Strange Tidings

I work in a library shelving books, and this has made for weird variety in my reading--from the latest biography of Ted Williams to Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie to too many cookbooks to count. Sometimes the reward of randomness has been great--my cooking definitely reflects that--but it's also taken a hit on my ability to finish books I picked up because I thought I'd enjoy it...but ended up struggling. The last two months have been many dead ends like that, and my GoodReads account is full of books I found too weird to finish.

I mentioned Red Country by Joe Abercrombie a few months ago, and I'm still flailing my way through it. The narrative seems to be trying too hard with conveying the voice and managing the many perspectives instead of moving the plot along, and the graphic imagery when it appears is over nine thousand. Another more recently released dark fantasy, The Barrow by Mark Smylie, started out promising but lost its way. Smylie mentioned in an interview that he used sexuality as horror in The Barrow, and that he likes to find out at what point the horror goes over readers' personal thresholds. My personal take is that the story faded out and none of the characters were interesting or strong enough to keep my attention.

It took David Dalglish's A Dance of Cloaks to take me out of my fantasy rut. The plot moved at a breakneck pace, which suited the story well, and the characters (especially Aaron/Haern) lived and breathed on the pages. The characters had realistic motivations and the kind of determination to gain power and influence that reflects reality. Dalglish said in an interview at the end of the Orbit edition that the world of A Dance of Cloaks is new and relatively clean of magical objects and the history that accompanies them--that translates into the story as giving the characters ultimate agency. I can't wait for the other two books in the series, but I'm pacing myself for now.

This weekend I sailed through Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick, which has me even more convinced I'm stuck in 2011. However, out of the fantasy I've been reading lately, I enjoyed this story the most. I'm always skeptical of the first person voice in adult fantasy, where my experience has been it's difficult to keep the narrative balanced and avoid sounding like young adult. That was never a problem with this story, and Drothe is clever and fascinating. The criminal underbelly of the empire that is the fabric of Drothe's life is an unusual mixture of class, history, and magic, and Drothe starts out as ignorant of the intricate plots as I did. As he uncovers more motivations and information, the stakes become astronomical and the ultimate test becomes if Drothe will stay true to his values or compromise for safety and the people he loves. Unlike in real life, it was wonderful to see the consequences of Drothe's actions, a payoff that's rarely experienced in real life.

My next fantasy adventure is going to be the Orbit edition of Michael J. Sullivan's Riyria Relevations: Rise of Empire. (Between Orbit and Angry Robot, I can't decide which is my favorite publisher.) More thieving! More magic! More blades! After my experiences with Red Country and The Barrow, and my impending move to a different city, I decided to take advantage of my library's excellent resources and reserve 15 books found on Amazon's Recommended lists that started with shopping around on Michael R. Underwood's Shield and Crocus. Look at the cover! A city built on the bones of a titan--I would love to set an rpg in that setting. My copy comes in next week from Barnes & Noble. It's going to be an exciting six weeks of reading.