The Edge of Reason by Melinda Snodgrass

I recently went to Barnes & Noble and spent an hour or two perusing their SF shelves, picking up things I usually would not have tried. I then sat down with a pile of books and tried the first chapter of each of them to cull them down to a reasonable stack. I found The Edge of Reason this way. It begins with a girl on the run from supernatural creatures. She is rescued by the intervention of a police officer, and together they manage to fight off the creatures, and then a homeless man tells them that the girl must stay close to the officer if she wishes to stay safe and hidden.

The officer, Richard, takes the girl, Rhianna, home with him for the night, and the next day he is ordered to visit a wealthy businessman named Kenntnis, who informs them that there is a secret war being waged between the forces of reason and superstition, and that if superstition prevails, the world will be plunged into darkness, agony, and hell. It is important that superstition (that is, religion) be held at bay. And Richard is the man who must do it.

This setup sounds mind-blowingly stupid and cliched, of course. Based on that description, I would ordinarily never, ever have given it a try. A battle between good and evil, our protagonist (who is stunningly good-looking) is the chosen one, magic alive and well but hidden in the modern world. Yecch. I've seen that or similar too many times before. But my trip to Barnes & Noble was about finding and trying new things, and when I sampled this book I found the writing was sound, so I decided to take a chance on it.

It was a very pleasant surprise. Richard is a competent but damaged protagonist, and the best parts of the book were about his internal struggle and growth. He is religious, and must come to terms with going to war against religion. His opponents force him to face some issues from his past, and he comes out a stronger man. There is a little sexual tension as I was wondering which of three characters he might eventually end up with. Snodgrass also does a good job of slowly revealing information, rather than explaining it all up front. That is much more satisfying to me. For instance, (Warning: mild spoiler) she does not immediately tell us that Richard is bisexual, but I was wondering about his orientation from the moment it was shown that his apartment was tasteful, elegant, and immaculately tidy.

The other characters are mostly good, too. The weakest character is probably Rhianna, who seemed to be a major character at first but faded from importance, and resented like hell that Richard was more special and important than she was. She is convincing as a self-absorbed and rather unlikeable teenager, but I am uneasy with the way she was handled. I think it's because she is obviously something important and special, but Kenntnis soon kind of loses interest and sets her aside because he's more focused on other things. He later has cause to regret this, but it just didn't seem believable to me.

I was, frankly, never very interested in the battle between good and evil, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. It's too big and too generic for me. But Snodgrass made me care deeply about what happened to some of the characters, and then she made it a satisfying journey, which is all I can ask from a writer. The book comes to a good stopping point, but the overall problem is unresolved at the end. There will clearly be more books, and I will probably pick them up. Recommended.

Soulless by Gail Carriger

Soulless is a sort of paranormal steampunk romance novel. Our heroine, Alexia Tarabotti, does not have a soul. This is important only when she is in the presence of supernatural creatures, because her lack of soul counteracts their supernatural-ness, and they return to human form when she touches them. Alexia is also a strong-minded spinster of 26, convinced that she is unattractive, and too assertive and obnoxious to ever marry.

I agree, she is too obnoxious, especially in the presence of her romantic interest, Lord Maccon, who is a werewolf. They bicker constantly, and she tells herself he is awful and uncivilised while at the same time wondering why she feels all tingly in his presence. Sigh. I nearly gave up on the book in the first 20 pages because Alexia was just too...obnoxious. She accidentally kills a vampire, Lord Maccon appears and asks her what happened, and she starts sniping at him about poor quality shirts and badly tied cravats. It did not make me like her, nor did it convince me that she was smart, capable, or level-headed.

Fortunately I persevered and Alexia became slightly more tolerable. She is not at all a believable product of her culture, even without a soul. But there are adventures with vampires and werewolves and mad scientists, and Lord Maccon eventually convinces Alexia to marry him. Soulless is a good, fast, entertaining read, and I mostly enjoyed it. At the same time, I had some reservations. It's good, but not great. Nevertheless, I will probably seek out the sequel.

Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley

I've been pondering whether to post about this one for the last week or so since I finished it, because I don't think I have anything very interesting to say about it. Nevertheless, I am going to take a whack at it.

Rose Daughter is a re-telling of Beauty and the Beast. This is McKinley's second attempt at it, as her first novel was called Beauty and tackled the same territory. I haven't read Beauty, so I can't compare them. It tells the story of Beauty and her sisters, Lionheart and Jeweltongue, and their merchant father who ceased to be wealthy. They sold all their possessions and took refuge in a small cottage far from the city. Lionheart disuised herself as a boy so that she could get a job working with horses, Jeweltongue became an accomplished seamstress and fell in love with a baker, and Beauty stayed at home, tended the garden, and grew roses.

The entire novel centers around roses. In this world they are rare and valuable, because it takes love to raise roses, and there apparently isn't enough love left in the world to grow them. Sorcerers can do it, substituting magic for love, but they are still expensive and rare. But Beauty settles in at Rose Cottage and the rose bushes begin producing flowers again. Beauty's father undertakes a journey back to the city and nearly dies in a blizzard on his return trip, saved only by stumbling into the enchanted castle where the Beast lives. But he makes the fatal error of taking a rose for Beauty, and the Beast demands that she be brought to him in exchange.

She goes, reluctantly, and finds that the Beast's rose bushes are dying. He has summoned her because he hopes that she can save his roses, and thus save his life. She spends most of the rest of the novel pruning roses and interacting with the furniture of the castle. She spends very little time with the Beast, which makes it very unconvincing when she decides she loves him after only seven days of acquaintanceship and having barely spoken to him in that time.

Rose Daughter moves in a dreamy, unreal haze. It alternates between a distant, impersonal description of events and spending too much time in Beauty's thoughts with very little actually happening. This (too much wandering around in the character's thoughts) was also a complaint I had with McKinley's novel Sunshine, which I loved in spite of that flaw. In this case I just slogged through wondering if anything was ever going to happen. Mostly, it didn't. Beauty did not slowly come to love Beast because she spent almost no time with him. She went from being horrified to sort of interested to undying love too quickly and without much reason. Which is disappointing, because after reading Sunshine I was looking for something else from McKinley to love, and this book was rather slow and quiet and didn't sparkle, or even really convince. How disappointing.

Park

I have restarted my Netflix membership, and the first movie I got (from my old queue they still had saved) is Park. It's a quirky comedy set one day at lunchtime in a park in Los Angeles. Several people are in the park that day: a young woman who is trying unsuccessfully to commit suicide, a dog groomer whose attractive coworker has arranged a tryst that day with her boyfriend, the boyfriend's wife and her friend who are spying on him, and a group of four coworkers whose lunch plans go awry.

I went into the film with no expectations, and so it was a very happy surprise. It's a charming and quirky little vulgar comedy that surprised me, made me laugh, and ends up as a feel-good film. Recommended, but be aware: sex, language, nudity.

The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker

Like Muse of Fire, which I reviewed here earlier this year, The Women of Nell Gwynne's is a novella published as a small, quite expensive hardcover by Subterranean Press. I read it from the library, and am glad they had it, because I would not pay $35 to read a novella, no matter how good. But since Subterranean seems to be staying in business, I assume that there is a market for these books, it just isn't me. Anyway, on to the story:

The women referred to in the title are classy prostitute-spies in a steampunk Victorian London. They entertain powerful men and extract secrets from them, which are passed on to the Gentleman's Speculative Society, who sponsor their house and their very comfortable lifestyle. After a brief introduction, the ladies are sent on a mission to the estate of Lord Besmond, who seems to have an amazing invention that he wishes to auction off to the highest bidder.

The Women of Nell Gwynne's is an enertaining story, a pleasant way to pass an hour or so. But it is also very, very slight. Recommended, if you can lay your hands on a copy, but not worth buying.

Hammerhead Ranch Motel by Tim Dorsey

Hammerhead Ranch Motel is the second of Dorsey's dark comedic novels set in Florida. This one is set in Tampa Bay, just before the arrival of the hurricane Rolando-berto. Our main character, Serge Storms, is trying to track down a briefcase containing five million dollars. I have read the books out of order, and honestly don't remember where the money came from--I think it's drug money.

Anyway, Serge has placed a tracking device in the briefcase, and is following its progress as it changes hands several times through the book, never quite managing to gain possession of it. He is camped out in the Hammerhead Ranch Motel, a rundown remainder of old Florida. It sits by the beach, hangout of losers and criminals, and is the thorn in the side of the residents of the Beverly Shores condominiums, who would like to think of themselves as lords of all they survey. They hate the fact that the beach is public and undesirables come to their neighborhood. They also hate each other, and Dorsey adeptly skewers the obnoxious sorts of people who live in places like the Beverly Shores condominiums.

The book is peopled with many other obnoxious people, and you find yourself hoping something horrible will happen to them. And it usually does, because Serge is insane and has no compunctions about killing anyone who gets in his way, or annoys him. I'm not sure he could be called a serial killer because he doesn't have a pattern--he kills all sorts of people, in many different and inventive ways. And most of the time they are entirely deserving. I wouldn't want to know Serge in real life, but he's a lot of fun to run around with in fiction.

I've really been enjoying reading Dorsey's books this year, and Hammerhead Ranch Motel struck me as one of the funnier ones I've read. Here is a sample, a description of a married couple fighting:

"Jose was a small, powerfully packed man with a falsetto voice and explosive temper. In contrast, Juanita was a woman of impressive avoirdupois, and if she could ever hold Jose still, she'd squeeze the breath out of him. Necessarily, Jose's strategy was jab-and-run, and he danced around Juanita and darted in and out of the reach of her bologna arms, registering sharp jabs in the kidneys that caused her to make the birthing sounds of a Cape buffalo.

"The clash was the age-old balance of the natural order, size against speed, and it was a fascinating thing to watch. However, early on a Sunday morning in one of Tampa's toniest neighborhoods, the residents had yet to acquire an appreciation for a South American midget screaming Spanish profanities like Frankie Valli and sucker-punching a fat woman into submission between the jacarandas."