older, more general audience, these might have had more success. (Like the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books, which have been read by adults and teenagers alike.)
Another thing that bothered me is that some of the additions to Legends just didn't work for me. For instance the expanded cosmology was good, as well as finding out how Vonotar betrayed the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star and joined the Darklords, but after a while I got tired of seeing Vonotar's perspective so much, especially once he got to the point of narratively supplanting Zagarna as the main villain.
All the Zagarna and Vonotar scenes ping-ponged across the map too. Literally, with some scenes out in Sommerland, then back in the Darklands, then out in Sommerland, and back in the Darklands, while at the same time Lone Wolf and Banedon are making desperate travels to the cities that matter most to their missions. While we don't have a timeline for how long it takes them, it should be a couple days at most, and somehow the villains manage a lot of back and forth even allowing for flying mounts.
Also, while I like the addition of women in everyday life and in martial roles, the two new characters don't fit well in the space they're given.
I remembered Qinefer's name before I started my reread, but that fact that was all I could remember probably says how much of an impact she made. And on reread, I'm really not sure what kind of a role she's intended to play. Of course, I only have up to the second volume of the US release, and she's not introduced until halfway, but Alyss groups her with Lone Wolf and Banedon as three people who are critical to the survival of Sommerlund.
As an older reader I do like that Qinefer is a girl of color in a predominately Nordic-themed country, and the fact she's a ridiculously capable fighter feels like a play for more female readers, but narratively her skill and anger at losing her family puts her in the same space as Lone Wolf, except without being a member of the Kai. She's really not good at anything other than fighting, and we know Lone Wolf (by virtue of being Kai and the titular character) is going to be our warrior hero.
I think I might have liked Qinefer if she had a different take on her grief or skill rather than feeling like a lesser female clone of Lone Wolf. For instance, if she'd been an intelligence fighter, coldly killing loads of Giaks through ambushes and traps, that would be a contrast to Lone Wolf's combat rage, which is already used liberally in the same book.
I also really hated her bathing scene. Granted Lone Wolf himself bathes nude in the first book, Qinefer is the one who gets a shapeshifted monster peeping on her. The story remains in her perspective, but the narration about her being comfortable with being seen while also being an underaged teenage girl feels like a level of author perv I didn't need to see.
And saving the best for last, my biggest problem with the Legends series is Alyss. She's author John Grant's pet character, and according to a quotation from him on the Lone Wolf fan wiki, she's appeared in numerous other works of his since because he simply could not get her out of his head.
Alyss is a sort of demigoddess, whose power to influence events is constrained for "reasons" so even though she knows a lot of the potential future, at best she can nudge things one way or another rather than rewriting the timeline to better suit her preferences. This allows her to easily one-up Vonotar every time they meet, but at the same time she can't actually do any lasting damage to him because the future says certain things must come to pass and them's the breaks.
The problem with Alyss is that she takes away so much of the agency of the main characters. Lone Wolf not being in the monastery during the slaughter? That was Alyss's doing. Lone Wolf not returning to the monastery in time after realizing it was under attack? Also Alyss. Banedon not dying on any of multiple occasions? That was Alyss.
She's also really annoying, liking to bluff when she's already ridiculously powerful, and talking to poor Banedon like he's an idiot when he's obviously trying to deal with incredibly unusual circumstances. (And I'm sorry Banedon, I know you're a teenager and have hormones, but you've got terrible taste in women.)
Alyss, though she purports to like people, is just incredibly arrogant and unsympathetic towards those she's helping, and often complains about people not being grateful, but she's doing it anyway. So while everyone else is bleeding guts and trying their best to succeed, Alyss flits about the story making snide comments or doing a magic trick or two before prancing out of sight again.
I didn't like her when I first read Legends and I still don't like her as an adult. Narratively she doesn't serve much of a purpose that couldn't be given to other characters (by allowing them to actually save the day like they're supposed to), so I can't really see any justification for having such a powerful character around. Her restraints only exist because without them Alyss really would single-handedly save the day.
If the other books come back into print again, I'd still read them, but it's just because I'm already a Lone Wolf fan and I want to see what I missed. And even if Banedon has poor taste in women, I really do like following his story since it's one we rarely get to see in the main series.
So as it turns out, I only have the first two volumes of Legends of Lone Wolf by Joe Dever and John Grant. The series ran for four installments in the US (though from my understanding the UK's Book 2 was broken into Books 2 and 3 in the US), but ran for twelve in the UK. Eventually, about ten years ago a small publisher actually reprinted them in a set of three omnibuses, but they are once again out of print and the publisher's web presence has disappeared, so they are likely defunct. With the recent passing of John Grant, and Joe Dever's own passing in 2016, I'm afraid it's unlikely we'll see these again unless their estates are active about working something out.
Which is too bad.
It's not that the books are amazing reading, now that I'm older I can better understand why sales were poor enough that the series dropped off here, but there were attempts to better flesh out the world in ways the game books couldn't. And Dever, who seemed to really like other people playing in his world (friends and fans being able to write sanctioned spin-off game books like World of Lone Wolf and Autumn Snow), handed off a lot to John Grant.
Grant builds up a lot of the cosmology of the Lone Wolf series, so we know more about the deities and the inner workings of the Darklords. Things that we can't know from the game books themselves because Lone Wolf has no need to consider them or because he's in no position to know himself. And since Legends of Lone Wolf was written while the Grandmaster series was in production, it's not surprising that a lot of the worldbuilding in Legends ends up being imported into the series proper.
It's possible a lot of this worldbuilding was also Dever's work, but the character Alyss was definitely Grant's creation, and she too was eventually imported into the main series.
Legends also makes a number of changes in perspective since we're no longer trapped within Lone Wolf's point of view. Vonotar, who is a minor recurring villain in the series, is built out as a villain equal to Zagarna, the leader of the Darklords when the story begins. Banedon is expanded into a deuteragonist role and gets tons of page time for his own mission.
Though the game books never present their female characters as less capable than their male counterparts, you're also hard pressed to see one even show up. Legends fixes that with lots of women in all walks of life; from the obvious peasant roles to being sentries in the king's army to Kai Lords in their own right. Most of the random soldiers with speaking roles are still male, but at least it's clear that women can and do fight. (Special nod to the king's clerk who carries on his duties in the strategy meeting while also dealing with the grief of losing his wife on the battlefield. It's a role reversal I didn't expect.)
Okay, so there are these good things. Why didn't Legends of Lone Wolf work?
I think part of the reason is that the overlap between people willing to read Legends and also play the game books was smaller than anticipated. If you already read the game books, why would you want to read someone else's playthrough? The first novel, Eclipse of the Kai, is a prequel, which was a good way to start, so we can see how the series' defining events came to pass, but the second book is weaker when Lone Wolf is going through a series of events that the reader may have already experienced, especially since they don't serve much narrative purpose other than to delay Lone Wolf from getting to Holmgard to warn the king.
It's something that's fun to play—dodging Kraan attacks, encountering the prince, crawling through old ruins—but outside of the game environment, one Lone Wolf segment reads much like another Lone Wolf segment and you probably could rearrange the middle ones without much consequence.
The books don't appear to be targeted to outside readers either. Even though I think they are friendly to new readers from a lore perspective, they're written like a grimdark fantasy story, but published at a YA length. There's a fair amount of blood and guts, descriptions of organs coming out of wounds. Sex is probably the only thing the series draws the line at (though nudity still happens to both genders).
What happens in the story is fine for books aimed at adults, and it's certainly tame compared to more modern grimdark, but YA traditionally deals with issues relevant to teenagers, particularly issues with coming of age, taking on responsibilities, and finding a place in life.
That's not to say that Lone Wolf and Banedon don't have these issues (or even new character Qinefer), and they're teenagers, but they're also in a warzone and their personal issues are not given much space since arguably they have bigger things to worry about. So even though the books star teenagers, and the books' length tilt them towards YA, they don't read like intended for that market. I think if these had been fatter volumes geared towards an older, more general audience, these might have had more success. (Like the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books, which have been read by adults and teenagers alike.)
Another thing that bothered me is that some of the additions to Legends just didn't work for me. For instance the expanded cosmology was good, as well as finding out how Vonotar betrayed the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star and joined the Darklords, but after a while I got tired of seeing Vonotar's perspective so much, especially once he got to the point of narratively supplanting Zagarna as the main villain.
All the Zagarna and Vonotar scenes ping-ponged across the map too. Literally, with some scenes out in Sommerland, then back in the Darklands, then out in Sommerland, and back in the Darklands, while at the same time Lone Wolf and Banedon are making desperate travels to the cities that matter most to their missions. While we don't have a timeline for how long it takes them, it should be a couple days at most, and somehow the villains manage a lot of back and forth even allowing for flying mounts.
Also, while I like the addition of women in everyday life and in martial roles, the two new characters don't fit well in the space they're given.
I remembered Qinefer's name before I started my reread, but that fact that was all I could remember probably says how much of an impact she made. And on reread, I'm really not sure what kind of a role she's intended to play. Of course, I only have up to the second volume of the US release, and she's not introduced until halfway, but Alyss groups her with Lone Wolf and Banedon as three people who are critical to the survival of Sommerlund.
As an older reader I do like that Qinefer is a girl of color in a predominately Nordic-themed country, and the fact she's a ridiculously capable fighter feels like a play for more female readers, but narratively her skill and anger at losing her family puts her in the same space as Lone Wolf, except without being a member of the Kai. She's really not good at anything other than fighting, and we know Lone Wolf (by virtue of being Kai and the titular character) is going to be our warrior hero.
I think I might have liked Qinefer if she had a different take on her grief or skill rather than feeling like a lesser female clone of Lone Wolf. For instance, if she'd been an intelligence fighter, coldly killing loads of Giaks through ambushes and traps, that would be a contrast to Lone Wolf's combat rage, which is already used liberally in the same book.
I also really hated her bathing scene. Granted Lone Wolf himself bathes nude in the first book, Qinefer is the one who gets a shapeshifted monster peeping on her. The story remains in her perspective, but the narration about her being comfortable with being seen while also being an underaged teenage girl feels like a level of author perv I didn't need to see.
And saving the best for last, my biggest problem with the Legends series is Alyss. She's author John Grant's pet character, and according to a quotation from him on the Lone Wolf fan wiki, she's appeared in numerous other works of his since because he simply could not get her out of his head.
Alyss is a sort of demigoddess, whose power to influence events is constrained for "reasons" so even though she knows a lot of the potential future, at best she can nudge things one way or another rather than rewriting the timeline to better suit her preferences. This allows her to easily one-up Vonotar every time they meet, but at the same time she can't actually do any lasting damage to him because the future says certain things must come to pass and them's the breaks.
The problem with Alyss is that she takes away so much of the agency of the main characters. Lone Wolf not being in the monastery during the slaughter? That was Alyss's doing. Lone Wolf not returning to the monastery in time after realizing it was under attack? Also Alyss. Banedon not dying on any of multiple occasions? That was Alyss.
She's also really annoying, liking to bluff when she's already ridiculously powerful, and talking to poor Banedon like he's an idiot when he's obviously trying to deal with incredibly unusual circumstances. (And I'm sorry Banedon, I know you're a teenager and have hormones, but you've got terrible taste in women.)
Alyss, though she purports to like people, is just incredibly arrogant and unsympathetic towards those she's helping, and often complains about people not being grateful, but she's doing it anyway. So while everyone else is bleeding guts and trying their best to succeed, Alyss flits about the story making snide comments or doing a magic trick or two before prancing out of sight again.
I didn't like her when I first read Legends and I still don't like her as an adult. Narratively she doesn't serve much of a purpose that couldn't be given to other characters (by allowing them to actually save the day like they're supposed to), so I can't really see any justification for having such a powerful character around. Her restraints only exist because without them Alyss really would single-handedly save the day.
If the other books come back into print again, I'd still read them, but it's just because I'm already a Lone Wolf fan and I want to see what I missed. And even if Banedon has poor taste in women, I really do like following his story since it's one we rarely get to see in the main series.
Monday, February 24, 2020
Nostalgia: The Lone Wolf Game Books
I have a (probably bad) habit of periodically checking video game sales to see if there's a good sale on a game that had fallen off my radar or possibly didn't know about. Usually there's nothing I haven't seen before, but this week I did a double take as I stumbled across a sale of a game called Joe Dever's Lone Wolf.
This awakened all kinds of feels in me.
You see, before I played Dungeons & Dragons, before I decided I wanted to be a writer, I was kid who discovered Lone Wolf in her school library. They were like choose your own adventure books, but with game mechanics in them and a random number table in the back so you could do combat or encounter different results when trying the same action.
Lone Wolf was your protagonist, but you could build him with different skills, and what skills he possessed led to different options as you read through your adventure. Being able to talk to animals might allow the animals in question to lead you to a secret route you wouldn't otherwise find. Being skilled in camouflage might allow you to hide when you otherwise couldn't.
Lone Wolf even "leveled up" between adventures, gaining one new skill for each book the player completed, and the series itself was a continuing storyline that followed Lone Wolf from a slacking student who survived the massacre of his order by dumb luck to a grand master of his kind.
I read a review to see if the game was any good (and surprisingly for a licensed title it seems to be) and it was funny seeing someone refer to the Giaks as Lone Wolf's version of orcs, because to me, Giaks predated my knowledge of orcs, and even now that I know what orcs are, I still don't see them as the same. (For what it's worth, I picture Giaks as being smaller and a bit more cowardly. Closer to being big goblins than orcs.)
Reading about the game reminded me of all the lore, the setting and the monsters, that I devoured as a kid. While I didn't think much of the game's character design (Lone Wolf looks like he's going to an Assassin's Creed audition), the writing itself was apparently the late Joe Dever's final project, and knowing that the author himself was penning the script gives me some hope that was otherwise lost on seeing Lone Wolf skulking around in black. (What happened to the green cloak of the Kai Lords? The color is so famous that in some books he gets identified immediately by other people when he wears it.)
I decided to buy the game (it was on sale, and as of this writing, it still is), because I hadn't journeyed as Lone Wolf in years, and because the game is supposed to be in continuity with the books, I decided that I needed a refresher.
One thing Joe Dever did that was incredibly kind to his fans, is give permission for his most of books to be uploaded to the web, free of charge, and you can read them at the fan run Project Aon. All of his Lone Wolf game books are there, though the novelizations are not (much to my dismay, because most of them were never published in the US and teenage me had been reading them). Unfortunately he passed away leaving his New Order sequel series unfinished, but it looks like his son and a co-author are trying to finish it.
In prep for playing the game, I started noodling through the game books and I'm rather surprised by how much I remember. Not always in regards to specific decisions, but the worldbuilding. I knew vordaks were! And that they are not to be messed with as a scrub initiate. Drakkarim are human enemies though, the only humans in the Darklords' armies. I also got to meet my magician friend Banedon again (and two more times as I kept reading)!
The books feel a bit dated now, especially with its less than flattering portrayal of people from Middle Eastern and Alaskan-themed lands. Lone Wolf can get screwed over by people of all nationalities (there's a reason you can choose Sixth Sense as a skill), but it's notable that the Middle Eastern country actually allies with the Darklords and the pseudo-Alaskans are introduced as "ice barbarians" who are so hostile even their children are shooting at you while riding on their parents' backs.
Though if you want to look at the story through a more progressive lens, Lone Wolf could be read as gay or bi, since the second person narrative repeatedly notes that certain men are handsome. (It's probably unintentional, but it's definitely something I didn't notice as a kid.)
Also hailing from a more simplistic time, is some of the decision-making, where shooting first and asking questions later is okay, even if you're the good guy. There's one time when you need to find out who tried to poison you and no clues as to who it was, and the way you accuse someone is by attacking them. Even if that's not the best way to find out who's your would-be assassin, fighting is generally something you don't want to do too often (unless you have the Healing skill), because healing potions are hard to come by, so getting into a fight just to get it wrong is rather clunky. Fortunately most of the time you can choose to run away from non-monster fights if you prefer not to kill someone.
One thing I was surprised about though is how little Lone Wolf's gender is referred to, which might be one of the reasons I got into the series as deeply as I did. I don't think it's until the sixth book that Lone Wolf is specifically referred to by another character as "he." Though there's a blond teenage boy on the cover, the book is written in second person, so it's easy to read without paying attention.
True, he's a "Kai Lord" (eventually), but the novelization established that the Kai Lords trained both boys and girls, so even referring to him as that felt gender neutral to me.
I figure I'll go through the original twenty books (it sounds like a lot, but they're fast reads since you don't go straight through) and then dive into the video game. I'll skip the New Order sequel series since follows a new protagonist. Unsurprisingly after twenty books Lone Wolf himself is pretty dang powerful and probably doesn't need to level up anymore! And I assume that's the point when the video game picks up, when he's no longer a teenage boy, but the man who's rebuilt his fallen order.
This awakened all kinds of feels in me.
You see, before I played Dungeons & Dragons, before I decided I wanted to be a writer, I was kid who discovered Lone Wolf in her school library. They were like choose your own adventure books, but with game mechanics in them and a random number table in the back so you could do combat or encounter different results when trying the same action.
Lone Wolf was your protagonist, but you could build him with different skills, and what skills he possessed led to different options as you read through your adventure. Being able to talk to animals might allow the animals in question to lead you to a secret route you wouldn't otherwise find. Being skilled in camouflage might allow you to hide when you otherwise couldn't.
Lone Wolf even "leveled up" between adventures, gaining one new skill for each book the player completed, and the series itself was a continuing storyline that followed Lone Wolf from a slacking student who survived the massacre of his order by dumb luck to a grand master of his kind.
I read a review to see if the game was any good (and surprisingly for a licensed title it seems to be) and it was funny seeing someone refer to the Giaks as Lone Wolf's version of orcs, because to me, Giaks predated my knowledge of orcs, and even now that I know what orcs are, I still don't see them as the same. (For what it's worth, I picture Giaks as being smaller and a bit more cowardly. Closer to being big goblins than orcs.)
Reading about the game reminded me of all the lore, the setting and the monsters, that I devoured as a kid. While I didn't think much of the game's character design (Lone Wolf looks like he's going to an Assassin's Creed audition), the writing itself was apparently the late Joe Dever's final project, and knowing that the author himself was penning the script gives me some hope that was otherwise lost on seeing Lone Wolf skulking around in black. (What happened to the green cloak of the Kai Lords? The color is so famous that in some books he gets identified immediately by other people when he wears it.)
I decided to buy the game (it was on sale, and as of this writing, it still is), because I hadn't journeyed as Lone Wolf in years, and because the game is supposed to be in continuity with the books, I decided that I needed a refresher.
One thing Joe Dever did that was incredibly kind to his fans, is give permission for his most of books to be uploaded to the web, free of charge, and you can read them at the fan run Project Aon. All of his Lone Wolf game books are there, though the novelizations are not (much to my dismay, because most of them were never published in the US and teenage me had been reading them). Unfortunately he passed away leaving his New Order sequel series unfinished, but it looks like his son and a co-author are trying to finish it.
In prep for playing the game, I started noodling through the game books and I'm rather surprised by how much I remember. Not always in regards to specific decisions, but the worldbuilding. I knew vordaks were! And that they are not to be messed with as a scrub initiate. Drakkarim are human enemies though, the only humans in the Darklords' armies. I also got to meet my magician friend Banedon again (and two more times as I kept reading)!
The books feel a bit dated now, especially with its less than flattering portrayal of people from Middle Eastern and Alaskan-themed lands. Lone Wolf can get screwed over by people of all nationalities (there's a reason you can choose Sixth Sense as a skill), but it's notable that the Middle Eastern country actually allies with the Darklords and the pseudo-Alaskans are introduced as "ice barbarians" who are so hostile even their children are shooting at you while riding on their parents' backs.
Though if you want to look at the story through a more progressive lens, Lone Wolf could be read as gay or bi, since the second person narrative repeatedly notes that certain men are handsome. (It's probably unintentional, but it's definitely something I didn't notice as a kid.)
Also hailing from a more simplistic time, is some of the decision-making, where shooting first and asking questions later is okay, even if you're the good guy. There's one time when you need to find out who tried to poison you and no clues as to who it was, and the way you accuse someone is by attacking them. Even if that's not the best way to find out who's your would-be assassin, fighting is generally something you don't want to do too often (unless you have the Healing skill), because healing potions are hard to come by, so getting into a fight just to get it wrong is rather clunky. Fortunately most of the time you can choose to run away from non-monster fights if you prefer not to kill someone.
One thing I was surprised about though is how little Lone Wolf's gender is referred to, which might be one of the reasons I got into the series as deeply as I did. I don't think it's until the sixth book that Lone Wolf is specifically referred to by another character as "he." Though there's a blond teenage boy on the cover, the book is written in second person, so it's easy to read without paying attention.
True, he's a "Kai Lord" (eventually), but the novelization established that the Kai Lords trained both boys and girls, so even referring to him as that felt gender neutral to me.
I figure I'll go through the original twenty books (it sounds like a lot, but they're fast reads since you don't go straight through) and then dive into the video game. I'll skip the New Order sequel series since follows a new protagonist. Unsurprisingly after twenty books Lone Wolf himself is pretty dang powerful and probably doesn't need to level up anymore! And I assume that's the point when the video game picks up, when he's no longer a teenage boy, but the man who's rebuilt his fallen order.
Monday, January 27, 2020
My Favorite Books of 2019
I'm afraid I've mostly been reading series last year. Since I was going through cancer treatment I had a lot more time for reading, and that gave me a fair bit of catch-up time. That said though, I did manage to squeeze in a couple of stand alones.
These are the twelve books I enjoyed the most, and in the order I read them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher
I was introduced to Ursula Vernon via her short fiction, and knew that she wrote her books for older readers as T. Kingfisher. She's always been a pleasure to read and from her Twitter I've become familiar with her sense of humor and passion for gardening, so when one of her books went on sale I figured I should pick it up. The Seventh Bride has a lot of funny asides and jumps in logic to dress up what is otherwise a retelling of the Bluebeard fairy tale. I never got entirely attached to the protagonist Rhea, but the narration was snappy enough to keep me moving along.
On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard *
I've been meaning to read this one ever since it came out, and finally got it as a Christmas present. It primarily follows two characters, Quyen and Linh, during their stay together at the rapidly fading Prosper Station. What's amazing is that both characters are sympathetic, but both of them are carrying such incredible amounts of baggage that it prevents them from ever fully understanding or wanting to understand the other's point of view. It's set in Bodard's Xuya universe, so it's a spacefaring future based on predominantly Vietnamese and Chinese culture. I really liked this one and I'm not surprised it was nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards.
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 2: Ambition by Yoshiki Tanaka *
I really enjoyed the first volume of LotGH last year and bought Vol 2 almost immediately after, not knowing when I'd get around to it. This time we see Reinhard and Yang operating on parallel tracks to do similar jobs in their respective nations, though for vastly different reasons. As such the core conflict isn't between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planet Alliance, so enjoyment may vary depending on which side you enjoy reading about more. I really loved Yang's chapters, but Reinhard's probably have more setup for what's going to happen later in the series. There's no cliffhanger though, so you won't be left hanging at the end, and I like that.
All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka *
I'd been wanting to read this for a while, even before the US movie adaptation came out as Edge of Tomorrow. Even if you've seen the movie, it's worth reading as it's tonally different (much less funny) and forgoes the Hollywood ending. Keiji is a hapless private set to head off into his first ever battle with the alien mimics when he finds himself caught in a time loop that always seems to end with him getting killed. Frustrustated with the whole thing, he decides that the only thing to do is become so damn good he can make it out of the meat grinder alive, and he spends well over a hundred attempts trying to do just that.
Baccano! Vol 5: 2001 The Children of Bottle by Ryohgo Narita
This is a rather odd time jump that brings the series up to modern day, though it's more understandable after you realize the author's notes and realize this could have been the second book instead what became the start of The Grand Punk Railroad duology. It doesn't make much use of the modern day setting, it probably could have been set in the 30s without much of a difference, but what the time skip allows is for many of the series' original immortals to reunite after they no longer have to fear being killed (since the source of that concern died in Vol 1). It's a decent stand alone, and we finally learn the number of surviving immortals from the ship, but I'm also looking forward to going back to the 30s in the next volume.
Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone
Third book in the Craft Sequence. As always, Max Gladstone's world building is impeccable. I love the island setting for the third book and how such a small nation has to manage its power and security against more powerful, larger nations outside its borders. As in Two Serpents Rise, change and colonization by outsiders is very much a thing, with foreigners kicking back on this world's equivalent of a Hawaiian vacation. Kai and Izzy are good protagonists, and Teo comes back for a second round, though it took me a while to remember who she was.
Serpentine by Cindy Pon
This had been sitting in my Kindle backlog a while, but the Kindle is really nice for reading when you're not feeling up for the weight of a regular book. I don't read a lot of Chinese fantasies, but this is one of the better ones. I mostly found it weird how all the servant names are translated into their English meanings, but the other names are not. It's hard for me not to like a snake girl though, and Skybright is easily the highlight of the book. Not only can she take on a demonic half-snake form, but she figuratively kicks real ass with it too.
Sacrifice by Cindy Pon
This was a spur of the moment pick because I was still recovering from surgery while I finished reading Serpentine on Kindle, and it was literally a button push and $0.99 to get the sequel, so I figured I'd go ahead while the first book was fresh in my mind. It was a good choice. The change to multiple POVs was different, but I didn't mind too much except that I found I didn't care about Kai Shen enough to really enjoy gaining his POV scenes. What was going on around Skybright and Zhen Ni was always more interesting. There's a bit of a love triangle in this one and I don't quite like the way it resolves, but it implies that eventually the resolution I would have liked will happen.
Spice & Wolf Vol 14 by Isuna Hasekura
I picked this up because I still wasn't well enough for gaming and I realized that I really wanted to do a better job of catching up with Spice & Wolf since Vol 13 was just an anthology and reading Vol 14 would let me get back into the main story. Spice & Wolf is always at its best when Lawrence is fretting over a future with Holo, and now that the end of their journey is looming he finds himself daydreaming about one day living with her, while also assuming that once they part ways they will likely never see each other again. This is probably the best volume I've read since the first half of the series, and it helps that it takes place in Lenos, where Lawrence first told Holo that he loves her.
Spice & Wolf Vol 15: Coin of the Sun I by Isuna Hasekura
And then I couldn't stop, because I already had the book in my backlog and Vol 14 left me wanting to plunge into the two-part finale. For a two-parter it actually has a pretty good resolution except for the obvious cliffhanger dropped at the end of the last chapter. Though there are the usual economic shenanigans going on, it's nice that at one point Lawrence is encouraged to stop looking for everything that could potentially go wrong and take a step towards realizing his dream of owning his own shop.
Spice & Wolf Vol 16: Coin of the Sun II by Isuna Hasekura
Unfortunately this volume was a bit of a letdown. It would have been fine as a middle book, but a lot of the dramatics force Holo and Lawrence into reacting rather than acting themselves. While I understand the realistic message that there are some things that a single person cannot change, I think Hasekura was trying to up the stakes, but didn't do it in a way that really served the characters, making the final book a lot less personal despite all the callbacks and obvious trust the two leads display in each other.
The World Awakening by Dan Koboldt
The last book in the Gateways to Alissia trilogy. I was on the fence with this one, but had some Amazon ebook credit and a long wait at the DMV ahead of me so I picked it up for my Kindle. I was pleasantly surprised and this is definitely the best book of the series. Still got some nits, and the decision-making of most of the major characters from the Earth side of the portal is pretty predictable, but overall it was a fun read.
These are the twelve books I enjoyed the most, and in the order I read them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher
I was introduced to Ursula Vernon via her short fiction, and knew that she wrote her books for older readers as T. Kingfisher. She's always been a pleasure to read and from her Twitter I've become familiar with her sense of humor and passion for gardening, so when one of her books went on sale I figured I should pick it up. The Seventh Bride has a lot of funny asides and jumps in logic to dress up what is otherwise a retelling of the Bluebeard fairy tale. I never got entirely attached to the protagonist Rhea, but the narration was snappy enough to keep me moving along.
On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard *
I've been meaning to read this one ever since it came out, and finally got it as a Christmas present. It primarily follows two characters, Quyen and Linh, during their stay together at the rapidly fading Prosper Station. What's amazing is that both characters are sympathetic, but both of them are carrying such incredible amounts of baggage that it prevents them from ever fully understanding or wanting to understand the other's point of view. It's set in Bodard's Xuya universe, so it's a spacefaring future based on predominantly Vietnamese and Chinese culture. I really liked this one and I'm not surprised it was nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards.
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 2: Ambition by Yoshiki Tanaka *
I really enjoyed the first volume of LotGH last year and bought Vol 2 almost immediately after, not knowing when I'd get around to it. This time we see Reinhard and Yang operating on parallel tracks to do similar jobs in their respective nations, though for vastly different reasons. As such the core conflict isn't between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planet Alliance, so enjoyment may vary depending on which side you enjoy reading about more. I really loved Yang's chapters, but Reinhard's probably have more setup for what's going to happen later in the series. There's no cliffhanger though, so you won't be left hanging at the end, and I like that.
All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka *
I'd been wanting to read this for a while, even before the US movie adaptation came out as Edge of Tomorrow. Even if you've seen the movie, it's worth reading as it's tonally different (much less funny) and forgoes the Hollywood ending. Keiji is a hapless private set to head off into his first ever battle with the alien mimics when he finds himself caught in a time loop that always seems to end with him getting killed. Frustrustated with the whole thing, he decides that the only thing to do is become so damn good he can make it out of the meat grinder alive, and he spends well over a hundred attempts trying to do just that.
Baccano! Vol 5: 2001 The Children of Bottle by Ryohgo Narita
This is a rather odd time jump that brings the series up to modern day, though it's more understandable after you realize the author's notes and realize this could have been the second book instead what became the start of The Grand Punk Railroad duology. It doesn't make much use of the modern day setting, it probably could have been set in the 30s without much of a difference, but what the time skip allows is for many of the series' original immortals to reunite after they no longer have to fear being killed (since the source of that concern died in Vol 1). It's a decent stand alone, and we finally learn the number of surviving immortals from the ship, but I'm also looking forward to going back to the 30s in the next volume.
Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone
Third book in the Craft Sequence. As always, Max Gladstone's world building is impeccable. I love the island setting for the third book and how such a small nation has to manage its power and security against more powerful, larger nations outside its borders. As in Two Serpents Rise, change and colonization by outsiders is very much a thing, with foreigners kicking back on this world's equivalent of a Hawaiian vacation. Kai and Izzy are good protagonists, and Teo comes back for a second round, though it took me a while to remember who she was.
Serpentine by Cindy Pon
This had been sitting in my Kindle backlog a while, but the Kindle is really nice for reading when you're not feeling up for the weight of a regular book. I don't read a lot of Chinese fantasies, but this is one of the better ones. I mostly found it weird how all the servant names are translated into their English meanings, but the other names are not. It's hard for me not to like a snake girl though, and Skybright is easily the highlight of the book. Not only can she take on a demonic half-snake form, but she figuratively kicks real ass with it too.
Sacrifice by Cindy Pon
This was a spur of the moment pick because I was still recovering from surgery while I finished reading Serpentine on Kindle, and it was literally a button push and $0.99 to get the sequel, so I figured I'd go ahead while the first book was fresh in my mind. It was a good choice. The change to multiple POVs was different, but I didn't mind too much except that I found I didn't care about Kai Shen enough to really enjoy gaining his POV scenes. What was going on around Skybright and Zhen Ni was always more interesting. There's a bit of a love triangle in this one and I don't quite like the way it resolves, but it implies that eventually the resolution I would have liked will happen.
Spice & Wolf Vol 14 by Isuna Hasekura
I picked this up because I still wasn't well enough for gaming and I realized that I really wanted to do a better job of catching up with Spice & Wolf since Vol 13 was just an anthology and reading Vol 14 would let me get back into the main story. Spice & Wolf is always at its best when Lawrence is fretting over a future with Holo, and now that the end of their journey is looming he finds himself daydreaming about one day living with her, while also assuming that once they part ways they will likely never see each other again. This is probably the best volume I've read since the first half of the series, and it helps that it takes place in Lenos, where Lawrence first told Holo that he loves her.
Spice & Wolf Vol 15: Coin of the Sun I by Isuna Hasekura
And then I couldn't stop, because I already had the book in my backlog and Vol 14 left me wanting to plunge into the two-part finale. For a two-parter it actually has a pretty good resolution except for the obvious cliffhanger dropped at the end of the last chapter. Though there are the usual economic shenanigans going on, it's nice that at one point Lawrence is encouraged to stop looking for everything that could potentially go wrong and take a step towards realizing his dream of owning his own shop.
Spice & Wolf Vol 16: Coin of the Sun II by Isuna Hasekura
Unfortunately this volume was a bit of a letdown. It would have been fine as a middle book, but a lot of the dramatics force Holo and Lawrence into reacting rather than acting themselves. While I understand the realistic message that there are some things that a single person cannot change, I think Hasekura was trying to up the stakes, but didn't do it in a way that really served the characters, making the final book a lot less personal despite all the callbacks and obvious trust the two leads display in each other.
The World Awakening by Dan Koboldt
The last book in the Gateways to Alissia trilogy. I was on the fence with this one, but had some Amazon ebook credit and a long wait at the DMV ahead of me so I picked it up for my Kindle. I was pleasantly surprised and this is definitely the best book of the series. Still got some nits, and the decision-making of most of the major characters from the Earth side of the portal is pretty predictable, but overall it was a fun read.
Monday, February 4, 2019
In Lieu of my Usual Recommendations Post
Usually, at about this time of year, I've finally caught up on all my 2018 award reading. That's not true this year.
Unfortunately a major personal issue came up and I only did about half the reading I wanted to. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of great stories that I just ran out of time for.
So I'm only going to make one suggestion this year, because I'm pretty certain that even if I hadn't gotten waylaid, this one would have made my top five for the year.
And that's "Strange Waters" by Samantha Mills, which was published over in Strange Horizons in April of last year. It's a great short story about a woman adrift in time, trying to find her way back home to her children, and I love the ending.
Unfortunately a major personal issue came up and I only did about half the reading I wanted to. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of great stories that I just ran out of time for.
So I'm only going to make one suggestion this year, because I'm pretty certain that even if I hadn't gotten waylaid, this one would have made my top five for the year.
And that's "Strange Waters" by Samantha Mills, which was published over in Strange Horizons in April of last year. It's a great short story about a woman adrift in time, trying to find her way back home to her children, and I love the ending.
Monday, January 7, 2019
My Favorite Books of 2018
I'm afraid I've mostly been reading series last year. Since I don't read as often as I used to, but I really like novel series, my reading is increasingly crowded by newer series and older series I'm trying to keep up with. That said, I did manage to squeeze in a couple of stand alones.
These are the twelve books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I read them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang
I usually don't like pan-Asian fantasy worlds, because it feels like the mixing of real world influences is arbitrary, but that's not the case here, perhaps because JY Yang is Asian and lives in Asia where different Asian ethnic groups are able to meet without being viewed through the lens of an outsider. If you're looking for some queer Asian fantasy with prophecies and non-western technology you can't really do better than this, and it's the first in a series.
Murder of Crows by Annie Bellet
This is the second book in the Twenty-Sided Sorceress series and I've been reading it on-off since 2016. Contemporary urban fantasy isn't really my thing (especially something with pop culture references), but the story is entertaining enough that I intend to continue the series anyway. What's happened is that this series became my go-to "I have five minutes and I'm not at a computer, let's read off my Kindle" series because as long as you know the characters you don't need to remember a lot of other details. I can come back months after my last reading and pick up where I left off without rereading more than a page.
The Island Deception by Dan Koboldt
The sequel to The Rogue Retrieval. I got into this one easier than I did the last, and overall it was more entertaining, save that I have serious beef with the Quinn and Jillaine relationship. (I really hate relationships where we're supposed to be sympathetic to somebody who is also manipulating their love interest for outside gain.) If I could have just cut that out I would've had a massively better time.
Spice & Wolf Vol 12 by Isuna Hasekura
Another installment in the long-running Spice & Wolf series. Lawrence and Holo have postponed their journey to her homeland for the sake of enjoying each other's company while they can, but they finally receive a tip about a mapmaker who might be able to draw them a map to her long lost village. If you enjoy the series, this is one of the better volumes, featuring a mystery about a holy phenomenon and Fran Vonely is one of the more interesting side characters.
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 1: Dawn by Yoshiki Tanaka *
I forgot that I'd actually pre-ordered this when the series was first announced for English translation, but the 2018 anime reminded me that I had it, so I read through it after I finished watching. This has to be one of the best written Japanese novels I've read in translation so far and the best space opera I've read in a long time. If you like the new anime (which doesn't finish the book!), I'd recommend checking this out. While the anime is good, the source material gives a lot better context as to what's happening.
The Iron Beast by Andy Remic
This is the third and final novella in the trilogy that started with A Song for No Man's Land. Robert Jones is still stuck in the alternate world and spends almost the entire book there, so if you weren't won over by the change in setting in the second novella, the third isn't going to change your mind.
Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone
Second book in the Craft Sequence. I really liked the world building in this one, featuring a Mesoamerican-inspired setting, but modernized with the hallmarks of Gladstone's world of Craft. There's a lot to unpack here with themes of colonization with multiple perspectives from the POV of the colonized, who comprise most of the cast. I didn't like it as much as Three Parts Dead, mostly because Caleb did not click with me nearly as much as Tara, but his rocky relationship with his father is one of the highlights of the book.
Garrison Girl: An Attack on Titan Novel by Rachel Aaron
I'm surprised this book exists, as spin-off novels for Japanese properties rarely originate on this side of the Pacific, but Garrison Girl is an English language original, and because it's by an American author, it reads differently from a Japanese light novel and more like an American YA. It covers old ground as far as the source material is concerned (the Trost arc is the finale), but it's an engaging read with an original cast. You can tell that Aaron has an affection for the series and I feel like it fits in almost seamlessly with the greater Attack on Titan world. (Almost. A couple things will likely stick out for the lore nerds.) Though I would not call this a romance, for those who wished there was a little more of that in the main series, what's here might be enough to scratch that itch.
Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine *
I received this book as a gift from my dad, who heard it was good and thought it would give me more insight into my ancestral country. It's a middle grade book, but packs a punch even for adults, especially if you have or know someone with young children. Ling is growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution and doesn't understand why some things (and people!) are considered bad or have to be taken away. There are a couple things that stuck out as me as being concessions for the American audience, but for the most part the book is a chilling view of the revolution through the eyes of a child, and reading it as an adult is no doubt much different from reading it as part of the intended age group. It's not fantasy or science fiction, but worth checking out.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells *
Though I ended up enjoying this book tremendously, I had multiple false starts with it. Murderbot has an entertaining and relatable narrative voice, but I start my Kindle reads in short bursts (usually under five minutes and sometimes even less) and the personality was not enough to draw me in when Murberbot's job was still business as usual. However, given a longer reading period the situation quickly gets interesting and the rogue Murderbot tries to do its best at the job it actually doesn't like very much. Despite the name though, Murderbot doesn't do any murdering in this book.
Saga of Tanya the Evil Vol 1 by Carlo Zen
This was a really difficult read, which is a shame because there's a lot of nuance that the anime adaptation loses, primarily that the protagonist is well aware of the fact he's actually a thirty-something year old man reborn into the body of a little girl, and it's very clear that he does not consider himself and Tanya as one and the same. Unfortunately the author is also very intent on showing his homework, so there is a lot of rambling historical and tactical discourse in the book, which was mercifully cut in adaptation. It gets better towards the end of the volume, but I'm rather torn about whether to continue the series.
Baccano! Vol 4: 1932 Drug & The Dominos by Ryohgo Narita
I can't let the year end without getting another dose of Baccano!, which wraps up the last of the books adapted for the TV series. One of the main plots of this book (Eve looking for her brother) is lifted for the 1932 storyline in the anime, but the rest of it wasn't integrated into the series, probably for running time. Narita's penchant for simultaneously running multiple plot threads is in full force here, with a number of unrelated characters eventually all ending up in the same place through various circumstances. If you wanted more of the Gandor brothers and the reason why Claire Stanfield was recalled back to New York, this is the book to read. Several other leftover plot details from the Flying Pussyfoot arc wrap up here as well.
These are the twelve books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I read them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).
The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang
I usually don't like pan-Asian fantasy worlds, because it feels like the mixing of real world influences is arbitrary, but that's not the case here, perhaps because JY Yang is Asian and lives in Asia where different Asian ethnic groups are able to meet without being viewed through the lens of an outsider. If you're looking for some queer Asian fantasy with prophecies and non-western technology you can't really do better than this, and it's the first in a series.
Murder of Crows by Annie Bellet
This is the second book in the Twenty-Sided Sorceress series and I've been reading it on-off since 2016. Contemporary urban fantasy isn't really my thing (especially something with pop culture references), but the story is entertaining enough that I intend to continue the series anyway. What's happened is that this series became my go-to "I have five minutes and I'm not at a computer, let's read off my Kindle" series because as long as you know the characters you don't need to remember a lot of other details. I can come back months after my last reading and pick up where I left off without rereading more than a page.
The Island Deception by Dan Koboldt
The sequel to The Rogue Retrieval. I got into this one easier than I did the last, and overall it was more entertaining, save that I have serious beef with the Quinn and Jillaine relationship. (I really hate relationships where we're supposed to be sympathetic to somebody who is also manipulating their love interest for outside gain.) If I could have just cut that out I would've had a massively better time.
Spice & Wolf Vol 12 by Isuna Hasekura
Another installment in the long-running Spice & Wolf series. Lawrence and Holo have postponed their journey to her homeland for the sake of enjoying each other's company while they can, but they finally receive a tip about a mapmaker who might be able to draw them a map to her long lost village. If you enjoy the series, this is one of the better volumes, featuring a mystery about a holy phenomenon and Fran Vonely is one of the more interesting side characters.
The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 1: Dawn by Yoshiki Tanaka *
I forgot that I'd actually pre-ordered this when the series was first announced for English translation, but the 2018 anime reminded me that I had it, so I read through it after I finished watching. This has to be one of the best written Japanese novels I've read in translation so far and the best space opera I've read in a long time. If you like the new anime (which doesn't finish the book!), I'd recommend checking this out. While the anime is good, the source material gives a lot better context as to what's happening.
The Iron Beast by Andy Remic
This is the third and final novella in the trilogy that started with A Song for No Man's Land. Robert Jones is still stuck in the alternate world and spends almost the entire book there, so if you weren't won over by the change in setting in the second novella, the third isn't going to change your mind.
Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone
Second book in the Craft Sequence. I really liked the world building in this one, featuring a Mesoamerican-inspired setting, but modernized with the hallmarks of Gladstone's world of Craft. There's a lot to unpack here with themes of colonization with multiple perspectives from the POV of the colonized, who comprise most of the cast. I didn't like it as much as Three Parts Dead, mostly because Caleb did not click with me nearly as much as Tara, but his rocky relationship with his father is one of the highlights of the book.
Garrison Girl: An Attack on Titan Novel by Rachel Aaron
I'm surprised this book exists, as spin-off novels for Japanese properties rarely originate on this side of the Pacific, but Garrison Girl is an English language original, and because it's by an American author, it reads differently from a Japanese light novel and more like an American YA. It covers old ground as far as the source material is concerned (the Trost arc is the finale), but it's an engaging read with an original cast. You can tell that Aaron has an affection for the series and I feel like it fits in almost seamlessly with the greater Attack on Titan world. (Almost. A couple things will likely stick out for the lore nerds.) Though I would not call this a romance, for those who wished there was a little more of that in the main series, what's here might be enough to scratch that itch.
Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party by Ying Chang Compestine *
I received this book as a gift from my dad, who heard it was good and thought it would give me more insight into my ancestral country. It's a middle grade book, but packs a punch even for adults, especially if you have or know someone with young children. Ling is growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution and doesn't understand why some things (and people!) are considered bad or have to be taken away. There are a couple things that stuck out as me as being concessions for the American audience, but for the most part the book is a chilling view of the revolution through the eyes of a child, and reading it as an adult is no doubt much different from reading it as part of the intended age group. It's not fantasy or science fiction, but worth checking out.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells *
Though I ended up enjoying this book tremendously, I had multiple false starts with it. Murderbot has an entertaining and relatable narrative voice, but I start my Kindle reads in short bursts (usually under five minutes and sometimes even less) and the personality was not enough to draw me in when Murberbot's job was still business as usual. However, given a longer reading period the situation quickly gets interesting and the rogue Murderbot tries to do its best at the job it actually doesn't like very much. Despite the name though, Murderbot doesn't do any murdering in this book.
Saga of Tanya the Evil Vol 1 by Carlo Zen
This was a really difficult read, which is a shame because there's a lot of nuance that the anime adaptation loses, primarily that the protagonist is well aware of the fact he's actually a thirty-something year old man reborn into the body of a little girl, and it's very clear that he does not consider himself and Tanya as one and the same. Unfortunately the author is also very intent on showing his homework, so there is a lot of rambling historical and tactical discourse in the book, which was mercifully cut in adaptation. It gets better towards the end of the volume, but I'm rather torn about whether to continue the series.
Baccano! Vol 4: 1932 Drug & The Dominos by Ryohgo Narita
I can't let the year end without getting another dose of Baccano!, which wraps up the last of the books adapted for the TV series. One of the main plots of this book (Eve looking for her brother) is lifted for the 1932 storyline in the anime, but the rest of it wasn't integrated into the series, probably for running time. Narita's penchant for simultaneously running multiple plot threads is in full force here, with a number of unrelated characters eventually all ending up in the same place through various circumstances. If you wanted more of the Gandor brothers and the reason why Claire Stanfield was recalled back to New York, this is the book to read. Several other leftover plot details from the Flying Pussyfoot arc wrap up here as well.
Monday, March 19, 2018
Reading versus Watching Saga of Tanya the Evil
I started reading The Saga of Tanya the Evil by Carlo Zen this month, and this is one of the more unusual light novels I've dug into. Usually light novels are pretty fast-paced reads. But The Saga of Tanya the Evil is pretty dense.
Most English speakers who've heard of it probably did so because of the anime that aired in winter of last year. That was my introduction as well. We have a salaryman from modern day Japan who is pushed into the path of an oncoming train by a disgruntled employee, and in the moment before death the man is saved by a higher power of dubious intent, who decides to have our unnamed protagonist reborn in another world as a little girl.
But from there, reading the book is a much different experience from the anime.
There are some personality changes, such as Being X doesn't seem to be pissed off at our protagonist so much as it wants to run an experiment (if anything, Being X actually comes off as a bit whiny during their first meeting), but the most important change is that our protagonist has a voice.
When watching Saga of Tanya the evil, it's easy to forget that the protagonist is mentally a thirty-something-year-old man in the body of a nine-year-old girl. Most people when discussing the show refer to Tanya as a "she" relying on the character's visual gender, but mentally the book makes it clear that the person inside Tanya still considers himself a man.
We also get to know this man and what he was like prior to his rebirth. For instance, we know he played first person shooter games, that he's well educated, and that he's something of a history/psychology enthusiast. We also know that he's incredibly cynical and that he lives the life that he does to get ahead, because he believes that is what a person should do to be successful in life.
A lot of this is implied in the anime, but the book calls it out, and there are quite a few segments where the book intentionally has a disconnect between the protagonist and his identity as Tanya. He will refer to his little girl self in the third person while saving the "I" part of the first person narration for his own thoughts.
It's a little confusing sometimes, especially when the first person disappears for a stretch, but it's an interesting consideration that never comes out in the anime. Who Tanya was hovers over the protagonist in the anime, but that same disconnect, where the protagonist recognizes that Tanya isn't really him, isn't there.
It might be fun if the anime had brought in more of that, particularly for Tanya's inner thoughts, much like the Detective Conan series uses one voice actor for Conan's physical child voice and a different one for the mental inner thoughts of his teenage self, to reflect that the body and the mind are not the same.
Also of note is that the opening to the anime is a lot different, though I'm not surprised they changed it. Being a visual medium, the anime needed some spectacle to launch the series, so they drop Tanya in the middle of trench warfare in a scene I haven't gotten to yet (assuming it wasn't made up). The book itself runs in chronological order so our beginning is actually episode 2 of the anime.
As I mentioned, the book is also unbelievably dense for a light novel. Carlo Zen is quite happy to drop infodumps and comparisons to real world history since Saga of Tanya the Evil is largely modeled off of World War I-era Europe. This makes the book pretty tough to read, even for someone who likes this particular period of military history.
Normally I could breeze through a light novel in a few hours, but I think I needed a few hours just for the first chapter. The anime removes a lot of the grand strategy from the equation, so it's friendlier to casual fans of history, but the book will probably bore people who don't care about the details as much as wanting to watch Tanya wreck havoc.
I'm still pushing through it, but it's a book I'm digesting in slow doses, which isn't what I expected going in.
Most English speakers who've heard of it probably did so because of the anime that aired in winter of last year. That was my introduction as well. We have a salaryman from modern day Japan who is pushed into the path of an oncoming train by a disgruntled employee, and in the moment before death the man is saved by a higher power of dubious intent, who decides to have our unnamed protagonist reborn in another world as a little girl.
But from there, reading the book is a much different experience from the anime.
There are some personality changes, such as Being X doesn't seem to be pissed off at our protagonist so much as it wants to run an experiment (if anything, Being X actually comes off as a bit whiny during their first meeting), but the most important change is that our protagonist has a voice.
When watching Saga of Tanya the evil, it's easy to forget that the protagonist is mentally a thirty-something-year-old man in the body of a nine-year-old girl. Most people when discussing the show refer to Tanya as a "she" relying on the character's visual gender, but mentally the book makes it clear that the person inside Tanya still considers himself a man.
We also get to know this man and what he was like prior to his rebirth. For instance, we know he played first person shooter games, that he's well educated, and that he's something of a history/psychology enthusiast. We also know that he's incredibly cynical and that he lives the life that he does to get ahead, because he believes that is what a person should do to be successful in life.
A lot of this is implied in the anime, but the book calls it out, and there are quite a few segments where the book intentionally has a disconnect between the protagonist and his identity as Tanya. He will refer to his little girl self in the third person while saving the "I" part of the first person narration for his own thoughts.
It's a little confusing sometimes, especially when the first person disappears for a stretch, but it's an interesting consideration that never comes out in the anime. Who Tanya was hovers over the protagonist in the anime, but that same disconnect, where the protagonist recognizes that Tanya isn't really him, isn't there.
It might be fun if the anime had brought in more of that, particularly for Tanya's inner thoughts, much like the Detective Conan series uses one voice actor for Conan's physical child voice and a different one for the mental inner thoughts of his teenage self, to reflect that the body and the mind are not the same.
Also of note is that the opening to the anime is a lot different, though I'm not surprised they changed it. Being a visual medium, the anime needed some spectacle to launch the series, so they drop Tanya in the middle of trench warfare in a scene I haven't gotten to yet (assuming it wasn't made up). The book itself runs in chronological order so our beginning is actually episode 2 of the anime.
As I mentioned, the book is also unbelievably dense for a light novel. Carlo Zen is quite happy to drop infodumps and comparisons to real world history since Saga of Tanya the Evil is largely modeled off of World War I-era Europe. This makes the book pretty tough to read, even for someone who likes this particular period of military history.
Normally I could breeze through a light novel in a few hours, but I think I needed a few hours just for the first chapter. The anime removes a lot of the grand strategy from the equation, so it's friendlier to casual fans of history, but the book will probably bore people who don't care about the details as much as wanting to watch Tanya wreck havoc.
I'm still pushing through it, but it's a book I'm digesting in slow doses, which isn't what I expected going in.
Monday, January 29, 2018
My 2017 Award Recommendations
It's award nomination time for both the Hugos and the Nebulas for works of science fiction and fantasy. I had a really rough time keeping up with short fiction this year, so some of that is likely reflected in my choices. Notably the novelettes and novella are the only entries in those categories I read last year, but I think they're each good enough to be award worthy. (I mean I read other novelettes and novellas, but these three are the only ones published last year.)
Can I get a chance to do retro-voting the years after things come out?
Links to where you can read the recommended fiction are provided when available!
Short Stories
"Monster Girls Don't Cry" by Merc Restad - Uncanny Magazine, January 2017
"The Last Dinosaur Rider of Benessa County" by Jeremy Sim - Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February 2017
"These Deathless Bones" by Cassandra Khaw - Tor.com, July 2017
"These Constellations Will Be Yours" by Elaine Cuyegkeng - Strange Horizons, August 2017
"Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™" by Rebecca Roanhorse - Apex, August 2017
Novelettes
"The Fox, the Wolf, and the Dove" by Ville Meriläinen - Writers of the Future Vol 33, 2017
"Children of Thorns, Children of Water" by Aliette de Bodard, Uncanny July/August 2017 *
Novellas
The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang - Tor.com (stand alone publication not tied to an issue)
* "Children of Thorns, Children of Water" was originally published as part of a pre-order bonus for Aliette de Bodard's The House of Binding Thorns. It came out in April 2017 so it is eligible even though the Uncanny link is a reprint.
Can I get a chance to do retro-voting the years after things come out?
Links to where you can read the recommended fiction are provided when available!
Short Stories
"Monster Girls Don't Cry" by Merc Restad - Uncanny Magazine, January 2017
"The Last Dinosaur Rider of Benessa County" by Jeremy Sim - Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February 2017
"These Deathless Bones" by Cassandra Khaw - Tor.com, July 2017
"These Constellations Will Be Yours" by Elaine Cuyegkeng - Strange Horizons, August 2017
"Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™" by Rebecca Roanhorse - Apex, August 2017
Novelettes
"The Fox, the Wolf, and the Dove" by Ville Meriläinen - Writers of the Future Vol 33, 2017
"Children of Thorns, Children of Water" by Aliette de Bodard, Uncanny July/August 2017 *
Novellas
The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang - Tor.com (stand alone publication not tied to an issue)
* "Children of Thorns, Children of Water" was originally published as part of a pre-order bonus for Aliette de Bodard's The House of Binding Thorns. It came out in April 2017 so it is eligible even though the Uncanny link is a reprint.
Monday, January 1, 2018
My Favorite Books of 2017
Happy New Year, everyone! It's time to start my 2017 entertainment round-ups, kicking off with the books I read last year.
For a while I was afraid that 2017 would be the year of sequels for me, as I continued reading older series that I'd already started, but I did get a number of stand alones novels in there and even started a new series.
That said, these are the twelve books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I finished them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*), though there is a cheater in there since I also included an inseparable pair that cannot be read independently of each other.
Return of Souls by Andy Remic
This is a sequel to the A Song for No Man's Land dark fantasy WWI novella that I read last year. It is totally a middle installment, ending on a cliffhanger, and definitely a lot weirder as most of the story now takes place in the alternate world realm where all the monsters comes from. I wanted to see the skogsra from the end of the first book, but she doesn't turn up in this one.
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
I've heard that this one of the best modern Lovecraftian takes in recent years and it is. It's a retelling of "The Horror at Red Hook," but a version Lovecraft himself never could have written about an African American hustler in 1920s Harlem who crosses paths with all the eldritch weirdness that Lovecraft is known for. The work is really good at capturing what it must have been like as a second class citizen both from the perspective of the titular Black Tom and from the POV of the white detective Malone (Lovecraft's original protagonist) who doesn't really hate New York's racial minorities but accepts their lower status for what it is.
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo *
The daughter of a failing merchant house is being pressured into a ghost marriage with the deceased son of the rich man her father owes money to, but unsurprisingly she's not interested. It doesn't helping that the ghost of the dead son is haunting her dreams, courting her like the worst of "nice guy" stalkers. He also might have been murdered. The story takes place in late 1800s Malaysia in the Chinese expat community and contains a smorgasbord of southern Chinese culture, particularly in regards to customs involving the dead. I consider it a huge plus that the author went with older, pre-pinyin spellings of names so that the regionalism of the different dialects comes through.
Spice and Wolf Vol 11: Side Colors II by Isuna Hasekura
Vol 11 is another short story volume containing two "lost" moments that take place early in Lawrence and Holo's journey and a novella about the side character Eve Bolan. "The Black Wolf's Cradle" is the clear winner of the three, as it follows the disenfranchised noblewoman Fleur and her transformation into the cunning merchant Eve. Fleur's naivete is heartbreaking, but her resolve is just as unyielding, making her a fantastic protagonist. And that ending! Wow, I did not expect it. It's very dark for this series, but perfectly in line for who Fleur becomes. Though I read Spice and Wolf for the fluff, it's nice to see Hasekura is capable of moving beyond it.
Iron Cast by Destiny Soria
Iron Cast was a whim purchase of mine and honestly I was afraid I would regret it, but I didn't! All I had to go on was one good review, but given the setup with a duo of young women doing skullduggery in the year 1919 through the use of their special powers, I was a easy fish to reel in. And it works! This story is really more YA given the ages of the characters and the themes, though it's told in third person which isn't de rigueur at the moment. The story is a little slow to get going, but Corinne and Ava are lovely and spirited protagonists, and all the building in the first half is rewarded by the second.
The Rogue Retrieval by Dan Koboldt
I volunteered to review this for the author so I persisted when I might not have otherwise, and it was a good thing since I was enjoying myself by the end. It's about a stage magician from Las Vegas who is pressed into a job where he needs to go to a medieval fantasy world and help a powerful corporation extract a researcher who has gone rogue. (Alas, the rogue retrieval does not involve capturing thieves.)
Baccano! Vol 2: 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local by Ryohgo Narita *
Baccano continues to be a hot mess in the most entertaining fashion. Most of the cast is different from the last book, but Narita's affection for taking a multitude of colorful characters, trapping them in the same location, and then seeing how it all plays out is done to great effect. This time it's on a cross country train ride with cultists, mobsters, bootleggers, and of course Isaac and Maria, where everybody except the latter two has a different crime job in mind, all of it involving shenanigans on the train. The only flaw really is that it's a two-parter, but with good reason, as I'll get to in a moment.
Baccano! Vol 3: 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Express by Ryohgo Narita *
I read this immediately after Vol 2 because they're a duology within the greater series, but it's not in the conventional sense. The Local and Express parts of 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad cover approximately the same span of time, but are told from two different sets of POV characters. Local gives us what is happening on the surface and Express gives us the POV characters with something to hide. It answers the remaining mysteries of the previous book, including the truth about the Rail Tracer. One is not complete without the other, and for that reason I'm including the two volumes as a pair in my Top 3 of the year.
Attack on Titan: The Harsh Mistress of the City - Part 1 by Ryo Kawakami
I rarely go into a series so much that I follow spin-offs written by other people, but Attack on Titan is one of my favorite series and I picked up Harsh Mistress of the City mostly because it sounds like something I would like to have written had I the opportunity. Taking place immediately after the fall of Wall Maria (the first two episodes of the anime), we follow a young soldier, Rita Iglehaut, as her district is cut off from the rest of civilization by the man-eating Titans. Due to the loss of nearly all the Garrison soldiers, Rita becomes the highest ranking soldier left alive, and her childhood friend Mathias Kramer, who escaped the district, is now coming back to find her.
Attack on Titan: The Harsh Mistress of the City - Part 2 by Ryo Kawakami
After a six month time skip and a heck of a way to end the first volume, things have gone from bad to worse. As far as spin-offs go, if you like those that stick to canon and feel like they really could have happened in the main storyline, this is an excellent pick. Unfortunately the ending is a bit of a deus ex machina and the ultimate fates of our protagonists are left unknown. Kawakami does put his characters through some gut-punch worthy moments, but he's not as clever at getting them out of it.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson *
I came into this one with high expectations, and they were mostly met. Mind, it's not that it wasn't good, but I'd expected more economics and less time marching with an army that belonged to neither Baru's people nor their conquerors. Fortunately, there's a reason for all that, and the writing is good enough that I liked following Baru and the scheming of the various dukes of Ardwynn. Baru is a fantastic protagonist, who is willing to put absolutely everything (love, loyalty, life) through the meat grinder if necessary to save her people. My primary disappointment was finding out this book is the first in a series and the second isn't out yet.
Writers of the Future Volume 33 (anthology)
I almost always read the latest of these, since I know so many of the writers who end up in them. There's a wide variety so subgenres can jump drastically from story to story. This approach might not work for someone looking for a theme, but there's more than likely something that appeals. My favorite this year is "The Fox, the Wolf, and the Dove" by Ville Meriläinen, for leaving me sobbing at the end.
For a while I was afraid that 2017 would be the year of sequels for me, as I continued reading older series that I'd already started, but I did get a number of stand alones novels in there and even started a new series.
That said, these are the twelve books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I finished them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*), though there is a cheater in there since I also included an inseparable pair that cannot be read independently of each other.
Return of Souls by Andy Remic
This is a sequel to the A Song for No Man's Land dark fantasy WWI novella that I read last year. It is totally a middle installment, ending on a cliffhanger, and definitely a lot weirder as most of the story now takes place in the alternate world realm where all the monsters comes from. I wanted to see the skogsra from the end of the first book, but she doesn't turn up in this one.
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
I've heard that this one of the best modern Lovecraftian takes in recent years and it is. It's a retelling of "The Horror at Red Hook," but a version Lovecraft himself never could have written about an African American hustler in 1920s Harlem who crosses paths with all the eldritch weirdness that Lovecraft is known for. The work is really good at capturing what it must have been like as a second class citizen both from the perspective of the titular Black Tom and from the POV of the white detective Malone (Lovecraft's original protagonist) who doesn't really hate New York's racial minorities but accepts their lower status for what it is.
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo *
The daughter of a failing merchant house is being pressured into a ghost marriage with the deceased son of the rich man her father owes money to, but unsurprisingly she's not interested. It doesn't helping that the ghost of the dead son is haunting her dreams, courting her like the worst of "nice guy" stalkers. He also might have been murdered. The story takes place in late 1800s Malaysia in the Chinese expat community and contains a smorgasbord of southern Chinese culture, particularly in regards to customs involving the dead. I consider it a huge plus that the author went with older, pre-pinyin spellings of names so that the regionalism of the different dialects comes through.
Spice and Wolf Vol 11: Side Colors II by Isuna Hasekura
Vol 11 is another short story volume containing two "lost" moments that take place early in Lawrence and Holo's journey and a novella about the side character Eve Bolan. "The Black Wolf's Cradle" is the clear winner of the three, as it follows the disenfranchised noblewoman Fleur and her transformation into the cunning merchant Eve. Fleur's naivete is heartbreaking, but her resolve is just as unyielding, making her a fantastic protagonist. And that ending! Wow, I did not expect it. It's very dark for this series, but perfectly in line for who Fleur becomes. Though I read Spice and Wolf for the fluff, it's nice to see Hasekura is capable of moving beyond it.
Iron Cast by Destiny Soria
Iron Cast was a whim purchase of mine and honestly I was afraid I would regret it, but I didn't! All I had to go on was one good review, but given the setup with a duo of young women doing skullduggery in the year 1919 through the use of their special powers, I was a easy fish to reel in. And it works! This story is really more YA given the ages of the characters and the themes, though it's told in third person which isn't de rigueur at the moment. The story is a little slow to get going, but Corinne and Ava are lovely and spirited protagonists, and all the building in the first half is rewarded by the second.
The Rogue Retrieval by Dan Koboldt
I volunteered to review this for the author so I persisted when I might not have otherwise, and it was a good thing since I was enjoying myself by the end. It's about a stage magician from Las Vegas who is pressed into a job where he needs to go to a medieval fantasy world and help a powerful corporation extract a researcher who has gone rogue. (Alas, the rogue retrieval does not involve capturing thieves.)
Baccano! Vol 2: 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local by Ryohgo Narita *
Baccano continues to be a hot mess in the most entertaining fashion. Most of the cast is different from the last book, but Narita's affection for taking a multitude of colorful characters, trapping them in the same location, and then seeing how it all plays out is done to great effect. This time it's on a cross country train ride with cultists, mobsters, bootleggers, and of course Isaac and Maria, where everybody except the latter two has a different crime job in mind, all of it involving shenanigans on the train. The only flaw really is that it's a two-parter, but with good reason, as I'll get to in a moment.
Baccano! Vol 3: 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Express by Ryohgo Narita *
I read this immediately after Vol 2 because they're a duology within the greater series, but it's not in the conventional sense. The Local and Express parts of 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad cover approximately the same span of time, but are told from two different sets of POV characters. Local gives us what is happening on the surface and Express gives us the POV characters with something to hide. It answers the remaining mysteries of the previous book, including the truth about the Rail Tracer. One is not complete without the other, and for that reason I'm including the two volumes as a pair in my Top 3 of the year.
Attack on Titan: The Harsh Mistress of the City - Part 1 by Ryo Kawakami
I rarely go into a series so much that I follow spin-offs written by other people, but Attack on Titan is one of my favorite series and I picked up Harsh Mistress of the City mostly because it sounds like something I would like to have written had I the opportunity. Taking place immediately after the fall of Wall Maria (the first two episodes of the anime), we follow a young soldier, Rita Iglehaut, as her district is cut off from the rest of civilization by the man-eating Titans. Due to the loss of nearly all the Garrison soldiers, Rita becomes the highest ranking soldier left alive, and her childhood friend Mathias Kramer, who escaped the district, is now coming back to find her.
Attack on Titan: The Harsh Mistress of the City - Part 2 by Ryo Kawakami
After a six month time skip and a heck of a way to end the first volume, things have gone from bad to worse. As far as spin-offs go, if you like those that stick to canon and feel like they really could have happened in the main storyline, this is an excellent pick. Unfortunately the ending is a bit of a deus ex machina and the ultimate fates of our protagonists are left unknown. Kawakami does put his characters through some gut-punch worthy moments, but he's not as clever at getting them out of it.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson *
I came into this one with high expectations, and they were mostly met. Mind, it's not that it wasn't good, but I'd expected more economics and less time marching with an army that belonged to neither Baru's people nor their conquerors. Fortunately, there's a reason for all that, and the writing is good enough that I liked following Baru and the scheming of the various dukes of Ardwynn. Baru is a fantastic protagonist, who is willing to put absolutely everything (love, loyalty, life) through the meat grinder if necessary to save her people. My primary disappointment was finding out this book is the first in a series and the second isn't out yet.
Writers of the Future Volume 33 (anthology)
I almost always read the latest of these, since I know so many of the writers who end up in them. There's a wide variety so subgenres can jump drastically from story to story. This approach might not work for someone looking for a theme, but there's more than likely something that appeals. My favorite this year is "The Fox, the Wolf, and the Dove" by Ville Meriläinen, for leaving me sobbing at the end.
Monday, July 24, 2017
Baccano! 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local
Baccano! was a rare find for me to stumble over in anime. I watched all 12 episodes (and the 3 bonus ones) in about three days in Japanese, and then I rewatched it immediately afterwards in English. While I often do my second viewing in English, usually the second viewing, if it happens at all, it's months or years down the line. Baccano! scratches a very particular itch I have though.
Namely, period piece mafia and magic. In this case, the magic part is centered around alchemists and immortals.
For a good long time I despaired of ever reading the rest of the Baccano! series. The anime only covered the four books, and the first one had been published in 2003, so it wasn't the hot new stuff anymore. But I loved the setting, the nutty characters, and especially the way the anime made everything happen at once. I was crazy jealous of the writers on that show. They managed to braid together three different time periods across four books so that revelations in one time had an impact on the viewer's understanding in another, even if chronologically they were taking place earlier.
Fortunately, though it took thirteen years, Yen Press picked up the Baccano! series for translation and I've slowly been grabbing the volumes. They haven't passed the threshold of the anime yet, but I'm hoping they're successful enough to do so. Amazon has at least volume 6 set up so far and they're very lovely hardbacks.
Author Ryohgo Narita's work is not quite as crazy as the anime. He does do incredibly short scenes from time to time so the reader knows everyone's positioning before all hell breaks loose, but each of the three main time periods in the anime is one book (with the exception of the Flying Pussyfoot storyline in 1931, which is two books) rather than jumping across time periods in the same book.
That's not to say everything is told linearly, he loves to jump around, but the jumps are more localized.
I'm currently in the middle of Baccano! 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local, which is the second book and the start of the two-part journey of the Flying Pussyfoot train. In pure Ryohgo Narita fashion, it starts with the epilogue to give the reader a viewpoint of the two minor characters who have clean up the mess everyone else has left behind, and has five prologues to set up all the different factions that are about to get involved.
Some of it is over the top ridiculous, but that's part of the appeal. If the premise is that four different parties (five if you consider the hidden character in the fifth prologue) board the Flying Pussyfoot train, each with their own agenda, then from there it's just a matter of watching all the chaos play out. All the parties are miscreants of some kind or another and naturally fall into conflict.
But part of the fun is in the details that slip in.
The thing is, Ryohgo Narita is a Japanese author writing for a Japanese audience, so he does spend some time explaining things that probably come off as pretty obvious to an American reader, but then at the same time, it's clear that Narita has done his research and he likes the time period. One of the characters, while beating someone to a pulp, compares himself unfavorably to Jack Dempsey, who was popular boxer in the 1920s.
Narita isn't blind to the fact that there were minorities all over the place during the time either. Though there aren't any in the main cast, unless they show up after the anime, there are multiple Chinese supporting characters and Jacuzzi Splot's gang includes a Mexican member.
There a good line where two of the side characters (one Chinese, the other Irish, and totally on board with each other) take a minor character to task on the train for belittling them as immigrants. While manhandling him out of the dining car, they tell him that one half of the transcontinental railroad was built by the disenfranchised Irish and the other half by the disenfranchised Chinese, so between the two of them, they have a claim to everything on the railroad, including that guy's life. (And considering they're also gang members, that's not a point the guy really wants to be arguing about.)
I doubt Jon and Fang will ever be regulars in the series, but this totally made me laugh. It's a nice bit of history that not only educates the readers (because I expect the average Japanese person wouldn't know that), but also defines the characters. It's a pity this part never made it into the anime.
I'm about halfway through so far, and then I hope to move on to the next volume. The series isn't always realistic, but when it isn't, it's usually in the service of fun so I'm inclined to forgive. It's clear when Narita is doing his research so if he wants to start with off with a three way battle between cultists, a mafia gang, and a band of delinquents while throwing in a couple of delusional ne'er-do-wells, I'm not going to argue. It's half the fun.
Namely, period piece mafia and magic. In this case, the magic part is centered around alchemists and immortals.
For a good long time I despaired of ever reading the rest of the Baccano! series. The anime only covered the four books, and the first one had been published in 2003, so it wasn't the hot new stuff anymore. But I loved the setting, the nutty characters, and especially the way the anime made everything happen at once. I was crazy jealous of the writers on that show. They managed to braid together three different time periods across four books so that revelations in one time had an impact on the viewer's understanding in another, even if chronologically they were taking place earlier.
Fortunately, though it took thirteen years, Yen Press picked up the Baccano! series for translation and I've slowly been grabbing the volumes. They haven't passed the threshold of the anime yet, but I'm hoping they're successful enough to do so. Amazon has at least volume 6 set up so far and they're very lovely hardbacks.
Author Ryohgo Narita's work is not quite as crazy as the anime. He does do incredibly short scenes from time to time so the reader knows everyone's positioning before all hell breaks loose, but each of the three main time periods in the anime is one book (with the exception of the Flying Pussyfoot storyline in 1931, which is two books) rather than jumping across time periods in the same book.
That's not to say everything is told linearly, he loves to jump around, but the jumps are more localized.
I'm currently in the middle of Baccano! 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local, which is the second book and the start of the two-part journey of the Flying Pussyfoot train. In pure Ryohgo Narita fashion, it starts with the epilogue to give the reader a viewpoint of the two minor characters who have clean up the mess everyone else has left behind, and has five prologues to set up all the different factions that are about to get involved.
Some of it is over the top ridiculous, but that's part of the appeal. If the premise is that four different parties (five if you consider the hidden character in the fifth prologue) board the Flying Pussyfoot train, each with their own agenda, then from there it's just a matter of watching all the chaos play out. All the parties are miscreants of some kind or another and naturally fall into conflict.
But part of the fun is in the details that slip in.
The thing is, Ryohgo Narita is a Japanese author writing for a Japanese audience, so he does spend some time explaining things that probably come off as pretty obvious to an American reader, but then at the same time, it's clear that Narita has done his research and he likes the time period. One of the characters, while beating someone to a pulp, compares himself unfavorably to Jack Dempsey, who was popular boxer in the 1920s.
Narita isn't blind to the fact that there were minorities all over the place during the time either. Though there aren't any in the main cast, unless they show up after the anime, there are multiple Chinese supporting characters and Jacuzzi Splot's gang includes a Mexican member.
There a good line where two of the side characters (one Chinese, the other Irish, and totally on board with each other) take a minor character to task on the train for belittling them as immigrants. While manhandling him out of the dining car, they tell him that one half of the transcontinental railroad was built by the disenfranchised Irish and the other half by the disenfranchised Chinese, so between the two of them, they have a claim to everything on the railroad, including that guy's life. (And considering they're also gang members, that's not a point the guy really wants to be arguing about.)
I doubt Jon and Fang will ever be regulars in the series, but this totally made me laugh. It's a nice bit of history that not only educates the readers (because I expect the average Japanese person wouldn't know that), but also defines the characters. It's a pity this part never made it into the anime.
I'm about halfway through so far, and then I hope to move on to the next volume. The series isn't always realistic, but when it isn't, it's usually in the service of fun so I'm inclined to forgive. It's clear when Narita is doing his research so if he wants to start with off with a three way battle between cultists, a mafia gang, and a band of delinquents while throwing in a couple of delusional ne'er-do-wells, I'm not going to argue. It's half the fun.
Monday, May 22, 2017
Mini-Reading Binge
I don't normally read nearly as many books as I'd like. A part of me wonders if it's just that I've gotten more critical as I've become a writer, or it's just that it's harder for me to sit down since there are so many ways to spend my time.
But, I did finish three books so far this month, which is unusual for me, and I'm in the middle of two others (one is an anthology, so it's very easy to pause in the middle for another novel).
I particularly like the two novels I finished. One is The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo, which hits all my southern Chinese buttons. I might have told the author over Twitter that reading the dialogue with its older style of romanizing Chinese words made me think of my grandmother and great aunt, because my family never learned to use pinyin. It just wasn't a thing with the Hoisan who came over to the US early in the 20th century, and given the book's late 1800s setting (though in Malaysia), it makes sense.
There's a lot to like about The Ghost Bride. Though the details sometime feel a little much for someone who grew up with similar traditions, they should be enough to bring non-Chinese up to speed, and I really liked the details about Malaysia, which I'm largely unfamiliar with.
The other novel I finished is Iron Cast by Destiny Soria, which is set in 1919 Boston, just before Prohibition. It starts a little slow, though I was pretty hooked by the second half. I liked the diverse cast, and the author doesn't let the reader forget that main character Ava is a second class citizen in her own city by virtue of the color of her skin. I also liked the addition of Gabriel, a Russian immigrant who Americanized his name because though he is white by our modern day standards, he would not have been back then.
I'm a complete sucker for something involving magic and period gangsters, but I have to admit I was surprised this ended up being a YA book. I didn't pick this up in the store so I don't know where they shelve it and unlike most contemporary YA it's not written in first person, so I was a bit thrown off when my brain had to age everyone down by about ten years.
The third book I finished is the second Spice and Wolf short story volume, Volume 11 in the series overall. Usually the stories are told from Lawrence's point of view, more rarely Holo's, but Volume 11 has a real gem in the novella "The Black Wolf's Cradle," which is a prequel telling the origin of Eve Bolan. If you've watched the second season of the anime, you may remember Eve as the backstabbing merchant in the second half.
"The Black Wolf's Cradle" gives us an early version of Eve, when she has recently become a young widow of a destitute noble family. It's painful watching her fumble her way through her first transactions, because she needs a trade in order to earn money, but she is so trusting that even when things begin to look promising for her, we're waiting for the sword to fall. When it does, we see how she becomes the person that we know in the main series. This is easily the best of Isuna Hasekura's shorts in this series, and better than a few of the novels.
But, I did finish three books so far this month, which is unusual for me, and I'm in the middle of two others (one is an anthology, so it's very easy to pause in the middle for another novel).
I particularly like the two novels I finished. One is The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo, which hits all my southern Chinese buttons. I might have told the author over Twitter that reading the dialogue with its older style of romanizing Chinese words made me think of my grandmother and great aunt, because my family never learned to use pinyin. It just wasn't a thing with the Hoisan who came over to the US early in the 20th century, and given the book's late 1800s setting (though in Malaysia), it makes sense.
There's a lot to like about The Ghost Bride. Though the details sometime feel a little much for someone who grew up with similar traditions, they should be enough to bring non-Chinese up to speed, and I really liked the details about Malaysia, which I'm largely unfamiliar with.
The other novel I finished is Iron Cast by Destiny Soria, which is set in 1919 Boston, just before Prohibition. It starts a little slow, though I was pretty hooked by the second half. I liked the diverse cast, and the author doesn't let the reader forget that main character Ava is a second class citizen in her own city by virtue of the color of her skin. I also liked the addition of Gabriel, a Russian immigrant who Americanized his name because though he is white by our modern day standards, he would not have been back then.
I'm a complete sucker for something involving magic and period gangsters, but I have to admit I was surprised this ended up being a YA book. I didn't pick this up in the store so I don't know where they shelve it and unlike most contemporary YA it's not written in first person, so I was a bit thrown off when my brain had to age everyone down by about ten years.
The third book I finished is the second Spice and Wolf short story volume, Volume 11 in the series overall. Usually the stories are told from Lawrence's point of view, more rarely Holo's, but Volume 11 has a real gem in the novella "The Black Wolf's Cradle," which is a prequel telling the origin of Eve Bolan. If you've watched the second season of the anime, you may remember Eve as the backstabbing merchant in the second half.
"The Black Wolf's Cradle" gives us an early version of Eve, when she has recently become a young widow of a destitute noble family. It's painful watching her fumble her way through her first transactions, because she needs a trade in order to earn money, but she is so trusting that even when things begin to look promising for her, we're waiting for the sword to fall. When it does, we see how she becomes the person that we know in the main series. This is easily the best of Isuna Hasekura's shorts in this series, and better than a few of the novels.
Monday, January 30, 2017
My 2016 Award Recommendations
It's nomination time for both the Hugos and the Nebulas for science fiction and fantasy, and though I tried to get a better handle on my reading this year, the fact is I still couldn't read as widely as I wanted, so I'm going to restrict my recommendations to short stories and novelettes.
Links to recommended fiction are provided when available, and yes there are more short stories than there are slot to nominate. Read a few to see what you're missing!
Short Stories
"This is Not a Wardrobe Door" by Merc Restad - Fireside, January 2016
"Dragon Brides" by Nghi Vo - Lightspeed, April 2016
"The Gentleman of Chaos" by Merc Restad - Apex Magazine, August 2016
"Pagpag" by Samuel Marzioli - Apex, October 2016
"And In Our Daughters, We Find a Voice" by Cassandra Khaw - The Dark, November 2016
"A Glamour in the Black" by Sylvia Anna Hivén - Writers of the Future Vol 32, 2016
"Of Sight, of Mind, of Heart" - by Samantha Murray - Clarkesworld, November 2016
Novelettes
"A Deeper Green" by Samantha Murray - Beneath Ceaseless Skies, August 2016
"The War of Heroes" by Kameron Hurley - Lightspeed, August 2016 *
* This was originally published on her Patreon, but because the copyright date is 2016 I assume it is eligible for this year.
Links to recommended fiction are provided when available, and yes there are more short stories than there are slot to nominate. Read a few to see what you're missing!
Short Stories
"This is Not a Wardrobe Door" by Merc Restad - Fireside, January 2016
"Dragon Brides" by Nghi Vo - Lightspeed, April 2016
"The Gentleman of Chaos" by Merc Restad - Apex Magazine, August 2016
"Pagpag" by Samuel Marzioli - Apex, October 2016
"And In Our Daughters, We Find a Voice" by Cassandra Khaw - The Dark, November 2016
"A Glamour in the Black" by Sylvia Anna Hivén - Writers of the Future Vol 32, 2016
"Of Sight, of Mind, of Heart" - by Samantha Murray - Clarkesworld, November 2016
Novelettes
"A Deeper Green" by Samantha Murray - Beneath Ceaseless Skies, August 2016
"The War of Heroes" by Kameron Hurley - Lightspeed, August 2016 *
* This was originally published on her Patreon, but because the copyright date is 2016 I assume it is eligible for this year.
Monday, January 9, 2017
My Favorite Books of 2016
I didn't read nearly as much as I'd wanted to in 2016, though I read more than the list below suggests since I'm omitting my research books. It's hard to stack up a historical non-fiction piece with novels and anthologies since they're read for so many different reasons.
That said, these are the nine books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I read them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too.
Thief of Songs by M.C.A. Hogarth *
Thief of Songs is what Hogarth describes as a pastoral romance; low stakes, not a lot of drama, lots of sweetness. It made the long list for the James Tiptree Jr Award, and features a world where there are four genders; female, male, hermaphrodite, and neuter. The world building is amazing and feels like a living place, though the hermaphrodite pronouns are a little hard to get used to at first since they don't map to any real world ones (as far as I know).
Justice Calling by Annie Bellet
Annet Bellet's Justice Calling is the first in her Twenty-Sided Sorceress series and stuffed full of pop culture geeky references centered around magic. I'm not usually an urban fantasy reader, but this was fun and I have the second book in my to-be-read pile.
A Song for No Man's Land by Andy Remic
World War I is one of my favorite settings (as most of my writer friends are well aware of, considering the stuff I send them) and Andy Remic's dark fantasy take on it is really dark, melding what's real and what's not with the horror of the trenches. This is the first in a trilogy and again I already have the second book waiting to be read.
Romancing the Null by Tina Gower
Disclaimer, I got a review copy of this one since Tina is a friend. That said, Romancing the Null is a fun urban fantasy romp through the eyes of an actuary for fantastical events. The fact her profession is such an unusual one (and not one pre-disposed towards ass-kicking) is what makes this fun.
Baccano: The Rolling Bootlegs by Ryohgo Narita
Baccano is one of my favorite anime series and the original novels are finally being translated into English! It's a hot mess (in a good way) when mobsters, an alchemist seeking immortality, and two cuckoo thieves get mixed up in the transit of a few bottles of alcohol that are totally not the booze most people take them for.
Spice and Wolf Vol 10 by Isuna Hasekura
Spice and Wolf is my guilty pleasure. Hasekura is not the strongest writer out there, but he still manages to spin a charming romance between a wolf goddess and an ordinary merchant who don't want their time together to come to an end. Volume 10 takes them to a monastery heavily in debt that might have the bones of Holo's fellow wolves, which leads to the usual economic shenanigans the series is known for.
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone *
Gladstone's Craft Sequence is supposed to be readable in any order since the volumes are stand alone, but I figured I'd start with the first, and I have to say that after reading it, I'm really going to miss Tara when I move on to the next! She's easily my favorite new protagonist of the books I've read this year, for being so creative in how she gets the job done. And the setting doesn't hurt either, being a sort of early 20th century magic-tech society.
Another by Yukito Ayatsuji *
Though there is an anime based on Another, Ayatsuji's original is much, much better, with a lot more details fleshed out. Kouichi Sakakibara gets a late start at his new school, and when he gets there, he discovers there is a supernatural phenomenon that is periodically killing the students and families of those in class 3. It sounds like a creepy horror novel, but in practice plays out like a whodunnit mystery, as there are rules to the phenomenon involving how a dead person can masquerade as one of the living.
Writers of the Future Vol 32 (anthology)
I almost always read the latest of these, since I know so many of the writers who end up in them. There's a wide variety so subgenres can jump drastically from story to story. This approach might not work for someone looking for a theme, but there's more than likely something that appeals. My favorite this year is "A Glamour in Black" by Sylvia Anna Hiven, for being so creepy and having the best reveal at the end.
The three novels I tagged with an asterisk (*) were my favorites of the year, the ones I considered the page turners where I tried to get a few more pages in every night before going to bed. I can't recommend them enough.
That said, these are the nine books I enjoyed enough to finish, and in the order I read them. Maybe you'll want to check them out too.
Thief of Songs by M.C.A. Hogarth *
Thief of Songs is what Hogarth describes as a pastoral romance; low stakes, not a lot of drama, lots of sweetness. It made the long list for the James Tiptree Jr Award, and features a world where there are four genders; female, male, hermaphrodite, and neuter. The world building is amazing and feels like a living place, though the hermaphrodite pronouns are a little hard to get used to at first since they don't map to any real world ones (as far as I know).
Justice Calling by Annie Bellet
Annet Bellet's Justice Calling is the first in her Twenty-Sided Sorceress series and stuffed full of pop culture geeky references centered around magic. I'm not usually an urban fantasy reader, but this was fun and I have the second book in my to-be-read pile.
A Song for No Man's Land by Andy Remic
World War I is one of my favorite settings (as most of my writer friends are well aware of, considering the stuff I send them) and Andy Remic's dark fantasy take on it is really dark, melding what's real and what's not with the horror of the trenches. This is the first in a trilogy and again I already have the second book waiting to be read.
Romancing the Null by Tina Gower
Disclaimer, I got a review copy of this one since Tina is a friend. That said, Romancing the Null is a fun urban fantasy romp through the eyes of an actuary for fantastical events. The fact her profession is such an unusual one (and not one pre-disposed towards ass-kicking) is what makes this fun.
Baccano: The Rolling Bootlegs by Ryohgo Narita
Baccano is one of my favorite anime series and the original novels are finally being translated into English! It's a hot mess (in a good way) when mobsters, an alchemist seeking immortality, and two cuckoo thieves get mixed up in the transit of a few bottles of alcohol that are totally not the booze most people take them for.
Spice and Wolf Vol 10 by Isuna Hasekura
Spice and Wolf is my guilty pleasure. Hasekura is not the strongest writer out there, but he still manages to spin a charming romance between a wolf goddess and an ordinary merchant who don't want their time together to come to an end. Volume 10 takes them to a monastery heavily in debt that might have the bones of Holo's fellow wolves, which leads to the usual economic shenanigans the series is known for.
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone *
Gladstone's Craft Sequence is supposed to be readable in any order since the volumes are stand alone, but I figured I'd start with the first, and I have to say that after reading it, I'm really going to miss Tara when I move on to the next! She's easily my favorite new protagonist of the books I've read this year, for being so creative in how she gets the job done. And the setting doesn't hurt either, being a sort of early 20th century magic-tech society.
Another by Yukito Ayatsuji *
Though there is an anime based on Another, Ayatsuji's original is much, much better, with a lot more details fleshed out. Kouichi Sakakibara gets a late start at his new school, and when he gets there, he discovers there is a supernatural phenomenon that is periodically killing the students and families of those in class 3. It sounds like a creepy horror novel, but in practice plays out like a whodunnit mystery, as there are rules to the phenomenon involving how a dead person can masquerade as one of the living.
Writers of the Future Vol 32 (anthology)
I almost always read the latest of these, since I know so many of the writers who end up in them. There's a wide variety so subgenres can jump drastically from story to story. This approach might not work for someone looking for a theme, but there's more than likely something that appeals. My favorite this year is "A Glamour in Black" by Sylvia Anna Hiven, for being so creepy and having the best reveal at the end.
The three novels I tagged with an asterisk (*) were my favorites of the year, the ones I considered the page turners where I tried to get a few more pages in every night before going to bed. I can't recommend them enough.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Looking at Japanese History Through Pop Culture: The Bakumatsu
I like looking at the stories told in other cultures, because they often have different flashpoints for us, events of cultural significance that decades or even centuries afterwards they still resonate with us. In the U.S. we seem to be in love with World War II, given the number of movies about it. The American Revolutionary War is still a big deal too, especially when still in school.
Judging from Japanese cultural exports, in the form of anime and video games, one of their cultural flashpoints is the Bakumatsu.
I first learned about the Bakumatsu (the closing years of the Edo period and the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate) from watching the Rurouni Kenshin anime, which actually takes place after the Bakumatsu had ended and dealt with the rough times that followed. Unfortunately Asian history is rarely taught in the U.S. so I didn't have much of a clue as to what the Bakumatsu was, other than was the end of the era of samurai and the beginning of westernation by Japan.
That alone should make it interesting, because Japan modernized at an incredibly rapid pace once the nation set its mind to do so, but the war that resulted in westernization was already over in Rurouni Kenshin and the main hero was a former Imperialist. He was on the side that won. His enemies, sometimes reluctant allies (depending on when in the series you're watching), often were people who had lost.
Among them was a fictionalized version of Hajime Saito, who had belonged to the Shinsengumi, a special police force that had been employed by the Tokugawa Shogunate. The Shinsengumi had been popularized in movies, manga, anime, and games, still put out over a century after their passing.
What I didn't get, was that the Shinsengumi had been on the losing side of the war. In the U.S. it might be equivalent to having Robert E. Lee and company glorified in pop culture... which they're not. The American Civil War might come up every now and then in media, but on the level of multiple games and TV series and movies? We tend to focus on WWII if we go for historical drama or video games. It was also a war where the side we root for won.
So why the Shinsengumi so popoular? Why the guys who lost, many of whom did not survive?
I recently played a game on PSP called Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeing Blossom. And now I think I finally understand.
The above video is something I stumbled across on YouTube. I was unfamiliar with the anime series being shown, but as I watched the video I found myelf engrossed. The only names I recognized off the bat were Hajime Saito and Souji Okita (the video runs through a large cast of characters, about 80% of whom are historical figures), but something about this fanmade video made me want to watch the anime series it came from.
When I discovered the that title of the anime was read as Hakuoki, I had a flash of recognition. I'd heard of it before. It had originally been a video game. In fact, the game had just been translated into English earlier this year, which meant it was still in print!
Hakuoki follows the story of a teenage girl, Chizuru, who joins up with the Shinsengumi because they are looking for her missing father and they believe that having her assistance will help them in their search. The story is not a straight historical, there are supernatural elements to it, and while I'm sure the details of the major historical events are fudged with a little, the outcome is still the same. The player gets to experience the rise and fall of the Shinsengumi through the eyes of a teenage girl, later young woman, who has fallen in love with one of them (player's pick).
It might not be the same for all paths, since the game is like a choose-your-own-adventure but with lovely anime style pictures and excellent Japanese voice acting, but on my path through the game I spent most of my time with a fictional Hajime Saito.
In trying to understand Saito's motivation for being part of the Shinsengumi, particularly as the Shinsengumi starts crumbling, I think I learned a lot about why they have a place in modern Japanese pop culture (a romanticized place, I'm sure, but there nonetheless) and why the Bakumatsu is a popular subject at all.
Listening to Saito and the Shinsengumi I began to understand their despair as the years spent honing their swordsmanship come to nothing against the most modern western firearms. Saito in particular has spent nearly all of his adult life as a killer of men, not because he's cruel, but because that was his job and he was working under orders. Now he was facing an era where warriors would no longer fight with swords, and what was he without his?
Throughout the game the Shinsengumi roll with awful punches, particularly in the later chapters they prepare for losing battles against better geared opponents with rifles and cannons. Some of them do it out of loyalty to the shogun, some because of loyalty to their commander or their group, others because they do not otherwise know what to do with themselves.
Living with these characters, and seeing their determination to keep fighting despite the fact they know it's a losing battle, showed me why they make a good story. Even if they do not have a happy ending, their spirit in the face of losing everything they know, is something that resonates across time, even across cultures.
There is an epilogue that runs through the main cast and discusses their fates. My character ended the game with Hajime Saito, who is one of the few Shinsengumi members who survived the real Bakumatsu, so I don't know how it works in other endings when the main character is paired with someone else. I skimmed Wikipedia to see if the fates of the other major characters were the same in real life and for the most part they are (though one of them uses a rumor for his fate rather than what probably actually happened).
It makes the ending bittersweet, because even though my character survives, not all of the people she was with live to see her again. It was not unexpected, in a historical game set during a period of revolution, and I think holding to that element of tragedy is what makes the game memorable.
Judging from Japanese cultural exports, in the form of anime and video games, one of their cultural flashpoints is the Bakumatsu.
I first learned about the Bakumatsu (the closing years of the Edo period and the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate) from watching the Rurouni Kenshin anime, which actually takes place after the Bakumatsu had ended and dealt with the rough times that followed. Unfortunately Asian history is rarely taught in the U.S. so I didn't have much of a clue as to what the Bakumatsu was, other than was the end of the era of samurai and the beginning of westernation by Japan.
That alone should make it interesting, because Japan modernized at an incredibly rapid pace once the nation set its mind to do so, but the war that resulted in westernization was already over in Rurouni Kenshin and the main hero was a former Imperialist. He was on the side that won. His enemies, sometimes reluctant allies (depending on when in the series you're watching), often were people who had lost.
Among them was a fictionalized version of Hajime Saito, who had belonged to the Shinsengumi, a special police force that had been employed by the Tokugawa Shogunate. The Shinsengumi had been popularized in movies, manga, anime, and games, still put out over a century after their passing.
What I didn't get, was that the Shinsengumi had been on the losing side of the war. In the U.S. it might be equivalent to having Robert E. Lee and company glorified in pop culture... which they're not. The American Civil War might come up every now and then in media, but on the level of multiple games and TV series and movies? We tend to focus on WWII if we go for historical drama or video games. It was also a war where the side we root for won.
So why the Shinsengumi so popoular? Why the guys who lost, many of whom did not survive?
I recently played a game on PSP called Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeing Blossom. And now I think I finally understand.
The above video is something I stumbled across on YouTube. I was unfamiliar with the anime series being shown, but as I watched the video I found myelf engrossed. The only names I recognized off the bat were Hajime Saito and Souji Okita (the video runs through a large cast of characters, about 80% of whom are historical figures), but something about this fanmade video made me want to watch the anime series it came from.
When I discovered the that title of the anime was read as Hakuoki, I had a flash of recognition. I'd heard of it before. It had originally been a video game. In fact, the game had just been translated into English earlier this year, which meant it was still in print!
Hakuoki follows the story of a teenage girl, Chizuru, who joins up with the Shinsengumi because they are looking for her missing father and they believe that having her assistance will help them in their search. The story is not a straight historical, there are supernatural elements to it, and while I'm sure the details of the major historical events are fudged with a little, the outcome is still the same. The player gets to experience the rise and fall of the Shinsengumi through the eyes of a teenage girl, later young woman, who has fallen in love with one of them (player's pick).
It might not be the same for all paths, since the game is like a choose-your-own-adventure but with lovely anime style pictures and excellent Japanese voice acting, but on my path through the game I spent most of my time with a fictional Hajime Saito.
In trying to understand Saito's motivation for being part of the Shinsengumi, particularly as the Shinsengumi starts crumbling, I think I learned a lot about why they have a place in modern Japanese pop culture (a romanticized place, I'm sure, but there nonetheless) and why the Bakumatsu is a popular subject at all.
Listening to Saito and the Shinsengumi I began to understand their despair as the years spent honing their swordsmanship come to nothing against the most modern western firearms. Saito in particular has spent nearly all of his adult life as a killer of men, not because he's cruel, but because that was his job and he was working under orders. Now he was facing an era where warriors would no longer fight with swords, and what was he without his?
Throughout the game the Shinsengumi roll with awful punches, particularly in the later chapters they prepare for losing battles against better geared opponents with rifles and cannons. Some of them do it out of loyalty to the shogun, some because of loyalty to their commander or their group, others because they do not otherwise know what to do with themselves.
Living with these characters, and seeing their determination to keep fighting despite the fact they know it's a losing battle, showed me why they make a good story. Even if they do not have a happy ending, their spirit in the face of losing everything they know, is something that resonates across time, even across cultures.
There is an epilogue that runs through the main cast and discusses their fates. My character ended the game with Hajime Saito, who is one of the few Shinsengumi members who survived the real Bakumatsu, so I don't know how it works in other endings when the main character is paired with someone else. I skimmed Wikipedia to see if the fates of the other major characters were the same in real life and for the most part they are (though one of them uses a rumor for his fate rather than what probably actually happened).
It makes the ending bittersweet, because even though my character survives, not all of the people she was with live to see her again. It was not unexpected, in a historical game set during a period of revolution, and I think holding to that element of tragedy is what makes the game memorable.
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