Vamparazzi is an urban fantasy, apparently the fourth in the series about Esther Diamond, but not in the vein of so man urban fantasies these days. Esther is an attractive young woman living in a city, but she apparently is not magically talented. She is not half-siren, or half-demon, or half-vampire, or any of the other unlikely scenarios that many urban fantasy authors think up to make their character both magical and a special snowflake. Esther is not a bounty hunter, a bodyguard, or a private eye. She's not well armed and not particularly angry. Nor does she particularly kick butt. How refreshing.
Esther is an actress, and she has a role in a short run of an off-Broadway costume drama as a woman who is seduced and killed by a vampire. The vampire is played by a somewhat well-known actor who claims to actually be a real vampire, and will only accept roles in which he can play a vampire. His many adoring female fans lap it up, and he takes full advantage of their throwing themselves at him. Some of the fans view Esther with hostility, however, as they want to be in her role, the one who the vampire seduces and marries. One night Esther is punched by a fan, who goes home that night with the star of the show, and that just elevates the hostility Esther has to wade through each night outside the theater.
The problem is that the woman who assaulted Esther and went home with Daemon, the star, is found dead the next day, so of course the police are hanging around. Esther consults with her friend Max, a 350-year-old magician who looks over the city of New York, and they conclude that it is probably the work of a vampire. The story is then interrupted in the middle for a flashback and a really long infodump about how everything people think they know about vampires is wrong. We eventually get back to the story, but the middle section really derails things and loses the momentum we had built up before it.
The tone of the book is fairly light, and Esther doesn't detect by banging heads, she's just loudmouthed, obnoxious, and nosy. I grew to like her less and less as the story went on, but I was fairly entertained throughout. I was a bit annoyed by the end, as they declare that the killer must have been killed, he couldn't possibly have survived, but they don't go and find a body, which is a nasty trick that sometimes leads to annoying sequels. I hope that will not be the case here. I was also struck by quite a few copyediting problems, like repeated words and incorrect words (for instance, the dog wagged its tale). The New York publishing establishment likes to point at editing issues in self-published and small press books, but they are also often inattentive to details.
This is not a challenging or deep or satisfying novel, by any means, but I liked it well enough that I will track down another one.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Witchcraft Mysteries by Juliet Blackwell
This is a series of cosy mysteries set in San Francisco. They feature Lily Ivory, a half-trained but very powerful 25 year old witch. Lily has recently moved to California, and within months is setting out to solve all the magical mysteries of her new city, usually with total disregard to the advice of people who know a lot more than she does.
In one sense these are somewhat out of the ordinary for the mystery genre, what with the heroine being a witch and the problems she is solving involving magic. At first glance they might even appear to be crossovers with urban fantasy, but these are way too light and fluffy to really be urban fantasy, and they also sort of imply romance without really fitting there, either.
Lily has recently opened a vintage clothing store at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. In the course of acquiring new stock, she meets a woman who gets murdered in the first novel, Secondhand Spirits. She meets the police, acquires a familiar, and charges forward to face down an evil spirit that is snatching children from the dead woman's neighborhood. In the second novel, A Cast-Off Coven, Lily is called in to investigate a haunting at a local arts college, and solves a murder while fending off a demon, and acquiring a closetful of Edwardian clothes. And in the third, Hexes and Hemlines, the police call her in to look at a crime scene where a man has died in unusual circumstances, then she charges around interviewing people on her own and gets herself into a lot of trouble. There is never the slightest bit of tension about whether Lily has the magical power to defeat the bad guys, because even though she's half-trained, she is clearly so powerful no one stands a chance against her.
These are, at heart, cosy mysteries, and possess all the traits that drive me crazy about cosy mysteries. Lily lives in a fantasy world, and I don't mean the magic. She moves to San Francisco and gets settled and a retail business up and running in less than 6 weeks. Total fantasy. Everyone who offers her stock for her store have great stuff in great condition. Total fantasy. Everything every one of her customers wants to try on fits well. Complete fucking fantasy. She owns a business, and yet doesn't seem to spend that much time there. She has friends to mind her store for her so that she can spend her day driving around interviewing suspects. The heroines of these sorts of cosy mysteries so often seem to run sort of unconventional or creative or "artsy" businesses (caterer, tea shop owner, bookshop owner, etc) that give them far more schedule flexibility than any small business owner has in real life. They are usually nosy and think they know best, and go around trying to question witnesses and suspects, and totally unlike what would happen in real life if someone did this, people talk to them. Add to that the fact that nearly every man Lily meets is good looking and seems interested in her, and all of the women except the villains are incredibly friendly and helpful, and what we have here is a completely unbelievable fantasy. And very typical of this genre, which I rarely read. Because they drive me nuts.
That said, these are quick and easy reads. They can be gulped down in a couple of hours, and are worth no more time than that. Lily is actually a very irritating person, and so is her best bud Bronwyn, but this is a good quick read for the end of a hard day, when I am too burned out to be able to focus on something more substantial. On a scale of 1 to 5, they're about a two and a half.
In one sense these are somewhat out of the ordinary for the mystery genre, what with the heroine being a witch and the problems she is solving involving magic. At first glance they might even appear to be crossovers with urban fantasy, but these are way too light and fluffy to really be urban fantasy, and they also sort of imply romance without really fitting there, either.
Lily has recently opened a vintage clothing store at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. In the course of acquiring new stock, she meets a woman who gets murdered in the first novel, Secondhand Spirits. She meets the police, acquires a familiar, and charges forward to face down an evil spirit that is snatching children from the dead woman's neighborhood. In the second novel, A Cast-Off Coven, Lily is called in to investigate a haunting at a local arts college, and solves a murder while fending off a demon, and acquiring a closetful of Edwardian clothes. And in the third, Hexes and Hemlines, the police call her in to look at a crime scene where a man has died in unusual circumstances, then she charges around interviewing people on her own and gets herself into a lot of trouble. There is never the slightest bit of tension about whether Lily has the magical power to defeat the bad guys, because even though she's half-trained, she is clearly so powerful no one stands a chance against her.
These are, at heart, cosy mysteries, and possess all the traits that drive me crazy about cosy mysteries. Lily lives in a fantasy world, and I don't mean the magic. She moves to San Francisco and gets settled and a retail business up and running in less than 6 weeks. Total fantasy. Everyone who offers her stock for her store have great stuff in great condition. Total fantasy. Everything every one of her customers wants to try on fits well. Complete fucking fantasy. She owns a business, and yet doesn't seem to spend that much time there. She has friends to mind her store for her so that she can spend her day driving around interviewing suspects. The heroines of these sorts of cosy mysteries so often seem to run sort of unconventional or creative or "artsy" businesses (caterer, tea shop owner, bookshop owner, etc) that give them far more schedule flexibility than any small business owner has in real life. They are usually nosy and think they know best, and go around trying to question witnesses and suspects, and totally unlike what would happen in real life if someone did this, people talk to them. Add to that the fact that nearly every man Lily meets is good looking and seems interested in her, and all of the women except the villains are incredibly friendly and helpful, and what we have here is a completely unbelievable fantasy. And very typical of this genre, which I rarely read. Because they drive me nuts.
That said, these are quick and easy reads. They can be gulped down in a couple of hours, and are worth no more time than that. Lily is actually a very irritating person, and so is her best bud Bronwyn, but this is a good quick read for the end of a hard day, when I am too burned out to be able to focus on something more substantial. On a scale of 1 to 5, they're about a two and a half.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Radiant by James Alan Gardner
I have a problem with Gardner's work -- he is good writer and I enjoy his writing, but I have no interest in reading about his main character, Festina Ramos. I had a similar problem with Kage Baker, whose writing I enjoyed, but I had absolutely no tolerance for Mendoza. So this is a problem, if I am going to try to read Gardner. I quite enjoyed Trapped, which was Festina-free, and I tolerated Vigilant, in which she had a fairly minor role. So when I picked up Radiant I was hoping that I wouldn't see too much of Festina, as she wasn't the point of view character. Unfortunately this was not a good Gardner.
The setting is in the future, and humans have joined the League of Peoples, a confederation of many races, most of them more powerful than humans. Our main characters are members of the Explorers Corps, who are sent on highly dangerous missions to strange planets, with the full understanding many of them will be killed. But that's okay, because they are unattractive, and therefore Expendable -- a study has shown that personnel are more upset by the death of an attractive companion than an unattractive one, so ugly people are forced into life-threatening situations because they don't matter. If you can buy this utterly stupid premise, then perhaps you can swallow the rest of the implausibilities Gardner throws in.
In Radiant, we follow the adventures of a young Expendable as she is infected and infested by a higher life form that intends to use her to achieve its own goals. She is paired up with Admiral Festina Ramos and they are stranded on a planet and likely to die unless they can figure out how to fix things that went badly wrong there in the past. They are teamed up with Tut, a companion who is both charming and insane, and a couple of supposed diplomats who are anything but diplomatic.
Randiant is a book that I liked less and less the further I read. Which, now that I think about it, was also my reaction to Expendable, the first in the series, in which Festina Ramos is introduced. But it wasn't just the characters and the heavy thumb of the author obviously manipulating the scale to create an extreme situation that I didn't like, I don't really think it's even very good science fiction. Yes, it's set in the future on another planet. Yes, the problem involves alien technology. But on another level, it's all much too easy. It isn't about understanding the alien technology or figuring out what's happening, because whenever they get stuck someone shows up to explain things to them, conveniently in a language they understand. And subduing the alien power that is causing the problem is dealt with as simply as Festina looking at some machinery and pulling out a wire more or less at random. It also seemed that the long-gone alien race whose planet they were exploring were, though physically different than humans, mentally not really very alien at all.
It seems, instead, that the story is more about themes of storytelling and heroism and finding a deeper meaning than it is about the trappings of science fiction, and thus as a work of science fiction it's breezy and superficial and just sort of annoying. There are too many things I was asked to swallow that I simply could not. And so I do not know if I will bother to read any more works by this author. I see potential, and I want to give him another chance, but this material is just not working for me at all.
The setting is in the future, and humans have joined the League of Peoples, a confederation of many races, most of them more powerful than humans. Our main characters are members of the Explorers Corps, who are sent on highly dangerous missions to strange planets, with the full understanding many of them will be killed. But that's okay, because they are unattractive, and therefore Expendable -- a study has shown that personnel are more upset by the death of an attractive companion than an unattractive one, so ugly people are forced into life-threatening situations because they don't matter. If you can buy this utterly stupid premise, then perhaps you can swallow the rest of the implausibilities Gardner throws in.
In Radiant, we follow the adventures of a young Expendable as she is infected and infested by a higher life form that intends to use her to achieve its own goals. She is paired up with Admiral Festina Ramos and they are stranded on a planet and likely to die unless they can figure out how to fix things that went badly wrong there in the past. They are teamed up with Tut, a companion who is both charming and insane, and a couple of supposed diplomats who are anything but diplomatic.
Randiant is a book that I liked less and less the further I read. Which, now that I think about it, was also my reaction to Expendable, the first in the series, in which Festina Ramos is introduced. But it wasn't just the characters and the heavy thumb of the author obviously manipulating the scale to create an extreme situation that I didn't like, I don't really think it's even very good science fiction. Yes, it's set in the future on another planet. Yes, the problem involves alien technology. But on another level, it's all much too easy. It isn't about understanding the alien technology or figuring out what's happening, because whenever they get stuck someone shows up to explain things to them, conveniently in a language they understand. And subduing the alien power that is causing the problem is dealt with as simply as Festina looking at some machinery and pulling out a wire more or less at random. It also seemed that the long-gone alien race whose planet they were exploring were, though physically different than humans, mentally not really very alien at all.
It seems, instead, that the story is more about themes of storytelling and heroism and finding a deeper meaning than it is about the trappings of science fiction, and thus as a work of science fiction it's breezy and superficial and just sort of annoying. There are too many things I was asked to swallow that I simply could not. And so I do not know if I will bother to read any more works by this author. I see potential, and I want to give him another chance, but this material is just not working for me at all.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
2012, the year in reading
I keep a list of everything I read, and have done so since 2000. For my list-making purposes, the work needs to be at least 90 pages to count as a book-length object, and I do not count re-reads.
In 2012 I read 140 books and scripts. This is down a bit from last year, and I attribute this directly to the fact I moved this year. I started cleaning out and packing and fixing up the old house to sell starting in April, moved in June, sold the old house in September, and finally now, at year-end, have all my financing sorted out and feel mostly settled in the new house. There are still things left to do, I still have about half a dozen boxes I haven't unpacked and there are some things around the house that aren't finished yet, but I feel pretty settled in now. Given how much of my time and energy the buying/moving/renovating/selling process took, I'm actually surprised I managed to read as much as I did this year.
In 2012, I read:
56 fantasies
13 science fiction
25 mysteries
19 romances
7 scripts
and the rest of my reading material was general fiction, nonfiction, horror, and thrillers. Of those, almost half (65) were gay fiction of some kind -- gay romance, gay mystery, gay fantasy, etc. These were almost all ebooks, and many were shorter than a commercially published novel in other genres.
A few years ago there was an upswing in my reading habits. I went from consistently reading 60 - 85 books, year after year, to consistently reading 120+ books a year. I attribute this partly to ebooks, as they are so much easier and faster to acquire. So when I finish something, I can make a quick purchase and be reading a few minutes later, whereas before I would be delayed by the necessity of getting to a bookstore or library, or order things online and have to wait for delivery. Also, with my ebook reader, I nearly always have reading material with me, so I read at times and places, for instance when waiting at a bank drive-through, that I didn't read before. On the other hand, I used to occasionally listen to audiobooks in the car, and since my commute is now considerably shorter I am no longer doing that.
I had a fairly good reading year this year. I read many things I liked, a few I loved, and plenty that were just so-so but entertaining enough to trudge through to the end. I found myself, quite to my surprise, reading some horror this year, as I stopped reading horror around 1990 and never expected to go back. I ended up leaving the mystery book group I had belonged to, as we ran into a string of books that I just bounced off of, and I got tired of going to meetings to explain why I didn't like it and gave up. I didn't want to always be the negative person in the group, nor did I much enjoy every month attempting to read books I never would have chosen to read, because I wasn't going to like them. The first year of the group we read quite a few books I enjoyed, but last year there were too many Scandinavian mysteries (I don't get along very well with those) and this year was just a series of books that were not my thing at all.
Here were some of my favorite reads of the year:
In 2012 I read 140 books and scripts. This is down a bit from last year, and I attribute this directly to the fact I moved this year. I started cleaning out and packing and fixing up the old house to sell starting in April, moved in June, sold the old house in September, and finally now, at year-end, have all my financing sorted out and feel mostly settled in the new house. There are still things left to do, I still have about half a dozen boxes I haven't unpacked and there are some things around the house that aren't finished yet, but I feel pretty settled in now. Given how much of my time and energy the buying/moving/renovating/selling process took, I'm actually surprised I managed to read as much as I did this year.
In 2012, I read:
56 fantasies
13 science fiction
25 mysteries
19 romances
7 scripts
and the rest of my reading material was general fiction, nonfiction, horror, and thrillers. Of those, almost half (65) were gay fiction of some kind -- gay romance, gay mystery, gay fantasy, etc. These were almost all ebooks, and many were shorter than a commercially published novel in other genres.
A few years ago there was an upswing in my reading habits. I went from consistently reading 60 - 85 books, year after year, to consistently reading 120+ books a year. I attribute this partly to ebooks, as they are so much easier and faster to acquire. So when I finish something, I can make a quick purchase and be reading a few minutes later, whereas before I would be delayed by the necessity of getting to a bookstore or library, or order things online and have to wait for delivery. Also, with my ebook reader, I nearly always have reading material with me, so I read at times and places, for instance when waiting at a bank drive-through, that I didn't read before. On the other hand, I used to occasionally listen to audiobooks in the car, and since my commute is now considerably shorter I am no longer doing that.
I had a fairly good reading year this year. I read many things I liked, a few I loved, and plenty that were just so-so but entertaining enough to trudge through to the end. I found myself, quite to my surprise, reading some horror this year, as I stopped reading horror around 1990 and never expected to go back. I ended up leaving the mystery book group I had belonged to, as we ran into a string of books that I just bounced off of, and I got tired of going to meetings to explain why I didn't like it and gave up. I didn't want to always be the negative person in the group, nor did I much enjoy every month attempting to read books I never would have chosen to read, because I wasn't going to like them. The first year of the group we read quite a few books I enjoyed, but last year there were too many Scandinavian mysteries (I don't get along very well with those) and this year was just a series of books that were not my thing at all.
Here were some of my favorite reads of the year:
- Moon Over Soho and Whispers Underground by Ben Aaronovitch (urban fantasy/police procedural)
- Dancing With Bears by Michael Swanwick (science fiction)
- Frog by Mary Calmes (contemporary gay romance)
- Irregulars by Astrid Amara, Josh Lanyon, Nicole Kimberling & Ginn Hale (urban fantasy/gay romance)
- Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory (I'm not sure whether this is science fiction or fantasy, it's hard to classify)
- The Hollow City by Dan Wells (horror)
- Orbus by Neal Asher (science fiction)
Currently I am in a re-reading mood. Over the weekend I re-read Foreigner and Invader by C.J. Cherryh, and I am currently re-reading Neal Asher's Ian Cormac novels, this time in the proper order.
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