Book Reviews: Chain Letter, Pike; Shadowplay, O'Conner; The Changling Sea, McKillip

Title: Chain Letter
Author: Christopher Pike
Published: 1986
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 190
Total Page Count: 451,125
Text Number: 1576
Read Because: I was curious to read some Pike after watching the firmly mediocre The Midnight Club; borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: After a deadly car accident, a group of teens receive a chain letter blackmailing them into increasingly self-destructive stunts. The writing here is workmanlike for sure, but it's hard to begrudge that in such a pulpy book and it allows the more stylized sections (like Alison's attack) to shine. Similarly the characters are uninspired but serve their purpose: their blandness is an entertaining juxtaposition to the increasing tension of their predicament. The mystery is also on the right side of legible. I remember Pike having more gleeful & less morose antagonists/violence, so I'll probably read a few more. But as an experiment in "how does Pike read as an adult" the answer is: utterly unsurprising, but that's not a bad thing.


Title: Shadowplay
Author: Joseph O'Connor
Published: Europa, 2022 (2019)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 360
Total Page Count: 452,455
Text Number: 1581
Read Because: cribbing off my mother's book club's October reading, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A fictionalization of Bram Stoker's life, managing the Lyceum Theatre under the tyrannical rule of its lead actor, Henry Irving, the model for Dracula. This isn't about writing Dracula, but it's about its inspirations, real and fictional: Irving, the rising homophobia of 19th Century England, and the background anxiety of the Ripper murders; and a sprinkling of namedrops and conjectures which grow gratuitous and offer limited insight into Stoker or Dracula. The good bits are rich, immersive, a nuanced imagining of life in period England. The bad bits made me roll my eyes, and I find this overstays its welcome, with a belabored, maudlin coda. Not mad I read it; probably would've benefited from reading some biographies instead.


Title: The Changeling Sea
Author: Patricia A. McKillip
Published: Firebird, 2003 (1988)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 140
Total Page Count: 453,395
Text Number: 1584
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Local tavern worker finds herself enmeshed in a world of princes, magicians, and the vast magics of the sea. As well established (since I mention it every time it comes up), I don't like water aesthetics; I took an age to pick this up as a result. There's so much that could bias me against it ... but no, it's beautiful. McKillip's evocation of the sea, its awe and beauty and danger, and the very real tension of living a mundane life on the border of something so unfathomable, marries perfectly to a fae-like understanding of magic and otherworlds. And it never hurts that McKillip loves to surround an unassuming female protagonist with numerous but non-competitive attractive, mysterious young men. It's wish-fulfillment, a fairy tale, but so nuanced in execution: emotionally intense and bittersweet. Still not a favorite, and blame that in fact on the water aesthetic, but I'm glad that I finally read it.

Book Reviews: Chanur's Legacy, Hellburner, and Tripoint, C.J. Cherryh

Almost finished?/caught up? with the Alliance-Union books, which is surreal.


Title: Chanur's Legacy (Chanur Book 5)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: DAW, 1992
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 454,185
Text Number: 1586
Read Because: continuing the series
Review: I was hesitant to return to this world because the next generation & Tully's absence felt like a losing combination. But! Hilfy is fantastic. The plot here is ridiculous, often in a charming ways: Hilfy is conscripted to make a diplomatic delivery that predictably goes to shit under the influence of the Stsho —who are a lot—and the ghostly figure of Pyanfar. Pyanfar's lingering impression, on Hilfy and the wider setting both, gives a meaningful sense of consequence to the previous books. Tully is here, in spirit, buried in Hilfy's memories and echoed in a new outsider to Han galactic culture that creates a delicious tension in the ship's social dynamics. This is fun: a separate-but-not sequel which is more fun and consumable than the core series.


Title: Hellburner (The Company Wars Book 5)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: Warner Books, 1992
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 365
Total Page Count: 454,550
Text Number: 1587
Read Because: continuing the series
Review: A rare direct sequel, this comes after Heavy Time and follows the same cast: Pollard is stranded on Dekker's battle installation, his unwanted next of kin, during a dangerous change of command. I really didn't want to spend more time with Pollard, but it turns out that "make Pollard suffer" is a great premise for a book, and the character growth that emerges is surprisingly satisfying. Dekker is a pilot in need of a specific crew, and Cherryh has a lot of thoughts on what it means to fly as crew: the intimacy (or lack thereof) of that bond and the responsibility of the work, from grunt pilots to aces flying at hyperspeed. She also makes the Earth side of the Alliance-Union world more interesting than I expected: less speculative and more scrappy than the other players, the meditations on the military and on capitalism lack an immediate hook but, like Heavy Time, speak to real-world issues.


Title: Tripoint (The Company Wars Book 4)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: Aspect, 1995
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 360
Total Page Count: 456,260
Text Number: 1593
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed Open Library
Review: Twenty years ago, a sleepover-turned rape resulted in the birth of a boy; now a man, he's crimped onto his father's ship. This is the Alliance-Union book about sex and rape - and Juu, you might say, isn't that Cyteen? or Forty Thousand in Gehenna? Or Rimrunners, or maybe the Hilfy bits of the Chanur series (bless)? And I reply: yes, there's a lot of it there, so even more remarkable that this is *the* sex book, all about the repercussions of rape, the politics of family and Family ships, and relationships formed around and via sex.

Cherryh does this uncomfortable thing of making rapists people, too: The rapist-father is objectively awful, but the protagonist has to build a working relationship with him anyway. The most interesting character in the book crosses the line into rape while remaining interesting and lynchpinning the larger plot. It's not easy reading, nor often satisfying, but I appreciate the nuance. So the interior and interpersonal struggles in this are engaging; but the larger plot is back-heavy and only okay. That said, I like this a lot as a counterpoint to Rimrunners, which it much resembles.