Orbiting Jupiter / Gary D. Schmidt

4 out of 5 stars

When Jack meets his new foster brother, he already knows three things about him:

Joseph almost killed a teacher.
He was incarcerated at a place called Stone Mountain.
He has a daughter. Her name is Jupiter. And he has never seen her.

What Jack doesn’t know, at first, is how desperate Joseph is to find his baby girl.  Or how urgently he, Jack, will want to help.  But the past can’t be shaken off. Even as new bonds form, old wounds reopen. The search for Jupiter demands more from Jack than he can imagine.

This tender, heartbreaking novel is Gary D. Schmidt at his best.

You can tell all you need to know about someone from the way cows are around him.

This is Jack’s opinion concerning his new foster-brother, Joseph, who may have trouble with teachers and the other kids in school, but he is loved by Rosie the cow. Generally, I do find animals’ responses to people to say a bit at least about their mood. Horses certainly know whether you are paying attention or not (and will plant a big hoof on your foot if they are displeased with your lack of regard).

Milking cows, as Jack and Joseph do, is an intimate task. I learned to milk as a youngster, with a gentle old cow named Stubby. Stubby had her tail frozen off as a calf and so couldn’t whip you with it as you milked—a bonus for us apprentice milkmaids. I remember that my dad had twine tied by the other cows, so that he could capture that tail and avoid being slapped by the frequently-urine-soaked tassel at the end of it. And if a cow is unhappy with you, they will whip you with that tail and stomp their feet. Milking takes a while, crouched on a little stool, with your forehead pressed against the warm flank of a cow. If you aren’t calm at the start, you will be by the end—it is a meditative task, perfect for a young man who needs to calm down and contemplate his life as Joseph does.

I must confess, I have warned certain of my friends, “Dogs don’t like that guy—stay away from him.” This from a woman who is none too fond of dogs (mostly because they refuse to just be mildly friendly but insist on taking liberties). In Cuba at dinner one night, my friend suddenly asked me, “What’s wrong?” One of the stray dogs was under the table, determinedly licking my toes! Apparently I taste delicious, as excessive licking is one of several complaints I have about dogs. I’m not sure what that says about me, however.

This is a young adult novel—easily read in an afternoon and it depicts farm life extremely well. If I have any quibbles with it
(spoiler show) . To balance that, there are a variety of adults, many supportive, some jerks, just as in real life—giving the reader a sense that not everyone will be against them always. Generally, I would not hesitate to recommend it to young readers or their parents.

Cordelia's Honor / Lois McMaster Bujold

4.5 out of 5 stars

Shards of Honor - Betan Cmdr Cordelia Naismith and enemy Barrayaran Aral Vorkosigan are attacked and marooned together. Aral, misnamed "Butcher of Komarr", captures her. They exchange meanings of honor and love, separate for homes. Later demoted to Captain, Cordelia runs into Aral, after his sadistic cousin Vorrutyer, and warped ugly bodyguard Sgt Bothari. Cordelia flees Betans who ignore truth.

Barrayar - Aral is appointed Regent of baby heir by dying Emperor. Cordelia, now pregnant Lady Vorkosigan, breathes antidote to poisonous gas. Her son Miles has fragile bones that break on birth and will limit his adult height and durability.

This is a combined volume, consisting of numbers 1 & 7 of the Vorkosigan saga, Shards of Honor and Barrayar. It is hard for me to believe, but although they are two halves of the same story, there was about 10 years between their original publication dates. I am really glad to have read them together.

I really enjoyed Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan as a main character. She was practical, capable, smart, and sensible. And despite all of that, she fell in love with a guy on the wrong side of a war.

This was kind of an anti-fairy tale romance. Cordelia and Aral are mature people, not impulsive 20-somethings. They talk about the things that are bothering them and they count on one another for support. In short, they have a real relationship.

Cordelia is from a rather Gene-Roddenberry-esque culture, that of the Beta Colony. Decisions are made rationally, government is democratic, knowledge is valued, sexual preferences are publically acknowledged, and frank discussions are seen as normal. Sure, a scientific expedition of Betans is rather like herding cats—everyone thinks they get a vote—but the aim is reasonably pure. I adored Bujold’s idea of uterine replicators to take the nasty part out of pregnancy—and all their medical procedures are first rate.

Contrast that with Aral’s society on Barrayar. A military hierarchy, a royal family, inequality of men and women, hidebound by tradition, a bit primitive in medical technology. As Cordelia struggles to figure out all of the nuances of this society, there are bound to be misunderstandings. Add to that political intrigue, and you’ve got a recipe for a good story.

I also appreciated that there’s no pretense that people have forgotten Earth and its history. They discuss Medieval history and one character in particular has become a devotee of the Marquis de Sade. I’ve always thought it would be a bit weird to have a society forget its roots while still having enormous databases full of information.

Favourite bits: The Betan psychiatrist and the fish tank; Cordelia’s use of a shopping bag at the end of Barrayar. This is my first venture into Ms. Bujold’s writing, but I think I can safely say that I love her style and will happily work my way through this whole series.

Books 211 and 212 of my science fiction and fantasy reading project.

Real Tigers / Mick Herron

4 out of 5 stars

London’s Slough House is where disgraced MI5 operatives are reassigned to spend the rest of their spy careers pushing paper. But when one of these “slow horses” is kidnapped by a former soldier bent on revenge, the agents must breach the defenses of Regent’s Park to steal valuable intel in exchange for their comrade’s safety. The kidnapping is only the tip of the iceberg, however, as the agents uncover a larger web of intrigue that involves not only a group of private mercenaries but also the highest authorities in the Security Service. After years spent as the lowest on the totem pole, the slow horses suddenly find themselves caught in the midst of a conspiracy that threatens not only the future of Slough House, but of MI5 itself.

This series is really growing on me. Who can resist the slow horses, the failed MI-5 agents, these anti-Bonds?  All of them desperately want to be back in the espionage game and not pushing paper after boring paper over in Slough House, a facility so obscure many members-in-good-standing of MI-5 don’t even know it exists.  So when any excuse presents itself, they fall all over themselves to get out there and try to kick some butt.

For me, it’s the characters that really make these stories work. I can’t help but root for River Cartwright, who ended up at Slough House when a practice op that he was running was sabotaged by a frenemy and went horribly wrong.  I’m cheering for him to finally be able to prove his worth and go back to the main office.  All the denizens of Slough House have some horrible failure in their backgrounds—alcoholism, gambling addiction, a reliance on cocaine, you name it.  And then there’s my favourite—Rodney Ho, who is just so obnoxious that no one wants him in their office.  Rodney has no social skills, a vivid fantasy life, and the ability to work the internet like no one else in the office.  If you’re a Criminal Minds fan, think of him as a male version of Garcia with no redeeming human graces.  His misguided attempts to blackmail the other slow horses or try to attract romantic attention provide the light moments in these thrillers.

Of course, there is always Jackson Lamb, the rather revolting supervisor of this motley lot. Messy, rude, bigoted, and able to produce a reeking fart at will, he is about as far from the Bond ideal as you can get, and yet he proves himself a very capable agent on many occasions.  One of the reasons that I keep reading is to figure out exactly how Lamb got to this situation.

If you’re tired of professional spies wearing slick clothes and drinking sophisticated cocktails, give the Slough House bunch a try. I think you’ll be totally entertained.

Seventh Son / Orson Scott Card

3 out of 5 stars

From the author of Ender's Game, an unforgettable story about young Alvin Maker: the seventh son of a seventh son. Born into an alternative frontier America where life is hard and folk magic is real, Alvin is gifted with the power. He must learn to use his gift wisely. But dark forces are arrayed against Alvin, and only a young girl with second sight can protect him. 

You may have heard—O.S. Card is a Mormon. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It just makes this little story a trifle more interesting, because you see, our main character Alvin goes through A LOT of the things that Joseph Smith did, growing up. Like Smith, Alvin has parents who disagreed about religion and like the Smith family, Alvin’s family practices a religious folk magic in addition to Christianity. Smith also claimed, like Alvin, to be confused about the claims of competing religious denominations, a situation which is resolved by a religious vision. In addition, Smith suffered from a bone infection in his boyhood, although presumably not from having a mill-stone fall on his leg, the scenario in Seventh Son. Interestingly, Joseph Smith had an older brother named Alvin. [For all these details of Smith’s life, I am reliant on Wikipedia—not the most reliable of sources, but not the worst either].

Add to that the alternative history aspect of the story—a North America which gets settled and governed in a radically different way (George Washington, for example, gets beheaded for treason). Here the hex signs on the Pennsylvania Dutch barns (which began as pure decoration) are used to suggest a whole practical magical system for this timeline (and the author presumes that they actually spoke Dutch rather than Deutsch). Add to that a rather odd Puritan set of names for characters (Alvin’s twin brothers Wastenot and Wantnot, for instance and his brother Calm). Somehow this odd mixture of religions does make a rather understandable system.

Seventh Son’s main character, Alvin, does suffer rather badly from “chosen one” syndrome, but as a seventh son of a seventh son, it seems he just can’t help it. He is destined to be special because seven is viewed as being such a lucky number. In addition to his birth order, Alvin is born with a caul (membrane) over his face—yet another omen of a child destined for great deeds. Card has pulled out all the stops and made Alvin into the special-est snowflake that he possibly could.

I have to say that the religiousness of the book’s characters (especially in the beginning) was a bit off-putting for me, but by about half way through I had reached some kind of stasis and was enjoying the story more. However, I found the ending rather abrupt. At least there wasn’t a cliff-hanger, but a reader wanting to know “how things end” will very obviously have to continue reading the series.

This was book number 210 in my Science Fiction and Fantasy reading project. 

Rosemary & Rue / Seanan McGuire

4 out of 5 stars

The world of Faerie never disappeared: it merely went into hiding, continuing to exist parallel to our own. Secrecy is the key to Faerie's survival—but no secret can be kept forever, and when the fae and mortal worlds collide, changelings are born. Half-human, half-fae, outsiders from birth, these second-class children of Faerie spend their lives fighting for the respect of their immortal relations. Or, in the case of October "Toby" Daye, rejecting it completely. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the fae world, retreating into a "normal" life. Unfortunately for her, Faerie has other ideas.

The murder of Countess Evening Winterrose, one of the secret regents of the San Francisco Bay Area, pulls Toby back into the fae world. Unable to resist Evening's dying curse, which binds her to investigate, Toby is forced to resume her old position as knight errant to the Duke of Shadowed Hills and begin renewing old alliances that may prove her only hope of solving the mystery...before the curse catches up with her.

”There’s rosemary and rue. These keep seeming and savor all the winter long. Grace and remembrance be to you.” –William Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, Act 4, Scene 4.

Add to that quotation Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet who tells us that rosemary, that’s for remembrance. And the name of the plant rue has become synonymous with regret and repentance. There’s a lot of remembering and regretting in this book.

October (Toby) Day is spending a lot of time remembering her family, her old job, the circumstances which separated her from both of those, her childhood, you name it. If she was to choose a Facebook status, she would have to select “it’s complicated.” You see, she’s a changeling—half human, half fae—not truly accepted by either community. And she spent 14 years as a fish (a koi in an ornamental pond), cursed when she ran afoul of a couple of powerful fae when she was following them in her former role as a private investigator. Nobody knew where she was (until the spell finally wore off) and her mortal husband & daughter now want nothing to do with her. Since those relationships have been ruined, October isn’t really in the mood to re-contact the fae either.

But sometimes you don’t get a choice in these matters. Despite her lowly Safeway job, as she tries to catch up with 14 years of societal progress, one of her powerful full-blooded faerie frenemies binds her once again—this woman (who knows that she will be killed) tasks October to avenge her murder using her investigative skills.

There is copious use of one trope that really bugs me—that of the person who is absolutely sure that no one wants to hear from them or spend time with them because of something they have done. This is October completely, despite the fact that she was “done to” rather than “doing.” And truly, when in life do you actually find this? Maybe among middle school children, but certainly not among adults! Toby’s rejection of all overtures from any of her former friends is incomprehensible to me, no matter how prejudiced they might be, no matter how much she may envy their status or their families. It’s even more frustrating when it becomes obvious as the story progresses that many of them are delighted to have her back in their lives and are most forgiving considering what a cold shoulder she has given them. As a side note, I also can’t imagine that her husband and daughter would actually reject her—most families welcome long-lost family members with open arms. But that will surely be an issue for another book.

In spite of this, I found Rosemary and Rue to be a fun read, keeping me guessing about who did what and why. I hope now that October has re-connected with friends and family, that I will feel less annoyed with her behaviour in book 2 and be able to completely enjoy the story. And I feel that a mythology refresher would be helpful before the second installment—who knew that the fairy folk came in so many versions?

Consider Phlebas / Iain M. Banks (Culture series #1)

4 out of 5 stars

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

I don’t know about you, but I remember reading exercises done when I was in Grade 5 that suggested that by now, we would be living in “the Culture”—work would be handled by machines of all kinds and humans would be living in a leisure-based society, post-money, able to do pretty much whatever we could dream up for ourselves. I seem to recall that this utopian ideal was to be in place by about the year 2000….I feel somewhat ripped off, now, that I’m still heading to work every day and saving my shekels for retirement.

I started out intrigued by the title, apparently a line in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. I’ve already requested Eliot’s work from my library—to do with the Holy Grail and the Fisher King, I think it will be interesting and right up my alley. Wikipedia tells me that its first section is The Burial of the Dead which “introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair.” Which is basically what Consider Phlebas does for the Culture series.

I found myself fascinated with the main character Horza and his devotion to the Idrian side of the war—not the side that I would have chosen! I am a Culture woman—give me that opportunity to do my own thing for a much-lengthened life in excellent health. Yes, there are intelligent machines (in fact many are much more intelligent than humans), but they don’t seem to hold any grudges against humanity, in fact they seem to have a protective role for vast numbers of races, preventing the religiously-driven Idrians from taking over their planets and forcibly converting them. Plus, human intuition can still sometimes surprise the machine minds—leading to them having certain intuitive humans “on call” to make predictions.

Maybe the biggest take-away message from CP is the pointlessness of this war. There is bravery and treachery on both sides of the Idrian/Culture conflict. Many years are spent in the struggle, but at book’s end the casualties are tallied, and really not much has been accomplished, little has changed.

One of my favourite parts was the “card” game called Damage. What a mild name for a game of high strategy and violence! I’ve done {an admittedly cursory) search for a video game that would try to recreate Damage, but I haven’t found one. I’d generally rather read than play games, whether video or card games, but even I could see the appeal of this one.

This is my first Iain Banks novel, but it will not be the last. The man could write. I sincerely regret that he lost his life to cancer (so recently!) and will not be penning any more adventures of any kind. I have book two, The Player of Games, waiting on my bookshelf for me to be ready.

Book 209 of my science fiction & fantasy reading project.

Undermajordomo Minor / Patrick deWitt

3 out of 5 stars

Lucy Minor is the resident odd duck in the hamlet of Bury. He is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for begetting brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending to his new post as undermajordomo, he soon discovers the place harbours many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle's master, Baron Von Aux. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder.

Undermajordomo Minor is an ink-black comedy of manners, an adventure, and a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behaviour, but above all it is a love story. And Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing.

Hindsight is 20/20. I should have re-read a fairy tale or two before tackling Undermajordomo Minor. I think it would have been useful to have the fairy tale structure in my head to compare to this work.

I do love the way deWitt plays with names. His outlaws with the surname Sisters in The Sisters Brothers and now Lucien Minor who takes on the position of Undermajordomo in this novel.

I snorted when the Majordomo, Mr. Olderglough, says, “I find the constant upkeep of the body woefully fatiguing, don’t you?” I have been known the claim that if I did everything every day that all of my health care professionals recommend that I do, I’d have no time to go to work. Perhaps I exaggerate a trifle. Perhaps.

Alas, I find that I don’t fully connect with Mr. DeWitt’s writing somehow—I like his work, but I always come away feeling that I’ve missed something crucial which would have transformed them into a fabulous experience.