Rosemary and Rue

I heard Seanan McGuire speak at 4th Street Fantasy several years ago.  I looked up her books afterwards and they sounded interesting, so I grabbed Rosemary and Rue, the first book in her October Daye series.  I finally got around to reading it now.

Rosemary and Rue opens with this really intriguing prologue.  October "Toby" Daye is a private investigator who just happens to be a changeling (a half human-half faerie).  She's tailing her only suspect in a kidnapping case (the wife and daughter of her liege lord and friend have disappeared).  The suspect (her liege's brother) gets the better of her and turns her into a koi fish.The prologue ends with Toby saying that the koi pond "was my home now, the only one I'd know for fourteen years."

So that was a pretty cool hook.  Unfortunately, chapter one opens with Toby working at a grocery store fourteen years and six months later; the curse had been broken somehow six months earlier, and she was trying to put her life together.  Her husband and daughter wanted nothing to do with her (they believe she left them fourteen years ago).  And Toby wants nothing to do with the faerie world because it caused all of this.

I say this is unfortunate because I thought it would be fun to see what happened - how the curse was broken, who broke it, etc.  But nope.  Skip ahead.  McGuire gives details a bit later in the narrative, but it's not very satisfying.

Anyway, a faerie noble, the Countess Evening Winterrose (who happens to be the only one Toby is really speaking to) is murdered.  Before the murder, Eve calls Toby and lays a binding on her, so that Toby must discover who the murderer was or else she will die.  This forces Toby back into the world and life she left behind. 

While Toby is much weaker than her mother, she inherited her mother's ability to taste blood and relive the blood's memories.  It's pretty neat.  She does this pretty early in the story (going to Eve's murder scene to learn what she can).  There's a part later in the story where Toby (and a couple of other changelings) is attacked and another fae, Tybalt, saves her.  Tybalt gets the attackers blood all over everything (including his shirt).  It was obvious to me that Toby could discover who had hired the attacker at that point.  And it was obvious to her too: she tried to tell Tybalt that, but he shooed her away (to be fair, she had almost died a couple of times - the attacker had shot her with iron, which had almost killed her.  Then the same attacker was waiting for her when she was leaving the Japanese Tea Gardens where her friend, Lily, had managed to heal her).  But then there was about 100 pages of Toby checking out random leads before FINALLY going and getting Tybalt's shirt to discovered who had hired the guy. 

Warning: Major Spoiler Ahead. 

The culprit was a bit surprising in some ways.  It was her changeling friend/old mentor Devin.  Devin had been friends with Eve, but she had a Hope Chest, which has the power to turn changelings into either full humans or full faerie, whatever they wish.  Devin wanted it to live forever.  So he killed Eve, and kept sending random people to go and kill (or torture then kill) Toby to stop her from getting the chest (or find out where she had hidden it).  The weird thing about him doing it is that he kept sending kids who had no idea about his plan to hang out with Toby.  Or like he would patch up Toby, then send a Doppelganger in to torture and kill her.  Or he called in a huge favour to heal her from iron poisoning, then turned around to murder her (this was really, really weird.  It would have made more sense if ANYONE else in the book had called in the favour instead).  These were really, really weird moments.  I guess he was wanting Toby to back off from the investigation and kept asking her to - it was only when she kept saying no that he'd send more things to murder her.  

Other than these plot issues (this and the weird prologue to chapter 1 time gap I mentioned earlier), I really enjoyed the book.  And to be fair, this was McGuire's very first novel.  So I would be interested in reading more from her (and more October Daye) in the future. :)

Guards! Guards!

Waaaay back in 2009, a couple of friends recommended that I give three different Discworld novels a chance after I read The Colour of Magic (twice!) and The Light Fantastic.  The three novels that were recommended to me were Reaper Man (which I read in February 2009), Wyrd Sisters (which I read in July 2009), and Guards! Guards! I'm not proud of it, but it's taken me EIGHT YEARS to finally get around to reading Guards! Guards!  I've picked it up a few times, or moved it to the top of my reading pile.  But it always gets shoved back for some reason.  Well, no more.  Over the weekend I finally sat down and actually READ the thing!

Guards! Guards! is the first book about the Night Watch of Ankh-Morpork.  There's Captain Vimes, the drunken leader of the Watch.  His second in command, Sergeant Colon.  Corporal Nobbs, the opportunistic thief ("the door just happened to be open, honest" sort of thief).  And Carrot Ironfoundersson, their new recruit.  Carrot is a massive man who was raised by dwarves - his dwarven father sent him to Ankh-Morpork to make a man of him.  Carrot is the only one of the bunch who believes being a member of the Night's Watch is a worthy occupation (almost everyone else in the city, including the other three members of the Watch, think the Watch is useless).

A secret society is plotting against the Patrician (the ruler of Ankh-Morpork) - they've decided to summon a noble dragon to terrorize the city a little bit, then set someone up to conveniently proclaim himself descended from the old kings of Ankh-Morpork and slay the dragon.  But things go a bit wrong and the dragon ends up crowned king instead!  And only the members of the Night's Watch, with the help of the Librarian of Unseen University (who happens to be an ape),and Lady Ramkin (who happens to breed swamp dragons), are ready to risk being burnt to a crisp to dethrone the new monarch.

I know it's been almost a decade since I last read a Terry Pratchett novel, but I honestly think Guards! Guards! was my least favourite of the three Discworld books that were recommended to me.  I found the book a bit hard to get through, especially since about half of it seemed to be the set up for the latter half (the dragon wasn't crowned king until over halfway through the story!)  The most entertaining thing about it was Carrot, who took his duties seriously (he read the law book of Ankh-Morpork and would be constantly quoting it while arresting people.  Plus he was a crazy dwarven-trained machine who could defeat basically whole armies while trying to arrest people. Oh and every here and there you'd get a letter written from him to his dwarven parents.  He was fun!)

Vimes was a bit of a tough sell to me.  I was not a fan at all at the beginning.  But the way he played off other characters (specifically trying to reign in Carrot) was fun.  The other two members of the Watch were just okay in my mind.  They were fine, but they seemed much more like stereotypes than characters to me.  Lady Rankin was pretty fun though.  :)

So yeah.  This was not my favourite Discworld novel.  But I think it was better than The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, so that's something.  I doubt I would recommend Guards! Guards! to anyone though.

When Demons Walk

It's been far too long since I've read a book by Patricia Briggs. I was bingeing on her books back in 2009. But then I started hoarding them for some reason instead of reading them. So I finally grabbed When Demons Walk off my shelf yesterday because it is a standalone book. I very quickly remembered why I liked her books so much as I very nearly finished the book last night (I very nearly didn't get any sleep in favour of finishing it - luckily I did stop to get a few hours of sleep).

When Demons Walk is the story of Shamera, a thief and mage who lives in the bad part of town. After several people, including her mage master, are killed, she is enlisted by Lord Kerim, Reeve of Southwood, to find the killer. Though Sham is not fond of the Easterners who conquered her city (and killed her family), she agrees to help find the killer to avenge her master. She poses as Kerim's mistress so she can enter the court and hopefully find the killer there. While the Easterners do not believe in magic, Sham and the other people of Southwood do; while Kerim does not believe it is possible, Sham knows they are hunting for a demon. It will take all of her magical power(and a good deal of luck) to find and defeat the demon.

I really liked Sham. She was smart, funny, and very capable as a heroine. As someone who grew up in the Court, she was able to blend in really well (and had a lot of fun playing the mistress who fawns over her lord). Her relationship with Kerim was quite a lot of fun with the two of them joking and teasing each other all the time (yet acting for everyone else around them). Quite honestly, a lot of the characters were fun. I loved the Shark and Dickon almost as much as Sham and Kerim.

I waan't a huge fan of the book's ending though. I felt like Briggs deliberately withheld details of the plan until they were happening to keep the reader in suspence. 

All in all, while I enjoyed reading When Demons Walk, it wasn't my favourite book by Briggs (it's quite possibly my least favourite, which is saying something about her writing - my lease favourite book was still one I didn't want to put down!!!) But if you want to read a better book from her Sianim series, go with Steal the Dragon or Masques instead.

The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made

I've been wanting to read The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell for awhile now.  My brother and I watched The Room many years ago with some friends; I bought The Disaster Artist as a gift for him several years back because I'd heard it was good; neither of us got around to reading it.  But when I saw a trailer for the movie based off of the book, I told my brother I would drop everything I was reading and read The Disaster Artist instead.  He originally thought I was joking, but true to my word, when he lent it to me I started it.

The Room is a movie created by Tommy Wiseau.  Wiseau writes, directs, produces, and stars in the movie (he plays the main character, Johnny).  Greg Sestero plays Mark, Johnny's best friend who is sleeping with his fiancee. It's a simple story with a simple plot, yet it manages to be absolutely crazy, with nonsensical dialogue, crazy plot holes, and a whole bunch of random shots of skylines.  It's honestly one of those movies you will be wondering how it got made as you are watching it.

The Disaster Artist is the story of how The Room got made, as told by Sestero.  It has two plot threads: the first one is about Sestero's life: how he got started in acting and how he met Wiseau (those two things are really closely intertwined).  The second is how Wiseau made the movie.  Slowly the two stories converge to give you one big long story.

The Disaster Artist is a fascinating look at not only how a notoriously bad movie got made, but also at how hard it is to succeed when you are not a "normal" person (particularly in a place as cutthroat as Hollywood).  I really enjoyed reading it, and look forward to James Franco's movie version this December!

The Ghost Bride

I've been wanting to read The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo ever since I came across it at work. It sounded like a very different but interesting read.  I ended up buying it for myself around my birthday.  I intended to get to it a bit sooner than I did (for some reason I got distracted by Charles de Lint's The Wild Wood), but I still managed to read it within a month of getting it.  I'm pretty proud of myself - with the amount of books I have piled up waiting to be read, that's super good timing!

The Ghost Bride is the story of Li Lan, the daughter of a merchant who has withdrawn from the world (and let his business and contacts slide as a result).  Because of this, Li Lan has no real prospects.  But another powerful family, the Lim family, contacts her father and requests that Li Lan become a ghost bride to their recently deceased son.  Their son, Lim Tian Ching, begins courting her in her dreams.  In an effort to rid herself of his attentions, she accidentally overdoses on a potion a medium gave her.  Sending her body into a coma, her spirit is released into the afterlife.  There she gets drawn up with the supernatural Er Lang, who is trying to figure out what is going on with the Lim family in the afterlife (because they clearly have some clout with the border guards).

I loved Choo's writing style.  It really set the stage for 19th century Malaya.  And I really liked the world of the Malayan afterlife.  My major complaint was that parts of the story were very predictable (such as who Li Lan's mother actually was in the afterlife, or what Li Lan would ultimately choose for her own life).  I know that some people (here are two examples) complained that Li Lan wasn't a very engaging character, but I didn't really have much of a problem with her.  While she sort of failed to save herself all the time, she was at least trying.  And since she was a young woman who was not at all worldly (and was largely left in her house, or only went outside when accompanied by her Amah), I thought the way she was seemed entirely fitting.

Overall, I enjoyed The Ghost Bride, and would be interesting in reading Choo's second book, whenever it comes out. :)

The Wild Wood

I've wanted to try reading something by Charles de Lint for awhile now, especially after hearing him speak at Ad Astra in Toronto a few years back. Somewhere along the way I picked up a copy of The Wild Wood, which sounded interesting. I don't know why exactly I decided to read it right now (I was going to start The Ghost Bride, but changed my mind at the last second and started this instead).

The Wild Wood is the story of Eithnie, an artist who has retreated to her cabin to try to reclaim her lost artistic muse. Her paintings have been lacking soul - and critics have been noticing this as well - so she's hoping getting back to nature will help. But after a particularly troubling vision of faerie creatures, she flees to her friends in the desert. Thanks to their wisdom, she returns, determined to discover whether the faerie creatures are real (and what they want if they are).

I really liked de Lint's writing, especially near the beginning of the book. I particularly liked his descriptions (they weren't as jarring as some of Stephen King's were in The Gunslinger). I also really liked Eithnie as a character; I felt I could really relate to her. 

I wasn't a fan of how abruptly the book seemed to end. I felt like Eithnie struggled to accept the faerie creatures for 3/4 of the book, but once she did accept them, things kind of fell into place a little too neatly (this was also not helped by the fact that the only person she really told everything to sort of accepted everything right away - it just seemed too easy I guess in a story that started off questioning what was real).

But for the most part, I quite enjoyed reading The Wild Wood. I'll have to give de Lint's other books a shot.

Aquaman: Volume 8

So here it is: the final Aquaman graphic novel before Aquaman: Rebirth, Aquaman: Out of Darkness. I saw it at the library and had to get it since I've read the other seven in the series.

Arthur wants to create an embassy on the American coast. That way Atlantis and the surface world will be able to learn about each other diplomatically. He asks Mera to head the mission. She reluctantly agrees.

Meanwhile a mysterious creature has been killing people on land. The attacks look like shark bites, which is odd because many of the killings have been happening on land, away from the sea. The FBI calls on Arthur to solve the case, which brings him into contact with Dead Water, a creature that can teleport through the tiniest drop of water. When Arthur discovers Dead Water used to be a man, he must go to extremes to stop him (including keeping the man extremely dehydrated so he won't revert back to Dead Water) and find out what happened.

I've been reading Rebirth since it started, but I missed all of these stories. It's nice to finally be caught up (and to know where Dead Water came from). I'm still waiting on that war of the seven seas promised at the end of Volume 4 though).