Where I Liked Some Things More Than Others

The Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's good, but annoying. 4 stars.

I find this whole series entertaining, for reasons I can't clarify in my own mind, and I'd almost give this book a 5 for that, but I'm frustrated by some things and it lowers my estimation of the book overall.

Mostly, it succeeds. We're in the 1400's in England, and Adelia is an educated woman--a kind of doctor, though more like a coroner or a forensic scientist--who serves the king by solving important mysteries. The setting is used well in this and the other books in the series, with a clear indication of deep research by the author. There's lots of good action, from sleuthing and fighting to passionate love scenes and man-versus-nature battles through dangerous landscapes--though we do sometimes slow down more than is really fun. Overall, though, it's about as thoroughly entertaining as genre fiction can be.

As a mystery, it's a bit disappointing, because most of the work is done in tiny obscure passages that only pay off at the very end. There's very little collecting of clues, really just hints of it, as if the author wants to keep the facts of the crimes a secret until the end, à la Sherlock Holmes (who is also fun and also annoying). Too much of the time, our main characters are kept powerless, useless to achieve anything, pushed around by circumstance--locked up, tied up, watched, trapped--so that they are inactive and passive for long parts of the book. Don't love that.

And Adelia is frustrating, making herself almost always disagreeable, being argumentative and insulting and rude with everyone on almost every page, including the people she likes as well as people she needs favors from. She's honorable and highly moral, doing good work, but she is so disagreeable that I find her a drag to hang out with.

So I like the books and the story pretty well, but I wish the main character's crankiness was turned down by about a half and her affability at least occasionally turned up a little. But that's just my opinion. Others may find her perfectly pleasant, and that would be fine. In any case, most mystery readers should enjoy the series and this book.

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Where Devlin Puts His Foot in It

Remember Love by Mary Balogh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another satisfying and entertaining book by an author I really enjoy. It didn't have quite as much closure as I would have liked, but I think some of that is coming in the sequels.

[Some minor spoilers. Probably none are surprising.]

I enjoyed the whole thing, but I especially liked it from about a third of the way in, part 2 of the book, where the story really begins. The first part is more like an extended prologue, with the characters half-formed and their relationships murky. This leads to the huge scene at the end of part 1, when Devlin blows up his family, his love life, his future, and the whole community by publicly revealing his father's infidelity. Very quickly, he finds himself pushed out, and goes straight into an officer's position in Spain against Napoleon. And we jump ahead six years.

I find all of Balogh's books have a somewhat awkward setup. It's like those chess puzzles in the newspaper where the pieces have been put in odd positions and the reader is supposed to put the black king in check mate in so many moves. It doesn't really matter how we got to that point, or if such a starting position is realistic or not. Just accept it and move on. That's how the author's plots are constructed--usually starting in a rather odd place that doesn't feel exactly organic, but that works its way through in a realistic way after that to a satisfying conclusion. The sudden emergence of love or revelation of love between young Devlin and even younger Gwyneth, occurring on the same day that he sabotages his future by acting in the most astonishing, foolish way, getting himself kicked out of the house and disappearing for six years, is a bit awkward. But the rest of the story, IMO, makes up for it, progressing in a much more believable way.

And all her stories (that I've read) are kinda similar. I think she dreams up the setup and has to work backwards to explain how they got there, then go forwards again. This is my theory. Ahem.

Anyway, the rest of the book works well, leading the protagonists towards each other once again in a slow, choppy, seemingly-hopeless but ultimately inevitable way. What I like is how so much of the story is taken up with all the other relationships that need repair, like that between Devlin and his younger sisters, his brothers, his friends, and between him and the community. Nothing is simple, but there is growth and forgiveness and healing in all of these areas that makes good sense. The fact that some of the repairs are not absolutely completed by the end of the book but are hinted at works well enough, and that includes Devlin's somewhat muted emotions. It's a curious deviation from genre norms, I think, a bending of the rules even, but nothing broken.

I was sad that his sister Pippa still seems broken by the events early in the book and isn't exactly herself by the end, but I think that may be resolved, as I said, in the sequels. And his half-brother is still not quite there. Same answer, I guess.

Anyway, I liked it. It's supposedly the first in the series, though I don't think they have to be read in order.

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Where McWhorter Steps in a Controversy

Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of "Pure" Standard English by John McWhorter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've read books by John McWhorter that are more entertaining than this one, which is still pretty entertaining, but it's excellent information well-presented and worth a read.

The main idea behind the book, or the unifying principle, is language change--how and why it happens--and how to categorize, compare, and evaluate the resulting variants. Most of the beginning section is dedicated to giving a framework for understanding what we mean by an accent, a pidgin, a creole, and other terms describing a language undergoing change. Useful.

I liked the bit about Shakespeare and his refreshing personal opinion about how his plays should be studied in the present. Maybe I like it because I agree with it. Having taught both English as a second language and mainstream high school literature, my opinion is that there is very little utility in teaching Shakespeare in the original. Beyond giving students cultural knowledge and the sense of accomplishment of going through a whole play, which are probably good enough reasons to justify doing one Shakespeare play at some point, there is very little learned by struggling to make sense of language that even educated adults only half comprehend.

(I have read all of Shakespeare's plays in the original, and I have enjoyed the process, but even now I find the very best way to read a play, even one I know pretty well, is to read a portion in modern English, as in "No-Fear Shakespeare," and then read the corresponding section in the original, back and forth. I'm far from a Shakespeare scholar, but compared to every other adult in my life I might as well be. And compared to 15-year-old students, I'm a master of Shakespeare. And it's still hard.)

The point is that while Shakespeare is still recognizably English, easier to understand than, say, Chaucer, and much nearer our own language than the Anglo-Saxon of a thousand years ago, it is very different from modern English and is only diverging more and more over time. English from the year 1600 is not a foreign language, but maybe halfway? (My words, not his.) And our modern English is just as beautiful as Elizabethan English. We're not speaking a debased version or anything. No reason to genuflect to Shakespeare's version of the language.

The main discussion here is about Black English, and it's a difficult conversation, even for the author, who is himself Black. His thinking emerged from the situation in the 90s when "ebonics" was being discussed. I remember the controversy pretty well, because I was teaching ESL at that time and the idea was that Black English should be considered a different language so that the schools could use additional resources to better transition them to standard English. And the point of that was to improve overall achievement, helping them succeed in all of their classes. I supported their goals at the time, but I wasn't well enough informed in the matter to have a strong opinion about whether it would work or not.

There were several responses to this movement. One was to mock it, and with it Black English. McWhorter does an excellent job of responding to this, as it is the central idea of the book still--showing how language changes over time and under certain conditions, producing different varieties within a language and even new languages. He gives Black English the respect that detractors will not, showing how it is systematic, following rules in pronunciation and sentence formation that are as regular as any other language variety, and just as flexible and expressive as any other form of language. (He gives many examples from around the world of similar bundles of varieties, such as forms of German and types of Finnish, that have survived alongside the standard form, which is, after all, just one among many.)

However, he also shows that the evidence doesn't support treating Black English like a second language, disputing some of the claims made by ebonics supporters about how different it is. This put him on the outs with many black scholars, but I found his arguments persuasive. Teaching teachers that Black English is not substandard or something to be despised is useful, elevating the prestige of the home language to the place it should be, helping students avoid the stigma to often placed on such varieties, which does great harm to those students and those communities. But mainstreaming instruction in standard English appears to be the most efficient way to achieve proficiency in that variety, based on studies in many countries, and I am inclined too agree at this point.

In any case, it's an interesting debate, and I feel like he treats all aspects of it with respect and integrity.

I recommend the book for those interested in the topic or in language in general, especially if you enjoy his distinctive style and voice, which I do.

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Where Cool Stuff Happened Real Slow

Sorcerer's Moon by Julian May
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This series wore me out, but I win. Finished. At f'ing last.

I love Julian May. The Saga of the Pliocene Exile is so cool--a long-time favorite. (I loaned the books to a friend and never saw them again....) And I loved the idea of this series so much--more than I loved the actual books, by a lot.

The first one I gave a 5, but I think that was mostly hopeful. It was good, but it cost so much energy to read that I didn't start the sequel for two years. That one was even harder to get through, and though I gave it a 4 back at the start of Covid, that was still more sentimental than real. I wanted to finish the trilogy, but it took me more than five years to work up the strength to pull out the last book and start reading. And even then it took me months, a small piece at a time, reading some every third or fourth or fifth day. Maybe skipping a week or two here and there.

It's not that there isn't some good stuff there, especially near the end. But the overall pacing was brutal. So dull. So little of note happening. There is a great deal of amazing creativity in the series, with cool magic and wild monsters and many excellent characters, but none of it (IMO) is used well. It goes from a setting-the-scene crawl in book one (I forgave the pacing) to a bridging-the-middle crawl in book two (wore me out) to a just nothing-is-happening-that-anyone-cares-about crawl in book three. You know, up until about 460 or 470 pages in, when stuff started to happen.

Many of the characters become a muddle, impossible to remember or tell apart or know what they're trying to accomplish. There are several kingdoms, all with factions and parties, and they're all scheming and meeting and trudging from here to there to do more scheming, and I gave up caring who was who or which side they were on. Halfway through book three, I was still trying to figure out what the author meant for the main conflict to be. Ultimately, it's the human fight against the huge amphibious Salka, but that is buried under so much chit chat and pointless maneuvering that I thought it was just the fight for the throne. Or maybe the weird battle going on between supernatural creatures in the sky.

I should have DNF'ed. My long love for the author made me stick it out, but the dreadful pace and strange resolution in the last 20 pages left me with little to say that's positive. The overall score of 3 for this book is for imagination and creativity and old time's sake. Otherwise--it was a 2. I couldn't do that to the author, though.

Not really recommended. Read her much better book The Many Colored Land and its sequels. Those I highly recommend.

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Where Viv Just Wants a Quiet Coffee Shop

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So, yeah, I liked this a lot. And I didn't think I would.

It's the whole TikTok thing that put me off until now. People tend to hype things that I already know I didn't like much. Makes me not trust them, and people were hyping this. Somehow, I finally decided to take a look, and the good news is a surprise to me: they were right. This is a very good book, in ways new and traditional. 5 stars. It's cool.

I'm okay in general with the idea of cozy genres--cozy mystery, cozy fantasy, cozy romance probably--and not just for others but for myself, because there are LOTS of times when I don't want bleak reality, or grimdark fantasy brutality, or high-stakes tension that makes you (me, the reader) grit your teeth. This is especially true at night. (That's not just me, is it?) I'm cool then with light stories, even YA or middle grade stuff with lower stakes and less cortisol-raising stress. Unfortunately for me, most of the books that I've read that might have been aimed at adults and could be called cozy were kinda lame and not very fun to read. (Most of that was indie, which is always hit-or-miss. And I say that as an aspiring indie author. Some is great. Some not.)

This is smack in the middle of the cozy fantasy category, with low(ish) stakes, little violence (except for the threat of violence), and typical fantasy characters and settings, but with a sunny attitude and a better than usual chance for happiness. It almost looks like it's gonna be a comic fantasy, like Discworld or something, but it's still pretty much mainstream fantasy with just the normal amount of humor. What makes it work is that it feels rooted in something darker, with sadness, chaos, pain, and bloody violence lurking on the fringes of the story while the characters fight (metaphorically) for a better life. We have a kind of found family carving out some peace and some contentment in a small corner of a dangerous world.

This isn't a Pollyanna story (not that there's anything wrong with that), and though it's sweet in places it's not, IMO, too much. (Sweet has to be earned, and I feel like it's earned here.) It's more like a redemption story, and it gives a vibe like the scarred old relative who had a hard life and had a bad temper and wasn't always fit for family gatherings but lived long enough to acquire genuine wisdom and now teaches all the kids how to ride horses or fix their bikes or hit a softball or something and never gets tired and never gets impatient and is everybody's favorite. Know what I mean?

Maybe not.

Anyway, I liked it, and it didn't have any of the flaws I was afraid I'd find. Well written, optimistic, avoiding simple answers while making happiness seem possible, with genuinely varied and likable characters. All that with coffee and treats.

Recommended.

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Where Ghosts Are Laid to Rest

Historical Romances of William harrison Ainsworth Rookwood by Ainsworth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a flawed but entertaining historical novel from an author I usually really enjoy. I don't love everything here, and I have quibbles, but I can't give him a 3. This is enough fun it still has to be a 4.

Most of his novels are historical romances in the same vein as most of Alexandre Dumas or Sir Walter Scott. They're well-researched, exciting, action and adventure novels, though they have pretty high diction and read a little stuffy. I don't mind that. The historical settings and castles and swordplay and escapes are all very fun. This one is a bit different though.

First of all, this one is intentionally filled with gothic elements. We spend a lot of time in crypts, talking about spooky curses and murderous ancestors. The gothic bits come and go, though, and we spend most of the time in action, with disputed wills and secret marriages, with songs and highwaymen and thief-takers, but then get back into Castle of Otranto territory. It's a bit uneven--but that's okay.

Another difference in this novel is how it feels like two stories jammed together. We have the Rookwoods, with half-brothers disputing their inheritance, with relatives attending the old lord's funeral, and one beautiful cousin seemingly destined for one of the half-brothers. The other part of the story is about Dick Turpin the highwayman, with a long scene in the middle where he is chased from London to York. It has nothing to do with the Rookwood manor or anything that went before, except that Turpin was present for some of that. (I hate that he rides his amazing horse to death. No excuse for that. I liked him as a character until then.)

Then back to the Rookwood story. It ends well, IMO, but in the middle we have characters acting so strange that I can't account for their motivations. Sybil, a Roma girl, loves Luke Rookwood, and he loves her, while his half-brother loves Eleanor, their beautiful cousin. But as soon as Luke sees her, he falls in love with her and is done with Sybil. Sybil meanwhile was ready to marry Luke, then said no (when he found out he was the rightful heir) then tricked him to marry him, then was going to kill Eleanor, but then instead killed herself........

Sorry for the spoilers.

There are many more instances of characters behaving oddly. I think we're meant to assume that the curses and prophecies talked about in the beginning have an effect on the characters, pushing them down certain paths, rewriting their wishes, but I could be making that up.

And yet the book is very fun to read, very brisk, with some characters to admire and to hate, with lots of great action. I like that the curse on the family is finally laid to rest, thanks to poor Sybil who saw what had to be done. I could have said this was a wild ride of a 3, but I think I'd rather call it a quirky 4. A curious reader who is new to Ainsworth might just read book III chapter 14 to the end of book 5, which is almost everything with Dick Turpin and his long ride to escape the thief-takers, full of close escapes and amazing action. That bit could probably be a novella all on its own.

Recommended for Ainsworth readers. Others should probably start on another novel.

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Where Grimdark Got Its Start

The Divine Comedy, Volume 1: Inferno by Dante Alighieri
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My score of 4 is a bit of a fudge. As a world classic, you'd think it deserves a time-tested 5. Based on how fun it is to read (not very) it's probably a 2 or maybe a 3, and even that is due more to curiosity more than genuine reading pleasure. But the version I read--the Penguin classic--is very useful, with excellent notes throughout and helpful drawings, making the reading much easier, and that support makes me give this volume an overall 4. You wanna read the Inferno? This edition works for that.

As a story, it reads like fantasy, though there's no real plot--no main conflict, no real danger or trouble for the main character. But at least it's in a fanciful, exotic setting, if horrible, and that imagination is probably the most interesting part of the work for me. It wasn't meant to be taken as fantasy, though. Even in its time, people knew the story wasn't literally true, of course, and could read it like a dream or vision or guess about hell, but Dante treats his work as if it really could be true, as if the whole thing was mere extrapolation from church teaching. That hell existed was a given. That sinners (as defined by the church) would go to hell was also a given. That they would be punished eternally was the same thing. Exactly what that looked like was an open question; I don't know whether Dante thought he was even in the ballpark, but my guess is he kinda did.

The work serves as spectacle, like reading cosmic horror along the lines of H.P. Lovecraft, allowing the reader to imagine more fully a barely-glimpsed idea of a hidden universe. That alone is a pretty good selling point, back in the day anyway. But it also teaches religious lessons like you'd only find in fire and brimstone preaching like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Do the right thing or you'll end up like the liars or the gluttons or the scammers in the Inferno. Probably scared a few straight.

For me, though, it reinforces the emptiness of that kind of faith, the kind of faith motivated by fear of eternal, horrible, unrelenting punishment, an idea so evil that it's hard to imagine it held in the same brain as the idea of virtue. What could be more evil than subjecting a sentient creature to horrible pain, not just for a moment or an hour or a year even but for all eternity? Be good or god will have you tortured. Forever. It's beyond my imagination, though it made perfect sense to Dante and a lot of other people for centuries.

There's a lot to think about, anyway, from art to religion to history to government, and even if you've read it before, or pieces of it, Present You might see more here than Old You did. Who knows?

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