A Week to be Wicked

I finally found a romance novel that I really enjoyed. Part of that may be because I am exhausted and stressed and therefore primed for fluffy fare but nonetheless I would happily read this one again. A Week to be Wicked by Tessa Dare isn't so much a historical romance as an alternate universe romance because I needed a major suspension of disbelief for a significant chunk of the storyline. But that actually made it a little more fun for me - I relish fantasy and science fiction, after all. And my naturalist heart just adored Minerva and her fossils and rock specimens. I spent far too much of my childhood collecting my own outdoor treasures not to have a soft spot for heroines who do the same. I also liked Colin much more than Bram from the first novel. While I am willing to admit that he and Susanna made a good match, I personally found Bram a bit overbearing. I was therefore predisposed to like Minerva for having beaned him with her rock-filled reticule.

Anyway, the story is set in Dare's Spindle Cove where young ladies have more freedom to be who they really are and where Miss Minerva Highwood has access to marvelous fossils including one that should set the scientific community atwitter once she presents her findings at the Royal Geological Society of  Scotland. One hitch: they don't know she is a woman, as she has joined and signed all of her papers and correspondence as M. R. Highwood. Another issue: she believes her beloved elder sister to be pursued by local rake Lord Payne, as he is need of a wife to free up his inheritance. Minerva therefore proposes that Lord Payne run away with her so that she can present her findings and keep him away from her sister, and in return she will grant him the prize money that she is certain her presentation will fetch. She is unconcerned with her reputation being ruined since she is awkward, bookish, and plain and thus unlikely to make a good marriage. What are the odds that Lord Payne will find within her a wild beauty others overlook? Oh, and while Lord Payne insists that he has standards that involve not ruining innocent young women, a tragic incident in his past leaves him unable to sleep alone and therefore Minerva must share his bed while they travel. Hmm, I wonder where this will lead?

So yeah, it is a goofy book but very sweet and fun. I've read three of the Spindle Cove stories so far and this is definitely my favorite. (I did take the time to write it up for the Cannonball, after all - why is it so much harder to write the reviews than it is to read the books? Sigh.)

One last note. I can't stand most romance novel covers and this one is as awful as I'd expect. I generally just grab cover pictures from Amazon for my reviews since I read books on Kindle and don't have physical copies to take photos of my own with. But for this one I desperately wished I could set my Kindle up against a lovely chunk of limestone studded with brachiopods that I have from a quarry up near Chicago. Sadly, it has already been packed in anticipation of our move. (The moving company will curse my name if they realize how many of the boxes they will be hauling are filled with rocks). However, to offset the awfulness of that cover, please accept this photo of Zonia Baber, 19th century geologist, Scientific American's first Pioneering Woman of Geology, and general badass.

Three Men in a Boat To Say Nothing of the Dog

I came across Connie Willis' novel To Say Nothing of the Dog and it sounded like something I would enjoy, but I figured I had best read Jerome K. Jerome's classic Three Men in a Boat first as it is the story that Willis riffs off of for her own. While Three Men in a Boat was amusing, I grew tired of it and had to force myself to slog through to get to the end. I think I would have enjoyed it more when I was younger but I am old and cranky and J. and his friends mostly just annoyed the snot out of me. It is a travelogue about J. and tow of this friends spending a fortnight on the Thames, along with J.'s dog Montmorency. It describes the places they pass by and the people they meet, along with anecdotes those places bring to mind for him.I seem to have a limited tolerance for entitled white dudes carousing through the countryside and the fact that the author pokes fun at himself as he laughs at his comrades and others he meets just didn't do much to mollify me. I can see why so many other people enjoy it but it just didn't click for me.

To Say Nothing of the Dog, however, did hit the right notes for me, and I am glad I read the Jerome book first just because it was fun to see how it played off of that book. Willis' story involves time travelers who are pressed into service by an exceptionally wealthy and overbearing donor to help her restore Coventry Cathedral just as it was before it was destroyed by bombs in WWII. One of them manages to do something that should be impossible and brings a cat that she has rescued from being drowned forward with her into the future. Because of fears that this could cause events in the past to change, another time traveler is tasked with returning the cat so that time might resume its proper course. Sadly, however, this second time traveler - Ned - is exhausted and suffering from severe time-lag brought on by too many time jumps spent looking for an object that the aforementioned donor insists must be found for the restoration and fails to achieve his task. He must try to set things right while passing as a proper Victorian, which is difficult for poor Ned, given that he was addled by time-lag when given his rushed assimilation lessons.

Ned falls in with a young man who talks him into renting a boat for them, and there is, of course, a dog involved, and Ned is delighted to find himself embarking on a journey so much like that in Jerome K. Jerome's classic. The cat rescuer, Verity, is sent back to help contain the damage as the time scientists in the future try to determine what the consequences of the temporal incongruity may be. Foremost is the importance of ensuring that a certain very important romance occurs - one that Ned's actions seem to have disrupted. And there is still that blasted bishop's bird stump to be found... To Say Nothing of the Dog is a tangled ball of science fiction, romance, mystery and comedy and it is very good fun.

Artemis

I loved The Martian. It was the book that got me reading again after a years-long drought. I raved about it to my family and friends and drove them nuts with my uninvited opinions when I heard they were going to turn it into a movie. So I was very excited when I learned Andy Weir had a new book coming out and preordered it as soon as the option was available. However, I was sad to find myself disappointed by Artemis. While the science-y bits were interesting,  I found the protagonist, Jazz, rather unlikable. Mark Watney was a goofball but he was also a brilliant scientist who used his mind to stay alive when disaster struck. Jazz seems to take a perverse pride in not living up to her potential. She constantly tells us how smart and capable other people insist she is but scoffs at the idea of becoming a professional of some kind because it involves work.

Boobs. Has Andy Weir never hear another word for female breasts? Because every single character in this book refers to them as boobs. It was jarring. In real life, different people have various favorite euphemisms but on the moon it seems that they are always just boobs. It’s a minor thing but it bugged the heck out of me. Another criticism I have heard and agree with is that Andy Weir just didn’t do a very good job of writing a female voice. Jazz didn’t talk or think like any woman I know. 

Anyway, Artemis is the story of a functioning city on the moon and I did enjoy all the explanations that went into how such a place would operate. Our girl Jazz is a courier and smuggler who has a driving need to get rich and therefore is unable to resist turning down a dangerous high risk job when it is offered to her, since she is the smartest, most competent honest criminal on the moon. Plans are executed and oopsies happen and Jazz strips to her underwear in front of a guy to get into an EVA suit while teeheeing about how awkward it would be if he weren’t gay instead of treating it like routinely donning the gear she has had significant training in during an emergency situation but BOYZ. Sigh. Anyway - three stars. Good science, didn’t hate it, could have been so much better.

Silver and Stone (The Antipodean Queen #2)

Silver and Stone is the second volume in a steampunk trilogy set in a fantasy version of Australia where certain metals can be ‘activated’ to take on magical properties - iron can confer strength, gold can attract, silver can heal, etc. I read the first volume (Heart of Brass) last year so it didn’t qualify for the Cannonball but it did give me the background for this story, which takes up pretty much where the last one left off. (This review will therefore have spoilers for that first book).

The hero is Emmaline Muchamore, a proper young lady from London who is herself an inventor and scientist and whose inventor/scientist father replaced her biological heart with one made of brass and silver, leading to his untimely death. The family falls in its fortunes and Emmaline commits a crime that results in her being transported to Australia as a convict. While there she makes her escape with the assistance of Matilda, the half-Aboriginal girl with whom she falls in love, and Patrick, Matilda’s adopted brother. The second book involves their attempt to rescue Patrick’s mother from the Female Factory on Tasmania where she herself has been imprisoned, and their subsequent efforts to fulfill a promise they make to Patrick’s mother that puts them in significant danger of being recaptured. As in the first book, the story is set against an event of actual historical significance - in the case of Heart of Brass, it was the battle of the Eureka Stockade, and in this book it is the women's suffrage movement.

The books do have their flaws - the characters, particularly the secondary characters, could stand to be fleshed out more - but I found them to be a fun, breezy read. A particularly entertaining feature is that they have Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style stories in the back of each book which take place in the same setting as the novels. 

The Only Harmless Great Thing

I first read about “The Only Harmless Great Thing” as a Big Idea on John Scalzi’s blog. It instantly intrigued me but the past year has been very hard on me and left me in a fragile state so I was reluctant to read anything that I would find disturbing. Still, I kept seeing references to it and realized that I needed the beauty and magic that the story promised. 

“The Only Harmless Great Thing” is a novella that tells the story of an alternate world where “elephants have been recognized as sentient beings. Of course, that hasn’t stopped their exploitation, because when has it ever?” (So says the author via the Big Idea.) She describes the story as short and angry, and so it is, as well as strange and defiant. 

It takes only an hour or so to read but the story and characters make themselves at home in your head. Each narrator has a distinct voice and the disparate points of view get braided together to tell an exquisite tale. The story revolves around Regan – whose body is decaying painfully as a result of her employment in a factory painting watch dials with radioactive paint – and her relationship with Topsy, one of the elephants being trained to replace human workers in the factory because their more massive bodies can handle more radiation exposure before succumbing to the lethal effects. There is also Kat, a scientist who is trying to negotiate with a representative of the elephants. Finally there is Furmother-With-The-Cracked-Tusk, who long ago gave stories to her people.

The callous disregard for the Radium girls and the horrific mistreatment of elephants are both part of our world, our history. I have read with indignation and sadness about both but here those stories are woven together with new elements to create not a tapestry but a Rouffignac cave painting flickering in the torchlight of imagination and fury. The ending is rather abrupt but overall the story is a wonder and everyone should read it.

The Light Fantastic

“When light encounters a strong magical field it loses all sense of urgency.  It slows right down.  And on the Discworld the magic was embarrassingly strong, which meant that the soft yellow light of dawn flowed over the sleeping landscape like the caress of a gentle lover or, as some would have it, like golden syrup.”

Pratchett describes the sunlight of Discworld as flowing like golden syrup several times during The Light Fantastic, which meant I spent a fair amount of the time that I was reading this book fantasizing about pancakes. Yes, I’m kind of weird, and carb deprived.

Anyway, stacks of fluffy flapjacks aside, we’re back with the continuing adventures of Rincewind and Twoflower! I didn’t find this book quite as laugh-out-loud funny as the previous one although it certainly did have its moments. Mr. alphabootoo is an inveterate punster and there were several passages I had to share with him because they were too groan inducing to keep to myself. This book finds the entire Discworld in peril from a great ruddy star that is growing ever closer and the spell in Rincewind’s mind is revealed to have a role to play in saving the world (Rincewind himself is considered somewhat expendable). We learn more about wizards and wizarding and spells – which left me eager to start reading about the Discworld’s witches because they sound like they will be far more sensible.

As much as I enjoyed Twoflower in the previous book, I absolutely fell in love with him in this one. I love his rose-colored glasses and his ridiculous optimism. And I totally and completely lost my heart to him near the end when he showed Rincewind – and the reader – that he is also more savvy than we had been giving him credit for. Since 2018 is currently kicking my butt, I could stand to cultivate some hardcore optimism myself. Maybe I need a WWTFD bracelet or something. Surely there has to be an etsy shop somewhere to help me out.

The next book in the publication order is a departure from the Rincewind tales so I will get a look at a different facet of the Discworld literary universe. I am really enjoying the books so far and glad I finally took the plunge.

The Colour of Magic

I attempted the second Cannonball Read and failed miserably (seriously – looking back at the posts I made way back when shows that but a single book review ever got posted). I’m finally back to try again, although I’ve lowered the bar to just a Quarter Cannonball in the hopes it will be more manageable. I am the sort of person who buys books in the hopes that perhaps I will someday find a way to read them and this challenge may be the impetus I need to actually do just that. Also, 2018 seems like it could benefit from some literary distractions! 

I had been dancing around starting Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series for a verrrrry long time because I was intimidated by the scope. I finally went with Small Gods based on a recommendation and, not surprisingly, fell in love. I want to read the whole thing now and settled on just plowing through them in chronological order. I have managed to stick with the plan long enough to start with The Colour of Magic. Many people say this is exactly the wrong thing to do because the first Discworld books are lacking the, er, magic of the rest of the series but since I have sufficient faith in the series to stick with it I think the decision was a good one for me.

The book is a breezy and fun introduction to the Discworld universe, via Rincewald the magician and his association with Twoflower, the visitor from the far off Agatean Empire who comes to the twin cities of Ankh-Morpork with gloriously full purses and some truly singular Luggage. Soon enough, Ankh-Morpork burns and the two are forced to flee. Shenanigans ensue, along with amusing send-ups of the fantasy genre. There were a number of times I found myself literally laughing out loud as I read. I don’t have much to compare it to beyond Small Gods and Good Omens but this book did feel like an early effort to me in that it had the humor but not so much of the bite that I loved about the other two.

As a total aside, Bravd and the Weasel made me remember how much I loved Fritz Leiber when I was young. I may have to add him to my book list, although it was his short stories that were always my favorites.