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book reading reviews

Fool Moon – Jim Butcher

Fool Moon is the second in the Dresden Files series of books. It’s fair to say that I’ve seen enough I liked in book 1 to stay with this franchise for a while. There are now I think 14 books and I’ve heard they get a bit repetitive later on but we’ll see how far I get.

With the title it’s perhaps not surprising that this book concerns werewolves. A gruesome series of murders occur on and around the full moon and Harry Dresden is called on for his supernatural advice. Actually at the beginning of the book he knows almost nothing but we learn as he does. There are apparently five different types of creature that could go under the category of werewolf and in this book we meet most of them. The plot concerns which of the various types (if any) committed which of the various murders (are they all from the same perpetrator?) and of course why?

There’s also more in this book about Dresden’s on-going story. We find out a bit more about his past, we see him move on in one relationship whilst apparently getting a bit stuck in another. Also, even though this is only book 2, patterns are developing. Once again Harry gets beaten up a lot. So much so that we have at one point need of a supernatural explanation of how he can keep going at all – properly set up so it’s not pulled out of thin air. Once again Harry has to go it alone and despite his status as sometime consultant to the cops is suspected of the crimes he’s investigating. So some of this already feels like it’s giving us more of the same. However there are signs that this will change in future books. A character that I’d assumed was going to be one of the mainstays of the series got killed off. Also he makes a decision to be more open with his police friend Murphy – which is good because the whole “I can’t tell you what’s going on because of the Mystical-Law-Reason” might be plausible enough but it leads to a fake-feeling kind of dramatic tension – a bit like when a sitcom’s plot is based around a misunderstanding that would be resolved in two minutes if only characters would TALK TO EACH OTHER.

Oh and it also had a dream sequence. I’m not a fan of dream sequences. They’re generally an excuse to be self-indulgent with imagery or deliver up a character’s motivations without having to dramatize them. But there are worse examples of that than the one in this book.

Another pattern-y[*] aspect is that these books are looking very much like detective/police procedurals with fantasy/supernatural set dressing. The bad guys are likely supernatural beasties and in place of CSI tech we have spells and summonings but structurally they work the same way. The question is whether you enjoy the scenery. I think I do (I like the PC Grant books and the same could be said of them) but I also think it’s because Butcher executes that structure as competently as he does that they work. I suspect he could right ‘straight’ crime novels which were just as compelling.

He does write the action sequences well. There’s a scene in a police station which is gripping, frightening and exciting. He manages to make me interesting in a trope – werewolves – that I’m not generally drawn to.

So I did enjoy this. It was “pattern-y” at times but I still enjoy Dresden as a character and there appears to be development there too – both in terms of exploring his back-story and the way his personal ‘arc’ is unfolding.

8/10 – a police procedural with plenty of supernatural splatter.

[*] i.e. formulaic, but I didn’t want to use that word as it carries more of a pejorative overtone than I intend.

P.S. given the title can’t get this completely unrelated song out of my head.

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book reading reviews

Among Others – Jo Walton

Among Others is a pick from my currently reading shelf (i.e. it’s one I’d started before and now finally finished.) I originally bought it when a friend from work suggested it a) because he knew I like SciFi/Fantasy and b) because it was Amazon’s deal of the day that day for 99p.

Among Others tells the story of Morwenna Phelps. She’s a twin whose sister died and she herself was injured in a car accident. She loves to read and specifically she reads SciFi/Fantasy which she devours at a scary and intimidating rate (5+ books a week!). Oh and she sees fairies and can do magic.

Which makes it sound more about that than it is. If it’s about anything it’s about books and stories and how they make you see the world a certain way. It’s also about how that can be a refuge. I think the book makes a case for it not being a withdrawal as Mor, as we come to know her, is always really trying “to live” and it’s not that she abandons ‘real life’ in favour of books, it’s that she has expectations of what life should be that come from books and these expectations cause her to reject certain things about ‘real life’ – things she sees as trivial perhaps.

The book is told from her point of view, in fact it comprises her diary for a period from the autumn of 1979 to the end of Feb 1980. This places some of the books she references very specifically in their time.Which is also the right time for when I was growing up and discovering books and SciFi books in particular.

A big question that arose for me was whether or not the magic was real. Did she really see fairies or did she merely think she did? Was her mother really a dangerous witch or simply someone with mental health issues? I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the book never steps outside of the point of view of Mor, so that question if it arises for you – and it may not – is left open to interpretation.

I enjoyed this book. It’s very good on her everyday life. She’s been shipped off to an English boarding school and is having trouble fitting in – because she’s Welsh, because she reads, because she neither cares about nor can participate in sport. So the sense of a lonely outsider is well drawn. I did feel that she was somewhat ‘spiky’. I felt I ought to have liked her more, on paper she had a lot of stuff going for her – a tragic back-story,  being the outsider, being picked on, being bookish and smart. But I never quite got over the slight sense that she felt herself better than all these other girls who weren’t into books and SciFi.

Another minor irritation – and it is no more than that – was the book references. There were so many and I’d read a handful, had heard of most but not heard of a few. However I got most of what I needed to know about them from context. Which was fine but it rankled every time she compared her situation to characters I knew of but hadn’t read, or concepts I didn’t know from SciFi novels. (If you’re thinking of reading this for example and you don’t know what a karass is then I’d look it up. She explains toward the end of the book but uses it a lot before that.)

As I said though, I did enjoy it. And if you ever felt yourself out of step with others because of a love of books, and especially SciFi/Fantasy then this might well be the book for you.

7/10 – a book about books and about magic (which may be the same thing)

TBR has gone back up to 253 because having finished one book I’d bought two new ones. Need to be careful about that deal of the day. Currently Reading holding steady at 10 because my next book is not from that list. I feel like I’m doing well but then I remind myself that this time last year I’d read 7 books. However that slowed down considerably. Plus I’m reading with an eye to enjoyment not (purely) book count this year.

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book reading reviews

Old Man’s War – John Scalzi

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.

Isn’t that a great way to open a book? Intriguing, it draws you in. I guess there’s nothing in it that isn’t implied by the book’s title but still, I like it.

I read Old Man’s War because I got it as part of the humble bundle back in October and Sword and Laser were doing it for their January pick. I confess the later reason was less important. My record with online book clubs is not great. When I do manage to finish the book in time I often read what’s already been discussed and don’t have much to add. When I do post something often there’s no reply. But I did find it interesting to see what others thought.

Old Man’s War is the story of John Perry who, as we’ve read, enlists on his 75th birthday. The army he enlists with is the Colonial Defence Force and involves him leaving earth, and his former life – he becomes legally dead, behind. The CDF recruits exclusively from 75-year-olds and there are rumours of rejuvenation technology, which is why so many enlist. The truth is slightly more disturbing.

The book follows John through the process step by step – leaving earth, initial induction, the treatment, military training, military campaigns. In fact for the first third of the book it’s pretty much one thing after another rather than a plot per se. Then there’s a section when we get to see John and the CDF battling various alien threats. This seemed mostly just to illustrate the variety of aliens and how they need to adapt tactics to fight them. The final section has something more of a plot.

I enjoyed this book, particulary parts 1 & 3. A common criticism and one I think I agree with is that you don’t really get a sense of an older person. Once we get to the training and the battles John is just a character we’re following and the fact that he has seven decades of experience doesn’t seem to play into it. I’d’ve thought at least in terms of the training we’d’ve see that oldies have less patience for their drill sergeant’s nonsense than your average 19-20-year-old.

I was also not a fan of the book’s treatment of the morals of war. The CDF seem to believe in Manifest Destiny and the one character who was given anything to say against this was also a character shown to be stupid by his actions. It’s true I suppose that there’s a constant tongue-in-cheek tone so how much we’re supposed to take any of this seriously is up for question. I’m told that this is dealt with again in the follow-up books. To be honest though I can’t see myself reading them.

7/10 – good decent old-fashioned spaceships and aliens SciFi.

TBR is down to 253 from 255 (this book plus a short from Nick Hornby – ok but not worth blogging about)