Books

Dave Duncan is an author I am familiar with from mainly from his King’s Blades series, a straightforward and competently written set of mostly-independent tales of supernaturally bound bodyguards. The Alchemist’s Apprentice takes a step closer to the real world, being set in a version of Venice where magic is somewhat more effective than in ours.

The alchemist of the title is Nostrademeus, and the apprentice one Alfeo Zeno, the latter being a character more reminiscent of a Dumas musketeer than anything else. When Nostrademeus is accused of a murder by poison to burnish his reputation, it falls to Alfeo to prove him innocent by unraveling the plot.

Blindsight is a first contact story that turns out to be more about the humans than the aliens, something that was more than a little disconcerting. The narrator explicitly functions as an “interpreter” between pre-Singularity humans and a variety of post-Singularity humans, the types of which include functional multiple-personalities, cybernetic human-machine interfaces, a vampire, and an AI. None of the post-humans seem particularly incomprehensible in their thoughts and behavior, which makes me question the need for a translator – or perhaps serves to point out how effective he is at translating. Suffice it to say, none of the post-humans were especially convincing at being post-human, nor were they especially interesting as characters. They existed primarily to personify their post-human type.

The third volume in SM Stirling’s Dies the Fire series brings the conflict with the Protector to a head.

I picked this up hoping for a mildly interesting tale of intrigue, and what I got was the renaissance through the eyes of a feminist who really, really wishes she could grow up to be a swordswoman. The Privilege of the Sword is not a bad book exactly; it’s an unrealistic premise handled reasonably well with a light dose of intrigue and humor on top. Interesting, particularly for the attention to detail given to the fencing, but not very meaningful.

Dzur is Brust’s long-awaited followup to Issola in the Vlad Taltos series. It’s an interesting mix of new material and old standbys of the Vlad series. In terms of series revelations and introductions, I counted at least five or six events of a similar stature to the Lesser Revelation of Orca. And it’s worth noting that the Greater Revelation of that novel is not directly revealed but gets enough in-jokes that it becomes tiresome.

Micah didn’t really do much for me. About equal parts sex, relationship angst, and supernatural spook. Nothing really to recommend it especially, though the sex didn’t grate nearly so badly as in the last full-length novel.

I have spoken before in this forum on my declining respect for, and interest in, the Anita Blake series. Nonetheless I have consistently picked up the latest book when it was released, hoping for something of a turnaround or change in direction. So far I have been disappointed, though not enough to make a firm commitment to refuse the next installment. Danse Macabre may well be bad enough to break that barrier.

So I went to see the first movie in the Narnia sequence last week. I was hopeful; the trailers presented an image of a movie in the tradition of Jackson’s Middle Earth, based around a classic fantasy series from the same period and sticking faithfully to the work of the original author. It should have worked out well, with the ground already broken, assuming the people involved were competent; instead, the result was disappointing.

The latest and long-awaited book in George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, A Feast For Crows, was released on November 8. The book’s delivery represents the end of a long wait for fans of the series, although – prodded most likely by the degeneration of Jordan’s Wheel of Time series – most fans seem to prefer to wait long enough for Martin to get it right rather than demanding a quick release; and in the face of continuing difficulty with the scope of the work, Martin eventually split the book he had planned into two, publishing what he was done with and leaving the remainder of what he had planned for the next book. The result is a clear triumph, and vindicates that decision.