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Book Reviews: Cloud's Rider, Cherryh; The Raven Tower, Leckie; Alone, Chabouté
Book #1000! This is an entirely-arbitrary number resulting from "number of books reviews that I managed to write up, for new-to-me or unreviewed books and/or series, posted since I started posting reviews online in college." It doesn't reflect what I've actually read in that time. It's still a neat round number!
When I was a (pre?-)teen I used to write book reviews on index cards, and then stopped all through high school, until I was 20. My old reviews are atrocious & some of them haunt me. Mostly I've made them shorter (despite that the #1000 batch has some longer reviews in it), but I also like to think they're ... yanno, better. I'm glad I write them.
And I appreciate that Cherryh is book 1000, because I love her work a lot and it's pretty indicative of my reading preferences.
Title: Cloud's Rider (Finisterre Book 2)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: Aspect, 1996
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 375
Total Page Count: 300,545
Text Number: 1000
Read Because: fan of the author, hardback from my personal library (purchased used, unsure from where)
Review: The threat of another rogue sends Danny and the Goss kids up the mountain to Evergreen, on the edges of known land. Where the first book was interesting worldbuilding and engaging tropes cascading into a too-neat ending, this is almost the reverse: tedious, mundane social tensions building to a worldbuilding-heavy climax that still relies somewhat on the coincidence that burdened the first book, but which pays off character arcs and the unsettling, unknown setting. I read this for the bond animal trope, and I love Cherryh's id-heavy take on it even more here than in the first book, if only for the presence (and diversity) of new bonds.
But I find myself hung up on the issue of Brionne. Child villains are tricky—engaging as a concept, but too easy to divorce from realistic social repercussions. A theme of social critique runs through Cherryh's work: she investigates society's institutionalized flaws and characters who subvert social order in order to find (small, insufficient, but valuable) solutions. Who doesn't deserve that comfort; who deserves society's harms? Should a disabled child be left to die if they're also a danger, if they're a persecutor as well as a victim? It's an uneasy question, and honestly I love the answer on a plot/worldbuilding level—it's evocative and haunting and has a devastating logic. But thematically, the argument that some vulnerable people should be abandoned—by individuals, by society—feels like a misstep.
Two quotes, really great quotes about psychic communication and psychic bonds and bond animals:
Title: The Raven Tower
Author: Ann Leckie
Published: Orbit, 2019
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 425
Total Page Count: 300,970
Text Number: 1001
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The Raven Tower
The Lease's Heir returns home to find his sacrificial duties usurped by his uncle—a summary which does this book no favors, because its true narrative is in its PoV, an alternating first- and second-person that obscures speaker and protagonist and antagonist. Unfortunately, its secrets are over-explained by the 70% mark, as characters recap the situation to one another ad infinitum—which belies a final development that retroactively makes the rest of the book more successful.
It's difficult to describe without spoilers! (I went in with zero foreknowledge, and am glad of it.)
I always want my fantasy gods to be stranger, larger, less human than they are on the page—and the rules that govern godhood here have strong internal logic but do make the gods feel limited. This is at odds with the awe and fear experienced by the human characters, and I envy them that and wish some were translated to the reader. This could have been a more ambitious experiment—stranger, bigger, less comprehensible; or just dense enough that the recaps didn't grow repetitive. But within the scope it has, as an experiment in narrative voice (how literal and deceptive PoV is; how the reader adapts their expectations to the speaker's) this is clever and sticks the landing. I wanted it to blow me away, but I'll settle for finding it solidly enjoyable.
Title: Alone (Tout Suel)
Author: Christophe Chabouté
Translator: Ivanka Hahnenberger
Published: Gallery 13, 2017 (2008)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 301,355
Text Number: 1002
Read Because: reading books in translation, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A man lives isolated on a lighthouse at sea. This is about imagination and language and loneliness, and these themes are fine but never developed with particular depth. The dense black and white art and sparse dialog is an aesthetic that doesn't work for me. Its starkness reads a like a Photoshop filter even when it's technically good art, and there's no contrast—no beauty to evoke the themes of imagination; too much repetition within the panels for such a sparse narrative.
(Four of the five speaking cast members are male, and the sole woman is seen explicitly and almost exclusively through the male gaze. Here's what an isolated man misses out on: companionship, diversity, and also boobs. No thanks.)
When I was a (pre?-)teen I used to write book reviews on index cards, and then stopped all through high school, until I was 20. My old reviews are atrocious & some of them haunt me. Mostly I've made them shorter (despite that the #1000 batch has some longer reviews in it), but I also like to think they're ... yanno, better. I'm glad I write them.
And I appreciate that Cherryh is book 1000, because I love her work a lot and it's pretty indicative of my reading preferences.
Title: Cloud's Rider (Finisterre Book 2)
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: Aspect, 1996
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 375
Total Page Count: 300,545
Text Number: 1000
Read Because: fan of the author, hardback from my personal library (purchased used, unsure from where)
Review: The threat of another rogue sends Danny and the Goss kids up the mountain to Evergreen, on the edges of known land. Where the first book was interesting worldbuilding and engaging tropes cascading into a too-neat ending, this is almost the reverse: tedious, mundane social tensions building to a worldbuilding-heavy climax that still relies somewhat on the coincidence that burdened the first book, but which pays off character arcs and the unsettling, unknown setting. I read this for the bond animal trope, and I love Cherryh's id-heavy take on it even more here than in the first book, if only for the presence (and diversity) of new bonds.
But I find myself hung up on the issue of Brionne. Child villains are tricky—engaging as a concept, but too easy to divorce from realistic social repercussions. A theme of social critique runs through Cherryh's work: she investigates society's institutionalized flaws and characters who subvert social order in order to find (small, insufficient, but valuable) solutions. Who doesn't deserve that comfort; who deserves society's harms? Should a disabled child be left to die if they're also a danger, if they're a persecutor as well as a victim? It's an uneasy question, and honestly I love the answer on a plot/worldbuilding level—it's evocative and haunting and has a devastating logic. But thematically, the argument that some vulnerable people should be abandoned—by individuals, by society—feels like a misstep.
Two quotes, really great quotes about psychic communication and psychic bonds and bond animals:
The preacher down in Tarmin had always said if you listened to the Wild you'd be attracted to thoughts of sex and blood that came and went for no reason. And he'd felt them—but he wasn't even sure what the preacher feared: he could have explained to anyone how scarily quiet it was, even in the howling wind, when Cloud was out of range. He'd gotten to depend on that presence for safety—and it wasn't just hearing some ravening Beast, as the preachers called it—it was hearing everything, it was an intensity of smells he didn't smell, colors he didn't see—most of all a sense of whereness that he couldn't explain in words, a jumble at first that made you think you were off balance all the time, but that just—slowly turned into a sense of where things were and how they felt—that in this place was an assurance you were still on the mountain and not walking off it.
That was a sense you could really get hooked on, and the preachers didn't know that one—or maybe they did and weren't telling you that because it was just too attractive, the way Brionne had gone off into it and gotten herself into a place she couldn't—maybe didn't want to—get out of.
That was the other side of it—you were bound to a creature that wasn't human. And if it should die—
The world began to flatten out: Cloud had begun to pull out of range, growing more vague as the snow came between them. He knew then he'd been thinking very dangerous, scary things.
But about that moment <happy> washed through the ambient with all the noisy force of a pair of youngsters—God, it deafened. It had to reach Ridley. It had to reach Guil and Tara at the bottom of the mountain. And Danny laughed. He couldn't help it. Cloud kicked up his heels, and pregnant Shimmer gave a little hop—there was nothing in the whole world like that happiness, and he couldn't but remember <himself and Cloud,> the way <Callie and Shimmer> came to him—and <Ripley and Slip> from clear across the wall.
Ridley knew. Ridley had heard—God, who in all creation hadn't? Danny had trouble breathing. And an unexpected attack of tears. Jennie and Rain had just in that instant gotten—there weren't words for it—but it was a coming together that made total sense for each other—or at least as far as which body had four feed and which one had two, which one was jogging about the yard and which one was sitting where Jennie had known for weeks she belonged and where Rain wanted her to be. He saw Callie take a surreptitious wipe at her eyes.
Title: The Raven Tower
Author: Ann Leckie
Published: Orbit, 2019
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 425
Total Page Count: 300,970
Text Number: 1001
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The Raven Tower
The Lease's Heir returns home to find his sacrificial duties usurped by his uncle—a summary which does this book no favors, because its true narrative is in its PoV, an alternating first- and second-person that obscures speaker and protagonist and antagonist. Unfortunately, its secrets are over-explained by the 70% mark, as characters recap the situation to one another ad infinitum—which belies a final development that retroactively makes the rest of the book more successful.
It's difficult to describe without spoilers! (I went in with zero foreknowledge, and am glad of it.)
I always want my fantasy gods to be stranger, larger, less human than they are on the page—and the rules that govern godhood here have strong internal logic but do make the gods feel limited. This is at odds with the awe and fear experienced by the human characters, and I envy them that and wish some were translated to the reader. This could have been a more ambitious experiment—stranger, bigger, less comprehensible; or just dense enough that the recaps didn't grow repetitive. But within the scope it has, as an experiment in narrative voice (how literal and deceptive PoV is; how the reader adapts their expectations to the speaker's) this is clever and sticks the landing. I wanted it to blow me away, but I'll settle for finding it solidly enjoyable.
Title: Alone (Tout Suel)
Author: Christophe Chabouté
Translator: Ivanka Hahnenberger
Published: Gallery 13, 2017 (2008)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 301,355
Text Number: 1002
Read Because: reading books in translation, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A man lives isolated on a lighthouse at sea. This is about imagination and language and loneliness, and these themes are fine but never developed with particular depth. The dense black and white art and sparse dialog is an aesthetic that doesn't work for me. Its starkness reads a like a Photoshop filter even when it's technically good art, and there's no contrast—no beauty to evoke the themes of imagination; too much repetition within the panels for such a sparse narrative.
(Four of the five speaking cast members are male, and the sole woman is seen explicitly and almost exclusively through the male gaze. Here's what an isolated man misses out on: companionship, diversity, and also boobs. No thanks.)