fantasy reading quest

[bunrab]

As I described in the previous post, trying to read 5 fantasy books by June 21. Well, I don't really have to try hard; I read enough that I'll have far more than 5 by then. The part that's a challenge for me is remembering to blog about them, and then writing a post that actually says something more than "I read this."

So today's book is Brazen by Kelley Armstrong. It's the newest entry in a werewolf-and-vampire series, a minor entry in several senses of the word, and a disappointing one. Its purpose is apparently to convince us that there's more to a particular minor character than there appears to be, and I didn't find it convincing.

First off, it's barely novelette length - there's not much story here, not even for the short length of the book. What brings the price of the book up to that of others in the series is supposed to be the illustrations - a whopping three of them, on glossy page inserts, none of them necessary and none of them at all useful in furthering the story nor in clarifying anything from the text. So, if you were to pay the list price of the hardcover (I got it from the library; I don't buy hardcovers any more), you'd be paying for a longish short story in which nothing gets resolved, with three glossy black-white-and-red illustrations with no action in them.

When I say nothing happens, I mean it. Well, a few new characters brought in as redshirts get killed, as redshirts will. But the book starts with our protagonist hunting for a murderer/evil-vicious-killer-werewolf, and a female mercenary soldier/security/bodyguard type who's supposed to be also looking for the psycho werewolf gets distracted by the fact that she has the hots for our protagonist. At the end of the book, several people are dead, the psycho killer is still on the loose, and the mercenary still hasn't gotten into the protagonist's pants. The only thing we've accomplished in terms of the overall arc of the series is that Nick hasn't screwed up his part of following the guy, not much, anyway, nowhere near as much as everybody else thought he would. Gee, that's exciting.

If you're following Armstrong's series, there's no real need to read this, I don't guess, and if it doesn't make it to your library, you can nonetheless read the next one without having lost any major threads in the series arc.

Other things I've read lately, some of them partly fantastical:
The Amazing, Enlightening And Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley which is a graphic novel. A lot of written content, unusual characters, a story with only the barest touch of fantasy (and one we don't find out about till much of the way through the book). The mysterious scene with beavers pictured on the cover isn't really an important part of the book - it's something from near the end, that's still mysterious when we've finished. I liked the book - it's an unusual story, and the illustrative style is interesting - but a little of this goes a long way; I would find the affectations of the "voice" of the story annoying if I were to read them in any larger doses.
How to Fake a Moon Landing: Exposing the Myths of Science Denial - nonfiction done in graphic novel format, which doesn't really add much to the writing. That is, having illustrations does help in explaining the science involved, but there was no need to have the entire thing spoken by talking-head illustrations. Except as a way to spin out fewer than a dozen short-essay-length explanations into an entire book. And not all the chapters are exactly to the point; there's a difference between the weirdoes who think the moon landing was a hoax, and people who are doing natural gas fracking, in terms of how they affect the public's understanding of how science works. If you regularly read science articles in the paper, or in science magazines, none of this will be new to you; you already know that people who firmly believe that the earth was created 6000 years ago are anti-science, and you already have an idea that the methods of science, including peer review and replication of experiments, tend to minimize hoaxes. Not prevent them always, but minimize them and eventually expose them. You might, though, want to get a copy of this for your local high school's library, where it will be new material to some kids and the graphic format will convince them to read through it.

Now tackling a much more substantial volume: Daniel Abrahams. It's apparently the third in a series - new on the library shelves; I often start series in the middle and then decide whether it's worth going back and reading from the beginning. I liked Abrahams' Long Price Quartet, mostly, so this has promise. Stay tuned.