Where Humans Kinda Fade Away

Space by Stephen Baxter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found this a hard read.

Almost DNF'ed a bunch of times.

I'm glad I finished it--but now I'm done. It wasn't much fun to read and I won't look for others by this author. I will give him credit, though, for very big ideas, for creating something worth thinking about. Is that a fair trade for my time and effort? Some people would probably say yes. I'm not sold.

This story, as entertainment, is disappointing, despite its constant promise to get good and be really cool. I'd say the last 45 pages do that. I liked that part. The first 400+ were frustrating. And here's my main objection: the main characters do almost nothing. There's an alien invasion and nobody mobilizes; nobody plans; nobody fights back. The whole book reads like a dream where you try to run and can't, and though you keep finding yourself in a new setting it's the same problem--you're passing through like a wraith, having no effect on the story. The characters are sleepwalking through Armageddon.

Nemoto does some stuff, and on page 444 she accomplishes something important on the planet Mercury. That's enough of a spoiler, and I won't give more, but that was the first time for me, the reader, that I thought "Yay! They're doing something!" For all of the rest of the book, until the very end, the main characters are just observers, looking at a small part of history, reporting an incomprehensible piece of the galactic tale. The author lays them out for us like sticks on the beach, and for most of the story it doesn't add up to anything. You (I) think that maybe you're getting the big picture, but nope. That's not it. It's not until the last handful of pages that anything is made clear.

(Have you ever heard one of those jokes that is spun out to ten or fifteen minutes before you finally get the punch line, and it's a joke that could have been told in about a minute? That's how the story and its much-delayed ending felt here--there's a little burst of sense after hundreds of frustrating pages of random weirdness. And in those jokes, remember, the punchline isn't the point. The joke is on the listener.)

In my opinion.

Malenfant and Madeline and others travel here and there, hitching a ride with the incommunicative Gaijin robots, surviving improbably long, pushed into the future by thousands of years by their interstellar travel, seeing the dwindling and scattering human race stumbling into oblivion. Why they're dwindling is just hinted at. There is no story about how nations tried to push back against alien invasion. There is no organized effort to survive. Minor actions are taken on earth's moon, on other moons, on Mercury, where humans are trying to hang on, but these are all chaotic fragments of stories that don't add up to anything. And the Gaijin robots won't talk, won't explain anything, won't interact in any way that matters until the very end of the novel.

I found it frustrating and unsatisfying.

Five for big ideas. Two for being a slog to read. Let's call it a 3.

YMMV

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Where You Really Need a Gun and a Horse

West of Dodge: Frontier Stories by Louis L'Amour
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second book of Louis L'Amour short stories, and I enjoyed it just the same as the first. 4 stars.

These are stories written to entertain a reader. I like that. I thought for a long time that I didn't really like short stories because the type that tend to get included in magazines that I would try (science fiction, fantasy, and a few others) apparently tend toward the literary. I'd be looking for a beginning, middle, and end, and they'd have maybe one or two but not all three. Or they'd do any number of clever, stylistic things that didn't make for satisfying stories, IMO. Crucially, they just didn't feel like the books I enjoyed in the same genre.

L'Amour isn't like that; these stories are a lot like his novels. This is regular genre fiction, where the author gives you an entertaining story with one or two characters you can get interested in. You want to read for a few minutes before bed? These stories are perfect for that. You want to cheer for a kid trying to get ahead in a tough world? Or a grown man looking for a second chance? These are the stories. I don't think you even need to be very interested in the genre to like them. Westerns probably represent about 1% of my reading, but I like this.

(Why a 4, then, and not a 5? Seems like a fair number. I guess westerns are not exactly my thing, though I liked it quite a lot. Better than I might have guessed ahead of time. Others will maybe like it a little more or a little less.)

I guess what I'm saying is this: if you know of fantasy or SF or mystery authors with short stories like this--fun, short, plot-focused stories with satisfying endings and likable characters--I would appreciate a heads-up. :)

Recommended. (Another one of brother Jon's books.)

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Where Lily Stays Lily

One Night for Love by Mary Balogh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very entertaining book. I enjoyed reading it, hoping for happy endings for a number of characters, wondering how it would all work out, and I was eagerly looking for the answers to questions through the whole second half like it was half mystery. A couple of those questions are left somewhat unanswered--technically revealed, but in a vague way--which I didn't love, but it didn't detract too much. Still a lot of fun.

(For example--Lily was told to find something in her father's bag, and the reader knows it involves a secret. I want to find the bag, or find what was in it. Lily never finds it, unfortunately, and though Neville locates someone who knows what it involved he never tells us explicitly what that was. We're clued into the secret already by that point, so it's kinda moot, but I really hoped they would somehow find the original document, at least for closure. Same for their original proof of being married--I hoped that would turn up, somehow, like in the TV show Belgravia. We didn't need it, but it felt like a missed opportunity.)

But overall, it's a cool plot with good twists and lots of great scenes.

The FMC, Lily, is a great character, original and likable, and so is Neville, which makes them easy to root for. And the people who are at first kinda anti-Lily come around in a way that does them credit, so that we can like them, too, or almost all of them. I like that Lily herself is unaffected, friendly with people of all stations, and remains that way throughout, chatting with people her peers would never chat with, peeling potatoes that they would never peel, but still able to be herself with the gentry. At first, they are put off by that aspect of her character, but later they appreciate it. That's a lot of her charm, for the reader as well as for the other characters in the novel, and she keeps that innocent quality from beginning to end.

Some of the story, by the last few chapters, is a little melodramatic, and that stretches the conclusion out more than I would like. It also takes the tone in a too-serious direction--too many apologies and reminiscences, too many starts and stops and partings, too many "I'll wait until you're ready" moments--so that I winced a tiny bit in the last 30 or 40 pages. But it still was mostly upbeat and fun, which preserved (for me) an "I liked reading this a lot" 4-star rating. (I've read the books in the wrong order, accidentally, so I knew how the plot came out before I started, and I'm not sure if I would have liked this more or less if I had read it in the right order. Doesn't really matter. I enjoyed it fine.)

In any case, I find myself entertained and charmed by Mary Balogh's books, enough that I've already ordered another one in the related series, and I'm looking forward to it. Maybe I'll buy and read them one at a time, all 40 or 50 of them, like ET following a trail of Reese's Pieces...

Recommended.

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Where He's Invisible and a Narcissistic Sociopath

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

You know what? It's not great.

I found it mildly interesting, but he could have made a much better story. The first third of this book is the MC tediously trying to reverse his invisibility. The second third is him recounting the dull story of how he became invisible. And the last third is an action and chase sequence that has the book's only fun scenes. It feels like a missed opportunity.

Imagine you're the first person to think of writing a story about an invisible man. Wouldn't you have your character *do* something with this ability, for good or ill, and make the story about that? Make him a hero or a villain, but have him use his ability for something: solve a mystery, track a criminal, rob banks, get intelligence on foreign spies, something cool.

Or if you're just gonna do what H.G. Wells did, make it a short story. This was so thin it didn't demand even 150 pages. It reminds me of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, where nothing interesting (to me) happens; all he did was show us the marvels of this pretend invention, traveling to amazing places underwater. It's as if both authors expected to wow readers with amazing visuals and unusual settings rather than write a very engaging plot. It is still quite short, as novels go, but longer than it needed to be.

IMO, always.

I found a few things to interest me, especially the final confrontations, and I still want to read other famous titles by the author that I have some curiosity about. But my expectations are lower than they used to be. Maybe he'll surprise me. Fingers crossed.

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Where Timon Loses It

Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not all that fun to read.

As a curiosity, it's all right. That's how I read it. But it's a pretty horrible story.

Timon was a hero of Athens and made himself rich. The early part of the story--first couple acts--he is popular, holding dinners and events, giving his guests not only fine food and drink but gifts, like jewels and other nice things. He also pays high prices for paintings and artwork to support the artists. His man of business keeps trying to warn him that he's overextended, that he has debts himself, but he doesn't listen. Then, flat broke, with creditors demanding payment, he asks his friends for help, and they all tell hm no. He is ruined and flees Athens, cursing it, after one final banquet where he serves his false friends stones and water--then throws the stones at them.

His cursing is so severe it's almost funny:

...Slaves and fools,
Pluck the grave wrinkled Senate from the bench
And minister in their steads!
...Bankrupts, hold fast:
Rather than render back, out with your knives
And cut your trusters' throats! Bound servants, steal!
...Son of sixteen,
Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire,
With it beat out his brains!

That's only part of it. He's pretty upset.

In the last acts, he lives in a cave, digging for roots, and finds gold. Instead of rejoicing and making himself rich again, he gives the gold to thieves and prostitutes and asks them to do even more than they've been doing, to undermine Athens with their immorality. One of the bandits he talks to this way is a little disturbed and says that Timon "has almost charmed me from my profession by persuading me to do it." You're freaking me out, man, and I don't think I want to be a bandit anymore.

This isn't, in my opinion (and who cares what I think?) a very good tragedy. He's supposed to have a tragic flaw--like anger, or pride, or something equally reprehensible--but it seems like his flaw was to be too generous and believe his fellow man was better than he turned out to be. I suppose you could argue that he was always an angry misanthrope, but that part of his personality wasn't revealed as long as he had spectacular good luck. Once tested like Job, he becomes a hater, instead of revealing patience or humility or something.

I dunno. Maybe that's convincing. I think he was just embittered by having literally everyone desert him after he had done so much for them, and it's pretty extreme, but you can sort of see how he got there. His end was tragic, but not really in the classic sense.

IMO.

Anyway, it's somewhat entertaining. It's clearly not as well-rounded a play as many others, as smarter people than me say about it. For completion's sake if nothing else, it's worth looking at.

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Where Everybody Might Have Done It

Jane and the Canterbury Tale by Stephanie Barron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Number 11 in my favorite all-time series. And another 5-star book.

I read this first maybe 15 years ago. Hard to believe it's that long ago. But like the last reread (book 10, I mean), I think I liked it even more this time through. (It was long enough ago that I didn't recall the solution to the mystery, not until I got to the crucial scene, so it was still great fun all the way. Perks of a faulty memory...)

Jane is staying with her wealthy brother near Canterbury when there is a murder, and the victim turns out to be the supposedly-deceased husband of a widow who has just remarried. Jane's brother is the magistrate and has to investigate, leading him to jail a friend of the family and consider others as possible suspects. So many people turn out to have genuine reason to want the man dead, it was hard to find someone who wasn't a suspect.

Lots of twists and turns, lots of social awkwardness (sorry I jailed your sister!), lots of clues and misdirection. All fun. As always, the writing feels both Jane Austeny and modern, a nice trick, and the characters are well-drawn and entertaining. A couple of rogues show up that I think deserve a spin-off series, if only the author could be persuaded. :)

I generally don't reread books. Very rarely. But I enjoy these so much I might become one of those people who goes back through a favorite series every year or two. Not a bad notion.

Highly recommended.

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Where They're Too Beautiful to Care

The Ivory Mischief by Arthur Meeker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'd never heard of this novel when I picked it up in a library bookstore. I just liked the looks of the hardcover--that was what sold me.

It's a great novel. It took me some time to read, but I loved it, and I am struggling to explain to myself what exactly held my attention so long. The genre isn't exactly my thing--straightforward historical novel, leaning more literary than popular, though it apparently was very successful in its day, that being the early 1940s.

Set mostly in France in the late 1600s, it is the story of two beautiful, rich sisters, Magdelon and Cateau. Cateau is the clever one, Magdelon the sweet one; Cateau has more beauty and more lovers, and is more adept in society; Magdelon makes a better marriage and has children and grandchildren, a family life her sister never achieves. But despite their differences, they remain close and live lives more similar than different. Both spend decades in the public eye, wearing the most expensive clothes, taking lovers almost without discretion. Both behave throughout the years of their youth and beauty as if nothing will ever change and the world will always be at their feet. But the novel follows them through their fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, and we see them desperate and afraid for their souls when everything has been taken from them except each other (and Cateau's money, which they both live on).

Much of the novel is about their earlier years and their brilliant careers as fashion leaders, invited to dances and parties and dinners almost every day of the week. The men in their lives come and go, off to war each year, sometimes not to return. Cateau especially seems to have everything anyone could want, but even rich beauties are not immune to grief and loss. Nor is she or her sister immune to befriending the wrong people, or being too flagrant in their disregard for decorum, and both spend years in hiding, if not repentance, until their fortunes brighten once more.

And all of this is true. The novel is fiction, filled with scenes and events and dialogue that is invented, but the people (I don't say characters) were real, and lived these very lives, rising and falling in public esteem, in wealth, in fortune, as found in letters and other documents from the times. In a real sense, this is their joint biography, if somewhat embroidered. And so the ending, which leads us to their passing months apart in their eighties, is more than usually poignant. It's like we knew them as very young women, right around twenty, with all of their lives ahead of them, and fast-forwarded (well, through about 700 pages) to gray hair, failing memory, and anonymity. I found it very touching.

Maybe every tenth or twentieth book I concern myself with prose. It's not one of my cares, usually. But when it's striking, as it is in this novel, I become aware of how much I approve of it. A dull story with brilliant prose means no more to me than a lovingly-painted image of garbage (I don't know; that might be cool, after all...) but an engaging, lively, stimulating novel with amazing prose is fantastic. Meeker uses a lot of ellipses and em-dashes and parentheses, a style I actually vibe with, and I find it adds to rather than detracts from comprehension. Maybe it's just me. Here's a taste literally at random, from page 340:

At thirty-eight--an age at which most of her contemporaries were grandmothers--the Comtesse d'Olonne [Cateau] was still a beautiful young woman. Her outline was as slender and graceful as ever; her eyes were as blue, her curls quite as yellow--or very nearly: Cateau had lately fancied that they were losing something of their new-minted glitter and had experimented, in spite of La Martin's vigorous protests, with various blond powders, none of which, fortunately, had done any lasting damage. Her complexion, too, had retained its pure ivory pallor [the ivory of the title, btw], so that even from as close a point of vantage as her own dressing-table mirror Madame d'Olonne appeared to be the same white-and-gold idol that had been the admiration of Paris for two decades.

Is it more a novel of manners? Maybe so. It reads like many 19th Century novels, for sure. It's beautifully done, whatever category we want to put it in, and I would love it if more people knew about it. And it makes me wonder how many such novels are waiting in bookstores and basements that cry out to be read, like this one did.

Highly recommended.

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