Note:

India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India is a book about India in transition, especially after the economy was liberalised in 1991. It’s written by Akash Kapur, who grew up in India, spent his early adulthood in the United States, and then returned to live in India. His hometown and the surrounding areas and cities have changed a lot, and he talks to a bunch of different people to figure out how their lives have changed. Sathy is a landowner in a village, which was formerly a position of power, but is quickly becoming irrelevant. Banu, his wife, is struggling to balance her career and her family. Hari and Selvi are recent college graduates from small villages, finding their place in a Westernised corporate world. Veena is an ambitious career woman that is flouting tradition by divorcing her husband and living with a boyfriend. There are a few more people interviewed, like Jayevel the cow-broker and Das the Dalit businessman.

The book is divided into two parts. The first focuses on the good; the burgeoning middle class, the proliferation of women in the workplace, the new businesses and construction and culture. The second part talks about the destruction and disarray that accompanied them – for instance, people’s livelihoods and homes getting destroyed, people that are unsure of their place in the new world.

The stories made interesting reading, but I don’t think they were more than a series of vignettes. It’s true that India is rapidly changing. This means that people can aspire to much more than the government jobs that used to be the only recourse in socialist India, and that Western culture is pervasively affecting Indian youth. India’s economic development is completely ignoring sustainability and damage to the environment. There is still enormous poverty, despite more and more people being successful. I think that’s what Kapur aims to show us with all these stories.

I’m not entirely sure why this book left me so ambivalent. I did enjoy reading about the people. I guess I was hoping for more insight or theories about how India might evolve in the future. I already know that there is a lot of change in India, both constructive and destructive, so I didn’t really learn much from the book. I know that we are neglecting our poor, but that we’re also becoming more individualistic and free, all because of globalisation. Kapur didn’t offer any analysis of this – just platitudes about how nothing is what it seems to be like on the surface. He doesn’t offer any answers or suggestions as to how India might achieve a better balance, he just points out the flaws.

The blurb for this book says:

India Becoming is essential reading for anyone interested in our changing world and the newly emerging global order. It is a riveting narrative that puts the personal into a broad, relevant and revelational context.

I don’t think I’d take it quite so far, but it’s a decent portait of a few lives coping with a country that is rapidly changing.

The Scar is set in Bas Lag, the world of the city-state of New Crobuzon, last seen in Perdido Street Station. Bellis Coldwine, a linguist, is escaping her beloved city of New Crobuzon because of the events of Perdido Street Station (no spoilers, but you’ll recognise some references if you’ve read it) by enlisting as a translator on a colony and prison ship. The ship carries a very disparate group of people, all looking to leave New Crobuzon for various reasons. Then they get attacked by pirates, and recruited to be colonists of an entirely different place – Armada, the floating city.

The world of Bas Lag is incredibly well-realised, and we meet more species and go to far more places than we did in Perdido Street Station. I’ve raved about Miéville’s world-building before, and I will continue to do so in the future. The descriptions of Armada make for spectacular reading – a floating city, built from ships and platforms.

Bellis is an interesting protagonist – she’s an established woman over forty, and I have read very few books that feature people like her. She’s a pretty cold person, but she’s also extremely sad at having to leave her home of New Crobuzon. I wasn’t really sure whether I liked her, but she was certainly a good protagonist. The other characters of the novel were also fun – I liked Silas Fennec and Tanner Sack (in very different ways), and Shekel’s thirst for learning was endearing.

The plot went along at a steady pace, and was pretty engaging. I didn’t see a couple of the twists and turns coming. The ending disappointed me a little bit, because so much was left up in the air.

I have the same problems with this as I have with any Miéville book – it’s a bit cold. I probably would have more to say about this if I hadn’t read The City & the City so recently. Overall, a pretty good book.

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This is book 20 of 25 of my Dec 11, 2011 book challenge.

Rojuun

This book tries to balance both epic fantasy and a lot of humour, and I think it would’ve been better if it had just stuck to one of the two genres. It fails at being a humour book by killing off a bunch of characters to start the story, and the cavalier way that the main characters act afterwards doesn’t reflect that story at all.

The worldbuilding was pretty standard, although I did enjoy some concepts, like the mysterious appearance of the Rojuun. The characters are all Mary Sues, and I had trouble thinking of them as actual people. The writing seemed a bit simplistic (lots of telling and not showing), which also got a bit grating. The romance was also a bit amateurish and somewhat uncomfortable, given the relative maturity of the characters involved. (I also felt the same way about the romance between Siri and the God King in Warbreaker.)

An okay read – I probably only finished it because I’m compulsive about finishing books. I’m somewhat curious about what happens next, but probably won’t get to the other two books anytime soon.

Dindi is a young girl that is nearing her Initiation. She hopes to be picked to join the Tavaedi, who are highly skilled magical dancers. However, everyone she knows thinks that she’s awkward and unskilled, and that she will never make it. The other main character, Kavio, is a skilled dancer that is exiled from his tribe for a crime that he did not commit. His travel is in the hopes that he will find a new home in another tribe.

This is a pretty short book, and it whizzed by. It is supposed to be the first of a 12-part series, so be warned! It was pretty light reading, but each character was really well fleshed out. Everyone was hiding some kind of secret and seemed to be much more than what they appeared to be on the surface. I was amazed at the distinctiveness of each character, especially given that the book is so short and there were quite a few characters. Dindi was a very lovable protagonist, and I can’t remember meeting any protagonist quite like her. I also enjoyed the characters of Gwenika and her sister and mother. Vessia was fascinating, and I can’t wait to find out more about her. I also enjoyed the little touches of detail given to extremely minor characters like Ula and Great Aunt Sullana.

There were a few romantic undertones in this book, but no outright romance yet. I suspect that I will not like the upcoming romantic bits, but there’s definitely enough meat on this story for me to overlook that.

The world of The Unfinished Song is a fascinating amalgamation of customs that I recognised from very different cultures. I enjoyed how it all worked together, and I was glad to read the author’s note at the end about the author’s inspiration for the world.

There are a lot of questions and mysteries in this book, and a lot of characters whose actions that I can’t quite predict. I look forward to reading the rest of the series to find out!

The Hand of Andulain is a pretty standard fantasy. In the grand tradition of Frodo Baggins, Rand al’Thor and Luke Skywalker (Star Wars is pretty much fantasy), Bran is a young man from a quiet, pastoral village. He has reached twenty summers, and is looking forward to tending to the family farm, although he occasionally dreams of adventure. But then he saves an elf Eki messenger who is being chased by some Broken (think Orcs or Trollocs) carrying a powerful magical item, and therefore has to run away from home and family, accompanied by his best friend and his wise old mentor (who is more than he seems.) Along the way he meets a pretty girl, fights some bad guys that are hunting him, and learns that he is the only one with the power to destroy the Dark Lord. Like I said, pretty standard.

This is the first book of a series, so it’s a bit clunky. There’s a lot of setting up and introduction to the world. The world is also fairly standard, but pretty well described. I would like to know more about the magic system and the history of the world. The characters are also quite archetypical, although I did like Alae more than most of the other characters – she seems pretty interesting for a servant girl.

Some of the explanations were repeated quite a bit, which annoyed me. The characters constantly realised things about 50 pages after I realised it, and then proceeded to deliver a speech about how exactly it worked. It’s almost like the author wanted to make triple sure that we understood how something was significant to the plot.

Another annoying thing was that there were quite a few typos. For instance, there was “they road their horses” instead of “they rode their horses.”

Overall, a pretty light, predictable and fun read. I’ll probably pick up the next book at some point when it’s out.

As I mentioned, The City & The City is a detective story, somewhat noir inspired. However, it’s set in the city-states of Besźel and Ul Qoma, somewhere on the edge of Europe. Besźel and Ul Qoma are intertwined cities that are completely independent from each other. The nearest example I can think of is Toll-by-Night and Toll-by-Day in Fly Trap. They are located in the same physical location, but some buildings/streets/locations belong to Besźel and some belong to Ul Qoma. Their culture, language, economic status etc. are very different. Residents of each city are trained to ignore the other city’s sights, sounds and smells. “Unseeing”, “unhearing” etc. are taught to children from a young age. If they break these laws, a shadowy force called Breach descends upon them, and they are never seen again. Tourists and children are allowed some leeway (tourists are deported.)

In this mad world (which is part of our own modern day world), Inspector Tyodor Borlú of the Besźel Extreme Crimes Unit discovers a corpse of a dead woman. However, she turns out to be from Ul Qoma, and seems to have made enemies among powerful people in both cities while investigating the legend of the mysterious, all-controlling third city, Orciny. Borlú can’t resist the mystery and goes above and beyond his duties to investigate this murder.

The worldbuilding in this story is absolutely fantastic. I find it utterly implausible that humans in our current world would put up with the absurd constraints of these two cities, but even so, the world is very well-thought out. I would have expected to have a lot of questions about how the logistics of this worked, but Miéville has laid out a very detailed (and very bureaucratic) world. And of course, there are the obvious unificationists, the hardcore nationalists, the conspiracy theorists, etc. Miéville mentions the myths surrounding the formation of Besźel and Ul Qoma many times, but never actually explains it. I wish that these cities were set on an alien planet (Bas-Lag from his other books, maybe?) or something, the familiarity of our world (email, planes, American embassies) made the cities really jarring.

The murder mystery and the conspiracy were well-thought out and written (although I did suspect the murderer), and I was pretty surprised by some of the revelations (in a “I should’ve seen that! How clever!” way.) I enjoyed the characters, although they seemed to be stock police types from TV shows (with much more profanity.) As usual, it’s hard to empathise with Miéville’s characters – I read the book for the ideas.

I’m still not sure if this book had any fantasy elements – they are hinted at, but I don’t think they were ever made explicit.

The ending of the book left me a bit annoyed and confused – I thought it was a bit of a letdown after the strength of the rest of the book. I don’t want to say more about it, but that’s probably the main reason that I didn’t absolutely love this book.

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This is book 19 of 25 of my Dec 11, 2011 book challenge.

This book is marketed as a “high fantasy set in an era of steam.” I really enjoyed the setting; it was a nice change from the usual medieval-inspired fantasy worlds. (Mistborn: The Alloy of Law had a similar world, although we saw the world in its medieval state in the previous Mistborn trilogy.) The protagonist is Amaranthe, an enforcer (police officer) who suddenly finds herself on the wrong side of the law through no fault of her own. She assembles a crew of misfits (also like in the Mistborn Trilogy) to help her find out what’s going on and perhaps help defeat some evil forces.

This was a fun book – it is written in a lighthearted style but still has plenty of heart. The gang of misfits was also extremely lovable – there’s Books, the drunk professor, Maldynado the preening dandy with a heart of gold, Sicarius, the extremely deadly assassin and Akstyr, the sullen ex-gang member teenager that can also do magic. Even though I thought they were all a bit crazy for going along with Amaranthe’s plan, I think that’s part of their characters – they’re all smart people that feel underutilised.

I also thought Amaranthe was a great protagonist. It’s refreshing to have a fantasy novel that has a non-magic user protagonist. Magic doesn’t actually play very much of a role in the story; it’s just there. Amaranthe is the team’s coordinator and leader, but what she’s really good at is managing people and skills, and coming up with ideas. She’s a competent fighter, but what she’s really good at is talking people into doing things for her. She reminded me a lot of Nate Ford from Leverage, both in her role in the team and that she’s an ex-official good guy doing good things using illegal methods. I also liked the fact that Buroker refrained from introducing any major romantic subplots while exploring various characters being attracted to each other.

Another exciting thing about the book was Amaranthe’s plan to save her empire. Let’s just say that it involved economics, which was pretty unusual.

This is a planned six-book series, out of which three are out. I really want to read Dark Currents and Deadly Games right away, but will probably hold off on it until I get through some more books in my pile. I’m looking forward to seeing the universe of the books explored some more – the magic system and the neighbouring countries especially. I was also a bit dubious that these characters will stay in a team, and I think Buroker addresses that in the next couple of books.

Stranger in a Strange Land starts off well. It appears to be a fun science-fiction story about a human raised among the Martians that returns to Earth and has a huge cultural shock while having to deal with all of Earth’s bureaucracy. I really enjoyed the descriptions of the Martian civilisation and bow it differs from ours, and the plots of the administration to make the protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, sign over his rights. Unfortunately, this part only lasts for the first couple of hundred pages or so.

SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH TO AVOID SPOILERS:

Once Valentine Michael Smith gets accustomed to Earth and its strange ways (or as the book says, once he groks Earth), he takes the logical next step of… starting a cult! Of course, this cult is the right one for Earth’s people, one which teaches them awesome mind powers that means work is unnecessary and also gets rid of jealousy and possessiveness. Everyone has sex with everyone else, except of course, homosexuality is utterly wrong. The highest value in his society is “growing closer” through sex, but men get closer with other men by encouraging the women that they have sex with to have sex with other men. (Presumably Michael’s amazing mind powers prevents sexually transmitted diseases, since he seems to be able to control his body utterly.) And in the end, after he sacrifices his physical form and his cult eats his flesh, he’s revealed to be an incarnation of the Archangel Michael!

END SPOILERS

Okay, so I thought this book was a bit absurd. I did think that it was going to be hard sci-fi, and in my opinion, it wasn’t (although I don’t think that’s what kept me from enjoying it.) Heinlein can write pretty well, as shown by the first part of the book, but the book ended up devolving into preachy philosophical monologues (all delivered by the men, while the women say “I understand now, dear! Can I get you some food?”) The character of Jubal seemed like a Mary Sue stand-in for Heinlein; he’s a writer who writes “bad pulp fiction” but knows that it is trash, but he’s also a doctor and a lawyer and the only person that understands Valentine Michael Smith.

Also, I’m usually very forgiving of old books being representative of the prevailing morals of their time, but still, this book is incredibly sexist. Like I said above, the men always need to explain things to the women, the women spend their days mostly in swimsuits (or later, naked), the women are always concerned about providing food to the men (or are rebuked with threats of “spanking”, all in good fun, of course.) There’s a disturbing statement about rape (“nine times out of ten, it’s the woman’s fault”) that’s said by a woman.

The homophobia was also a disappointment. For a story that preaches free love and “sex isn’t just about babies, it’s to grow closer to people” to be so acutely homophobic seemed like a huge cop-out. I’ve heard this book described as visionary for its message of sexual liberation and anti-bigotry, but then it’s homophobic! I would’ve forgiven it if the topic of homosexuality had not been addressed at all.

I’m glad I read it, though. It’s good to read books I absolutely don’t agree with, once in a while. And Heinlein is still a way better writer than Larry Niven.

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This is book 18 of 25 of my Dec 11, 2011 book challenge.

Azar Nafisi went from a revolutionary Iranian student in the U.S. to being a professor of English literature at the University of Tehran just after the revolution. She describes how the revolution changed Iran and herself, using liberal comparisons and allusions to the works of Vladimir Nabokov, Henry James and Jane Austen and The Great Gatsby. She is extremely frank about her life, even about her initial naivete and her constant confusion about her life.

Once I’d gotten over my expectations of what the book was going to be, I started to enjoy the book. It was still pretty slow reading; I couldn’t focus on the book for long stretches. I think it was because of a few reasons. The first is that life under the Iranian regime sounded very tough, and I couldn’t take reading about it for too long. Secondly, Nafisi’s writing is very poetic, but also quite disjointed and jumps around a lot. Third, she was analysing a few books I hadn’t read, and it seemed a bit dense to me. None of these reasons is a bad thing, of course.

I think that Nafisi’s way of writing really describes her very well – she frequently mentions being confused about what actions to take next and how to counsel her students, and her writing reflects that. She jumps between different time periods and between her interactions with different people. Her constant allusion to books, passages, quotes, characters, etc. was also really interesting – it is clear that she is a professor of literature through and through. As a person who has read a lot but has never taken a college English class, I found those sections of the book fascinating.

I would have liked to read Henry James’ books and The Great Gatsby before reading this one, since they’re now fully spoiled for me. I would’ve gotten a lot more out of the analyses. I did enjoy the analysis of Lolita, and was disappointed that the “Austen” section didn’t really talk much about her books.

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This is book 17 of 25 of my Dec 11, 2011 book challenge.

Anyway, this is a review of four Kindle books by Ruth Nestvold. None of them is as long or epic as Yseult; Looking Through Lace is a single story, and the other three are collections of short stories. Since they’re all pretty short (Yseult is longer than all of them combined), I figured I’d do a single post on them. Here are my reviews, in the order I read the books:

1. Dragon Time and Other Stories

This book contains four short stories: Dragon Time, Wooing Ai Kyarem, To Act the Witch, and Princes and Priscilla. Overall, I thought that it was a pretty strong collection. I was a bit surprised by the fact that all the stories had a strong element of romance to them, but that’s probably because I went into the author’s novel, Yseult expecting a lot more romance than there was, and that skewed my expectations.

I was pretty impressed with the range of settings described in Dragon Time and Other Stories. The titular story is set in a place like medieval Germany, Wooing Ai Kyarem is set in what seemed like Mongolia and Genghis-Khan inspired, and To Act the Witch is set in 17th century England. Nestvold was able to capture very different feels in all the stories, and I really enjoyed that.

I thought that To Act the Witch was the weakest of the stories; the events of the story were too big to be adequately conveyed in such a short story. It felt a bit rushed and not entirely believable. I still enjoyed it, though. Dragon Time was a fun story, although it was a bit too romantic for me. Wooing Ai Kyarem was one of my favourites; I liked Ai Kyarem and her determination a lot. Princes and Priscilla was my other favourite, I also loved Priscilla’s way of taking matters into her own hands, and the humour of the story.

2. If Tears Were Wishes And Other Short Stories

This book had three stories: Feather and Ring, Woman in Abaya with Onion, and If Tears Were Wishes. These are all set in the modern day and feature American women protagonists, but are set in different countries.

Feather and Ring follows Lindsay, a game designer whose marriage and career is falling apart. While visiting Taiwan, she meets a mysterious woman who just might be a goddess. This is a pretty simple and endearing story, and I liked it. I’m not quite sure if I understood the second story, Woman in Abaya with Onion, but I enjoyed it all the same. It follows Haley, a young woman that has a series of hallucinations of previous massacres in the places that she visits, even as she falls in love with a young Egyptian man. It was a bit more ominous than Nestvold’s usual style.

If Tears Were Wishes was probably my favourite of the three stories. It follows a pair of twins whose tears grant wishes. One of the twins, Brooke, is kidnapped to take advantage of her power, and the other, Crystal vows to find her. Things get pretty interesting since each of them has the power to grant wishes. I loved the ending, too.

3. Never Ever After: Three Short Stories

I’ll review the three stories in Never Ever After one-by-one.

A Serca Tale: In a lot of stories, heroes are portrayed as universally likeable. Every woman wants him, and every man wants to be him. But what if there’s a woman that doesn’t want him, but has been promised to him by people that assume she does? This story is set in an Eriu similar to that of Yseult, so I enjoyed the familiarity. I wish that the heroine hadn’t fled one man only to end up with another, but I suppose it’s the freedom of choice that matters. I did enjoy the story, though.

King Orfeigh: I really enjoyed this story, which tells of a king who has lost his wife to the faerie king, and has been trying to find her and win her back. It’s written in the second person, which I found kind of jarring at first, but got used to pretty quickly. The story is heartfelt and touching.

Happily Ever Awhile: This story explores Cinderella’s life after she marries her young Prince Charming and lives “happily ever after.” Being married to a prince has its drawbacks – he has to rule a kingdom, and lead its men to war if there is one. Ellie manages to find happiness, though. Happily Ever Awhileis a fun story, and manages to balance the fairy tale and the realistic quite well.

Overall, a great collection of stories!

4. Looking Through Lace

Looking Through Lace is the story of Toni, a xenolinguist who is assigned to work with a first contact team. She’s been relegated to doing grunt work until now, and is really excited for the opportunity to prove herself.

The alien world in Looking Through Lace is fascinating – although the inhabitants are descended from humans, they have a unique history and culture. The women speak an entirely different language among themselves that the men are not allowed to learn, and Toni is determined to figure out how and why that happened. However, she has a jealous senior colleague and the affections of an attractive native (who just happens to be in a group marriage) to contend with.

I enjoyed reading a science-fiction story by Nestvold; all the other work I’ve read by her has been fantasy. She keeps up the excellent worldbuilding and characters. I found the revelations concerning the history of the world very interesting. The antagonist xenolinguist seemed like a bit of a caricature, but the interesting alien world more than made up for it.