June 2019 books: Marks, Demas, Pacat, Pocorobba

Wow, has it been a while since I posted. Luckily, I've been posting about books I've read at fantasyliterature.com.

So pleased to be able to read Air Logic by Laurie R. Marks, the final book in her Shaftal/Sain series. Everyone in Shaftal has a particular logic strength: water, air, fire, or earth. Some people have 2. People with very strong leanings in one direction can have magical or almost superhuman powers. Air Logic focuses on that power of which the strong ones can tell truths from lies and compel truth from someone. Most were killed when the Sainnites invaded (think vikings). Norina, the last one, is now teaching several children who read as on the autism spectrum.

Meanwhile the rest of the characters from previous books are there–Karis, Zanja, Medric and Emil have their own stories to tell.

What attracted me to this series in the beginning, and that caused me to think about it well after I finished the first book, is that Karis and her family are trying to forge peace with the invader Sainnites. They’re not fostering rebellion or battles. Very different from most invasion stories!

I whipped through the Fence series by C.S. Pacat, Johanna the Mad, and Joanna LaFuente. Set at a boy’s boarding school, it focuses on the fencing club and the two new boys–one, the unacknowledged son of a master fencer whose acknowledged son is on the best junior team (at another school) and is expected to win the state championship, and another well-off scion, ignored by his father, who lost to the golden boy and is trying to get his mojo back. Some m-m romances/sex (off-screen) and a bunch of the hothouse emotions you get in a closed environment like a boarding school.

Non-genre memoir, The Fourth String by Janet Pocorobba. The story of an American woman who teaches English in Japan. She finds a Japanese woman who gives free lessons in the arts to foreigners and ends up staying 3 years, studying mostly the shamisen. Another hothouse emotion story with Pocorobba dealing with jealousy, uncertainty, imposter syndrome, etc. as well as the joy of mastering an instrument and managing in a foreign culture.

I think I finished in July, but started it in June…One Night in Boukos by A.J. Demas. A trade mission from Zash is hoping to arrange a trade agreement with Boukos, a city-state in a quasi-Roman or Greek culture. Zash is more Persian in nature and both cultures find the others difficult to deal with. The ambassador disappears into the city on a wild festival night. His secretary Bedar, a eunuch, and the guard captain, Marzana, decide to find him. As they find out some unhappy things about their boss, and meet some interesting people, the hunt goes awry. It’s a lot of fun. I’ve already bought the author’s other book and signed up for some short stories.
 

July 2019 books: Randall, Rozan, Demas, Bujold

YAY, Marta Randall has a new fantasy novel out! Mapping Winter by Marta Randall. It’s rewritten (I think extensively) from her earlier A Sword in Winter and is a start to a new series.

The various realms are connected with a Rider’s Guild which is in danger of being replaced with a telegraph system and other technological advances. The main character, Kieve, has been oathbound to a diabolical ruler for several years. He’s on his deathbed and she can hardly wait until he dies and free her from her oath. Meanwhile he hasn’t named an heir and various relatives and lords are congregating…

I continued reading A.J. Demas’s stories: "Thalia’s Gift", "Something Human", and Sword Dance. These are set in an alternative Greek/Persian world with Sword Dance set several years after One Night in Boukos, I believe.

A comment somewhere let me know that Bujold had published a new Penric and Desdemona book, "The Orphans of Raspay". Penric is now married to Nikys and is returning home from a mission when his ship is attacked by pirates. Many shenanigans ensue as Penric get increasingly frantic trying to escape and rescue some orphans.

The rest of my reading were books in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series by S.J. Rozan. She just published a new book, Paper Son. Lydia is an ABC (American-born Chinese) who is a PI in New York City. She often partners with Bill Smith, ex-Navy, older white guy. The books in the series alternate narrators, so some are labeled with Bill Smith/Lydia Chin instead! In Paper Son, Lydia and Bill are dispatched to the south to help a relative. Because of immigration restrictions, Chinese men already established in the US would return to China and state that so-and-so is my son. The “son” would be primed with details about the village, relatives and so on.

I’d been meaning to reread the series for a while, so this triggered the start. Being away from home, I had to stick to ebooks and there are several that haven’t been released as ebooks yet. So far, I’ve finished:

China Trade (1, some Chinese porcelains have been stolen, museums and provenance)
Concourse (2, deaths at a home for the aged in the Bronx, non-profits and politics)
Mandarin Plaid (3, start-up designer, her lo faan (white) boyfriend, high society)
No Colder Place, (4, construction site, bribes, unions)
Winter and Night (8, Bill’s nephew Gary is picked up by the police, is released to Bill and then disappears, small-town football, many details about Bill’s past)
The Shanghai Moon (9, stolen jewelry from Shanghai and a dead policeman, wartime atrocities)

5,6, and 7 don’t appear to have ebook versions, so I’ve borrowed one from the internet archive. Now that I’m home, I can read my hard copy instead.

This series debuted in 1994 so no cell phones and definitely of its time. Bill is in love with Lydia before she starts reciprocating. The earliest books made me roll my eyes a bit because of that on this reread.

Lydia still lives with her mother in Chinatown. The mom’s a hoot, still trying to get Lydia to stop her embarrassing PI work and marry a nice Chinese man.

August 2019 books: Shinn, Wells, Burgis

I read Stephanie Burgis’s latest book, The Princess Who Flew with Dragons, about the younger Princess Sofia who’s always prickly and angry. She gets sent to a neighboring kingdom for a big meeting of royalty and ends up antagonizing her hosts, but making friends with a group of goblins! Then the ice giants show up.

I had a hankering for some Martha Wells so reread The Death of the Necromancer for the umpteenth time. The main character, Nicholas
Valiarde, is a mild-mannered art importer by day and a criminal mastermind most of the time. His long game is to frame a nobleman (who’s done quite a bit of crime himself) to take revenge for the nobleman’s causing the death of Nicholas’s foster father. This is all derailed when one of this daring robberies finds something else was stolen, and then things get worse. Great characters, including a more human Holmes and a smarter Watson.

I’m not sure why I randomly searched for new Sharon Shinn books, but she has 3 released in August in the Uncommon Echoes series. I’d heard her read an excerpt from the first several years ago when she was still working on it. Alternative fantasy setting, medievalish technology. Some nobles have ‘echoes’, basically homunculus/golems who are their exact duplicates and copy all movements and mannerisms but are usually non-speaking and don’t initiate action. A few people do have more control and can loosen the bonds so that the echoes do not have to fully copy the original. For many years, fewer echoes had been born, but the numbers have been going up in this generation. That’s thought to be a sign of coming war or other dangers.

The books were Audible originals, at first. I never listen to audiobooks, so I hoped that they would be released as ebooks. Yay!

The first book, Echo in Onyx, has the viewpoint character, Brianna, who becomes a ladies’ maid for Marguerite. Marguerite is being sent to the capital to try to catch the eye of the heir along with a bunch of other young noblewomen. Marguerite has 3 echoes and can ‘release’ them–they can move independently.Marguerite and Brianna run into trouble on the way to the capital and end up having to carry out an elaborate masquerade. Meanwhile, Brianna is falling in love with the nephew of the Inquisitor...

can move independently.

Early September 2019 books: Shinn, Lee, Miller, Randall

 And a quick follow-up to the August post because I screamed through several books already this month. At least one was started in August. 

The e-ARC (electronic advanced reviewer copy) of Accepting the Lance by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller was released, with official publication occurring later this year. The latest story in the Liaden Universe, we get updates on a bunch of ongoing story threads. Yay! 

The sequel to Mapping Winter, The River South by Marta Randall was released. This time the protagonist is Iset Kievesdaughter (yep), who was left in the care of the guild when Kieve took off into the wilderness. She's not been treated well, and suddenly people start trying to kill her. One of Kieve's comrades, who owes her, decides to help Iset. Interesting story with an ending that I didn't foresee. 

I then read books 2 and 3 of Sharon Shinn's Uncommon Echoes series: Echo in Emerald and Echo in Amethyst. The second book starts near but before the end of the first and focuses on a minor character from the first book. Chessie was abandoned by her father and her mother died young. After her guardian died, she headed to the capital city. She's made a life for herself as an errand-runner and, through her echoes, a bar maid and a laborer, respectively. No one realizes that the echoes are not just friends as they have a little autonomy and Chessie is able to change bodies to allow them to speak (echoes don't ever speak). She ends up entangled with Lord Dezmen who is investigating the killing of a noble in the city. 

In the third book which is also almost contemporaneous with books 1 and 2, we follow Hope and Elyssa. Elyssa is the original, daughter to a western lord. The western provinces have been agitating for autonomy for years, but the fate of Lady Marguerite (book 1) has brought everything to a boil. Lady Elyssa is bored and bitter, ignored by her parents except that she might bring an advantageous marriage. She's tortured her echoes for years, and one has actually become sentient. I really expected a different ending, and spent some time trying to figure out how everyone could end up happy.