[Lisa’s Take] Best Served Cold – Joe Abercrombie

Oh, Joe. Joe, Joe, Joe. Why must you try me? Is it because I initially tore into The Blade Itself so badly? I apologized for that, you know, and in my review of Before They Are Hanged I recounted all the ways in which you had remedied my gripes and turned out to be a pretty darn good author after all.

So tell me – why! Why, oh, why must you persist in writing out all your sound effects in text? Haven’t I impressed upon you how distressing, disturbing, and laughable it is to be trying to take your story seriously only to have it broken up by “HUUUUUUUUURGH!” or “slap, slap went his skin, grunt grunt went the barbarian”? While the later does conjure up some highly amusing parallels with the kids book “Pat the Bunny,” it also serves as a detriment to the tone of the story.

*cough* Sorry, I think I’m done with that little segue. You have to understand quite how hard I’ve ranted about Joe’s Sound Effects (tm) in the past. Anyway: Best Served Cold! A story of betrayal and revenge, also known as “Joe picks his favorite secondary characters from The First Law Trilogy and plays dress up with them!” And a damn fine job he does at it, too – Best Served Cold blasts The First Law out of the water in terms of awesome. The plot is much tighter and more polished, the character flaws much more realistic and understated, and the pacing and scope of the story are just spot-on.

I will disclaim my endorsement with the following: know what you’re getting into with this book. If you read The First Law, you have a good idea: really graphic violence, really graphic language, and really graphic sex. No, really. Take all of the fantasy books that you’ve read and munge them up together, then add about 10 degrees of raunchy and you’ll have a good idea of how NC-17 Best Served Cold is. Definitely not for the faint of heart – I don’t exaggerate when I say that the opening chapter made me green around the gills. I do appreciate that Joe is as visceral in his sex as he is in his violence; way to even up the score across the board, buddy!

Anyway, I don’t have a lot more to add to this silly little ramble. I quite liked Best Served Cold, and Joe Abercrombie is now solidly on my list of authors whose books I will pick up no questions asked. I would like to see his next book try out a new setting, just for variety, but no huge hurry there. Just try to keep the sound effects to a minimum next time, eh?

[Lisa’s Take] The City & The City (China Mieville)

[Editor's Note: this was supposed to be a mini-review, but then it ballooned. My apologies for the rambling]

I have a viciously love-hate relationship with China Mieville (ok, that’s a lie – I have said relationship with his books, not with him personally, though the latter would be nice too). Perdido Street Station and The Scar top my list of “all time favorite books” and I can’t get enough of his amazing, subtle world building. But then on the other end of the spectrum are books like Un Lun Dun (meh) and King Rat (super-meh edging on loathing). I’m not sure where the disparity in my feelings is sourced (after all, Un Lun Dun and King Rat are extremely different books) but there it is.

Based on this background, you can imagine my surprise when I didn’t at all have a strong reaction to The City & The City. It was a good book with some interesting elements, but I didn’t love it. It had some shortcomings, but I didn’t hate it. Dammit, China, what am I supposed to think of our relationship now!?

The City & The City is set in more-or-less present day in a fictional country somewhere in eastern Europe. The story starts out reading like a detective novel, and then slowly introduces the concept that there’s something a bit odd about the setting – gradually a picture is painted that there are in fact two countries that exist on top of each other in space. The residents of each country are trained to “unsee” the elements of the sister country, and the border between the two places is enforced by a supernatural force known as Breach. The story follows Detective Tyador Borlu as he investigates a murder that takes him across country lines and gets him involved in all sorts of historical intrigue.

As always, what Mieville does best is build a world without explicitly calling attention to its weirdness. He tells the story from the point of view of someone who lives in that world – someone who takes in their surroundings, but doesn’t exclaim “Wow, Holy crap!” every time something strange happens… because to that character it’s not strange: it’s every-day. The City & The City was no exception to this excellent world-building approach, but the “real world” elements made the journey less fantastic than PSS or The Scar.

The characters were solid and real – flawed without being contrived. The story was interesting – starting small but expanding to examine some bigger issues. The ending was a bit predictable, but the plot turns throughout the story were surprising enough that I didn’t feel cheated. The whole narrative read very quickly, and left me pleased and satisfied.

So – good book. Not as good as some of my favorite Mieville work, but not as bad as some of my least favorite. Worth reading, especially if you want to give someone a gentle ramp-up to PSS and The Scar.

[Lisa’s Take] Mistborn Trilogy Book 1 (Brandon Sanderson)

Praise be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster: the fantasy genre is still good! I have to admit that I was having doubts this year – since Tigana, which I finished in January, I haven’t read a single fantasy (or extended/related genre) novel that really blew my socks off. There have been a few good things, but nothing that really drew me in, made me believe, and felt obligated to deliver the occasional sucker-punch to the gut.

Before I get too far into this review, let me issue a preemptive apology for the number of times that I compare the book to Lies of Locke Lamora – I’ll try to keep the number less than 5, but no hard promises here. Sorry.

So, the world of Misborn. If you’re feeling a little sci-fi, you could call the world post-apocalyptic: some event in the past caused huge volcanic eruptions that turned the sky permanently grey and ensured that ash falls like snow when the wind is blowing right. If you’re leaning in a steam-punk direction, you’ll note that the men and women nobles in the book wear complicated dresses and vests and carry pocket watches. If you’re feeling straight up fantasy, no ifs-ands-or-buts… you won’t be disappointed, either. The world is filled with magic, monsters, and evil overlords. The fantasy-tropes are definitely the strongest, but there are some cool genre-crossover points that spice the world up from the standard fantasy setting.

Next, politics and magic! The political system in Mistborn is pretty standard fantasy-fare: Immortal, God-Like Overlord reigns with an Iron Fist ™. Nobles live a life of luxury, filled with balls and riches and intrigue. The poor folks (called skaa, in this particular case) work as the slaves of the nobles, constantly beaten down and subjugated. As for the magic – Mistborn might have the most interesting magical system I’ve ever read about. I’d love to play a video game based upon this magic system: it’s just that awesome. I’m not going to go into it in this review, as finding out about it in the story is part of the fun, but I will say that it’s awesome, intriguing, and thought provoking.

Right – we have this awesome world and magic system, so what’s the plot? Remember how Lies of Locke Lamora was kind of a fantasy-heist? And how there weren’t really many other books that fell into the same genre? Mistborn definitely qualifies as another fantasy-heist, which is the most wonderful news I’ve ever heard. I could read fantasy-heist novels all day and never get bored, I think. The plot of the story follows a group of thieves and con-men as they plan to… well, I could tell you, but like the magic system I think I’ll let you read for yourself. Suffice to say that much like Lies, the plot doesn’t fall out quite how you expect it to, and there are plenty of twists and roadblocks along the way.

This review is getting long already, but I feel the need to put a word out there about Sanderson’s characterizations. They’re good – kind of standard, but with some of the generic archetypes shaken up a bit to keep them interesting. What Sanderson really excels at are the conversations and interactions between the full crew of characters (think the scene in Lies where they discuss why they steal). The interplay is spot-on, and the camaraderie is genuine and compelling.

The one negative I’ll dish about is that I didn’t always like how the action scenes read. Especially when you got two magical badasses fighting each other, Sanderson would often wax poetic about the fight scene – which is cool, because the magic system allows for that in a big way – but in a lot of cases I felt like he had a really clear picture of every movement and action that was supposed to occur in the scene, but when he described it I was missing something, or all the pieces didn’t fit together. It was a small thing, but I figured I have to mention something critical in this praise-fest if I’m to maintain any credibility.

One final note on the plot: Sanderson managed to put a couple of big old twists into the story that I didn’t see coming, which is always impressive. There was perhaps one item that I think might be a little plot hole, but I’m reading the book annotations now (which he has on his website, along with deleted/revised chapters – so cool!) and I’ll see if they clear up the problem. I do appreciate a story that manages to pull the wool over my eyes. Also, I managed to keep to my promise of mentioning Lies of Locke Lamora fewer than 5 times in this review, but let me be clear on one thing: while the genre and level of awesomeness in Mistborn are similar to Lies, they are very different books, especially in the scope of implications and world. Don’t let my comparisons make you think that they are in any way clones.

I finished Mistborn around 2:00 on Sunday afternoon. By 4:00 I had gone to the bookstore and bought the sequel, and I chewed out 100 pages of it amid my other Sunday evening festivities. This is the first time in a while that I immediately picked up Book 2 in a trilogy without needing a breather – I very much hope that the rest of the trilogy delivers.

The bottom line: get this book. Read it now. I was late to the party on this one, but it’s definitely a staple of new fantasy releases that you need to read. Is my recommendation resounding enough?

[Lisa’s Take] Last Watch (Sergei Lukyanenko)

I kind of never thought this book would come out in the US. After all of the drama with the movie side of things, and after the release date getting pushed back so many times, I had pretty much given up hope on ever getting to read the final book in the Night Watch series. I was down about it, but more or less resigned to my fate.

So you can imagine the sound I made when I saw Last Watch on the shelf – or rather the string of excited curses that were entirely inappropriate for a quiet little bookstore, but that escaped before I could contain myself. This was the 3rd fantasy release in a week that caught me totally off guard, and definitely the most thrilling of the 3.

It occurs to me that many people might not be familiar with this little gem of the fantasy, so let me explain a bit. The Night Watch quartet is a series of books by Russian fantasy author Sergei Lukyanenko. They qualify for my mental niche of “massively multi-genre fantasy.” The books are set in modern day Russia, so they have a dash of “urban fantasy.” The books are built on the premise that in addition to humans, there are people who are called Others who have other-worldly powers. These Others fall into two factions – Light Others and Dark Others. The Light Ones have the powers that we usually equate with high fantasy – witches, prescience, healing, spell casters. The Dark Ones have powers from the “fantasy horror” end of the spectrum – vampires, werewolves, dark wizards. A truce was made between the Light and Dark to prevent them from warring each other into oblivion, and the Night Watch was set up as a coalition of Light Ones to watch over and monitor the Dark Ones, while the Day Watch was set up as a coalition of Dark Ones to monitor the Light Ones. Maintaining the balance of power is paramount, and the main character spends a lot of time playing a political balancing game while philosophizing about the nature of good and evil. Add that dash of political fantasy and philosophy, and you have a book series that touches on practically every fantasy sub-genre there is.

The books garnered enough claim in Russia to inspire a movie that smashed all sorts of nation-wide box office records. In 2004 the movie was subtitled for an English audience (with awesomely engaging text, I might add – lots of interesting after-effects and interplay with the on-screen action). It was pretty well received, though it never saw more than a limited release in independent theaters. The film did well enough to secure the US-release of the second movie, Day Watch, which also gained the attention of Fox Searchlight. Good old Fox secured the rights to the 3rd movie and promptly ditched most of the original cast and ran the project into the ground.

Luckily, the movies did well enough to inspire Miramax to pick up the novels, translate, and publish them in the US. I loved the movies for their somewhat bizarre, abrasive, but engaging approach to dark fantasy, and I especially loved their take on magic. As such, when I saw the books on the shelves I picked them up right away. I never got around to writing full reviews for any of the books in the series, but I figured that I should at least highlight them in this blog as I finished up the final installment.

I really can’t say enough good about the Night Watch books – they are an incredibly fresh breath of air amidst all of the ho-hum, been-there-done-that fantasy on the market these days. They make me wish that the US saw more foreign translations, because it’s just a marvelous experience. The premise of the series at first glance seems a little “comic bookish” (not to disparage any of the excellent graphic novels out there) but the deep characterizations and human aspects of the main characters, as well as the keen examination of “good” and “bad” really elevates the whole shebang to a higher level. For all their depth the books still read incredibly quickly, but manage to be both emotionally engaging and have a dash of self-aware humor that keeps it interesting. All four books are great, but I will say that Last Watch was the strongest, and finished off the series on a high note for me.

Well, this has gotten longer than I expected, so I’ll wrap it up. Procure these books. Read them all in a long weekend. They’re so very worth it, and a great change from the established fantasy norm in the US. Also, if you happen to read them without seeing the movies first, I’d love to hear your feedback, as I’m not sure how much my prior exposure to the films influenced my opinions. Happy reading!

[Lisa's Take] The Black Company - Glen Cook

Allow me to start off this review by saying, loudly and passionately: Damn it. I'll get back to why in a moment.

The Black Company is a dark, gritty, military fantasy following a group of elite mercenaries as they are pulled into a struggle between good-- well, no, not good. Between evil and potentially more evil. Published in 1984, The Black Company is definitely one of the pioneers of the military fantasy genre and it wouldn't surprise me if a number of current authors who are a fan of R-rated gray fantasy (*cough* Joe Abercrombie *cough*) looked to this series for inspiration.

I'll admit that even though The Black Company only clocks in a little over 200 pages, it took a bit to engage me. The first 3 or so chapters read as though they came out of a magazine serialization - repeating of character information we'd already been presented with, odd re-stating of plot points in each chapter, and a very story-like quality to the chapters, with each presenting its own introduction, conflict, and resolution. This seemed to abate a bit by the mid-point of the book - either that or I just got used to it.

As I mentioned, The Black Company clocks in at about 218 pages. Today so much fantasy seems to be judged on the thickness of the book, rather than the quality between the covers - and this book pointed out to me just how much I've fallen victim to the stereotype of "thicker is better." When I picked up The Black Company I assumed it was a big, fat tome of a fantasy novel, but discovered that it was actually the first 3 books of the series republished in one volume. I immediately soured on the book, but continued reading - and I'm extremely glad I did. Cook manages to pack more plot, conflict and characterization into 200 pages than most contemporary authors do in 500. He has a way of laying out the plot in what seems a stark, plain telling, but that in reality has layers of implications and a lot of depth. When I first started reading I actually had a hard time because I was charging through the text so fast that I was missing important plot details - he really expects you to pay attention to every word, every sentence, and every character nuance. Cook trusts his reader's intelligence and plows ahead through the major plot points assuming you'll be able to keep pace.

At first I was a little put off by the stark styling of The Black Company, but by the end of the first book I found myself very emotionally engaged. I didn't mean to start in on the second book right away, but I was 10 pages in before I realized what I was doing. Somehow, unbeknownst to me, Cook had tied me up in his characters - made them deep and complex and compelling in spite of the spare words used to describe them. The fantasy genre has changed a lot in the 25 years since Cook published the first book in The Black Company, but I think a lot of contemporary authors could take a couple of pages from Glen Cook's book (so to speak).

Now - back to why I started this review off with a bit of passionate cursing. From the time The Black Company really hooked me, about half way in, I kept having a niggling sensation that it felt a lot like The Book of Amber (10 short fantasy novelettes published in one big omnibus. Well worth reading). However, I kept assuring myself that this was only a trilogy - after all, I had all 3 books in one volume! Then I started this review and did a bit of digging about the books' history and discovered that The Black Company is, in fact, the first of 10 books. I didn't mean to throw myself head long into another huge series, dammit! (read: Woohoo! I have another 9 books to enjoy!)

Goodness, this review really go lengthy, given the relative shortness of the book in question. The bottom line here is that in spite of its bumpy start The Black Company is a really great read.

Lisa’s Take – Last Argument of Kings: First Law Book 3 (Joe Abercrombie)

This is a really hard review to write. When I reviewed book one I was delightedly picking it apart, finding all sorts of things to harp on – justified or not. After the second book I had a solid basis for comparison… I could revisit each of the knit-picks and talk about how they had been taken care of or improved in the second book. But now that a review for Last Argument of Kings has come around, I find myself lacking a good starting point. I can’t put together a plot summary, as that would be far to spoilery this late in the trilogy, and I don’t have any convenient lists to base things on. Hell, I don’t even have a good anecdote to start off with.

I suppose I’ll just keep it simple. I really enjoyed Last Argument of Kings a lot, and I’ll definitely be buying Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie’s next book. Big reversal from The Blade Itself, I know, so let it never be said that I won’t revise my opinions with good reason. That said, I didn’t like it quite as much as Before They Are Hanged. I wanted the improvement from book 2 to book 3 to be as great as the improvement from book 1 to book 2, and that just didn’t quite happen. My biggest gripe was the character POVs, yet again, as there were a couple of times where the POV would jump mid-chapter and leave me baffled. Sometimes these jumps in perspective were totally unnecessary and didn’t add anything to the story, which just frustrated me more.

Ack, let me stop before I rant, because that was really the one and only problem I had with the book. Other than that it was great – the plot was gray and gritty and had a whole lot going on. A lot of loose ends were tied up, and there were events from the first book that got tied back into the overall plot quite nicely. I called a few plot points, but didn’t call just as many. A couple of the “gotcha!”s were a little thin, but mostly they had solid foundation and made me go “No WAY!” Always a good sign. There were also some big plot points that didn’t get totally resolved – which felt right… in the end there was all this Crazy Stuff that happened, but the world didn’t really change. Cool in a real-world kind of way.

I was pretty attached to the characters by the end – not so much as in the second book, but still quite a bit. I catch myself using one of Logen’s catch-phrases sometimes, which says a lot for the writing style. There was one character that I struggled a lot with… once I thought about it I remembered that he had been mentioned briefly in book 2, but he really could have used a more solid foundation. Again, though, small gripe. I got a little teary when my favorite sub-character was killed off, and the author made me keenly aware of just how much people had changed, as well as just how much they’d stayed the same. I’d almost call it deep.

Well, I guess I did have a decent amount to say once I got going. I wish I’d written this review right after JD and I talked it over when he finished the book, because we really got going with a lot of food-for-thought. Maybe he’ll grace me with a complementary review and catch anything I missed.