books and books review

The Pride of Chanur – C. J. Cherryh (reread)

Published on November 24, 2010

Cover of The Pride of Chanur

The Pride of Chanur
C. J. Cherryh
224 pages
published in 1981

I’ve read and reviewed The Pride of Chanur before, way back in 2001. That’s only three sentences long though, so high time for a reread and a proper review, especially as I’m trying to read more women sf writers this year, having discovered how unbalanced my reading was. Rereading old favourites like this one seemed a good way to start. Even if it did make me dream of kissing a Kif at Kefh.

The Pride of Chanur is a trade ship run by Hani –a race of bipedal intelligent lions– of the Chanur house/clan, captained by Pyanfar Chanur. She’s doing the rounds of her ship, currently docked at Meetpoint, the big interspecies trading station run by the stsho, when something speeds past her into the ship. At first thinking it some kind of animal escaped from another ship, it turns out to be sapient, but “naked-hided, blunth-toothed and blunt-fingered” unlike any species she knows, something that after careful questioning calls itself human and turns out to have escaped Kif custody, the Kif being a particularly nasty race of black robed, grey skinned, long snouted pirates and thiefs. She refuses to hand it –him– over to them and the result is she and her ship have to flee Meetpoint, one step ahead of the murderous Kif, who in the process blow up and murder another Hani ship…

Now read on at the bookblog…

Shards of Honor – Lois Mc Master Bujold (reread)

Published on November 14, 2010

Cover of Shards of Honor

Shards of Honor
Lois McMaster Bujold
313 pages
published in 1986

I’ve reviewed Shards of Honor before, way back in 2001. Chronologically it’s the earliest story in the Vorkosigan series, with the exception of Falling Free. It is also the earliest published novel in the series and was based on an idea Bujold had for a Star Trek story. In the original story, the roles of Aral and Cordelia would’ve been played by a Klingon warrior and a Vulcan scientist; you can still sort of see the traces of this in the published book.

Cordelia Naismith is the captain of a Betan Planetary Survey Mission investigating a newly discovered planet, when her expedition is attacked by a Barrayaran force. She’s stunned and when she comes to she’s alone with the leader of that force, Aral Vorkosigan, left behind for death by his own internal enemies. They negotiate an uneasy truce to try and survive on a hostile planet to reach a survial cache left behind by the Barrayarans. After a long and ardeous terek they reach the cache, but something unexpected has happened in the meantime: they’ve fallen in love.

Read on…

Omaha Beach: a Flawed Victory – Adrian R. Lewis

Published on November 5, 2010

Omaha Beach: a Flawed Victory

Omaha Beach: a Flawed Victory
Adrian R. Lewis
381 pages including index and notes
published in 2001

Omaha Beach: A Flawed Victory was not quite the book I expected it to be or wanted to read. What I thought I was getting out of the library was a book describing the landings itself, looking in detail at how the battle for Omaha Beach evolved, similar to a book on Kursk I got at the same time. What I got instead was an analysis of the strategic choices made for the landings and how that led to near-disaster at Omaha. The actual battle is dealt with in the first chapter, the rest of the book deals with the reasons why the battle happened as it did.

Any disappointment I felt was shortlived. The book I got was easily as interesting as the book I wanted to get. What it managed to do was to make me question the “official” reasons why the Americans at Omaha Beach did so much worse than their colleagues at Utah or the British/Commonwealth forces at their landings. What I’ve always read was that the American commanders at Omaha had both underestimated the German resistance and the German fortification and had rejected the use of all the various special enginering tanks the British had developed to tackle these fortifications, the socalled “Hobart’s Funnies“. What Adrian R. Lewis argues instead was that the real problem was that the Normandy Landings were planned according to the wrong doctrine, that the experience build up in earlier landings in the Pacific and the Mediterranean was ignored in favour of finding new solutions to the same problems because the commanders in charge of Operation Overlord overestimated the uniqueness of the operation.

Komarr – Lois McMaster Bujold

Published on November 4, 2010

Cover of Komarr

Komarr
Lois McMaster Bujold
311 pages
published in 1998

Komarr was the first Miles Vorkosigan book I’d ever read, back in 1998. At the time it was the latest in the series to have been published and deliberately written as a jump on point for new readers like me. I didn’t jump in completely ignorant however, as the Vorkosigan series was one of the favourite series of rec.arts.sf.written, which each new novel thoroughly dissected and discussed. It was these discussions that prompted me to finally pick up one of the series and luckily, it was the perfect starting point.

What I missed about Komarr the first time around was how feminist it is in its own right. It’s not an overtly political book, but the heart of the story is how one woman manages to escape from a bad marriage and the gender assumptions, traditions and expectations she grew up with. It’s her story that makes Komarr special, in what otherwise would’ve been a fun but unremarkable adventure science fiction story. As I’ve realised since, Lois Bujold has always been good at infusing even her slightest science fiction with subtle sociological backgrounds, imagining what effects the usual genre props might actually have on a society. So for example, the coming of Galactic gender assignment technologies to backward Barrayar has lead to a glut of males, as tradition values male heirs more than costly daughters and every family scrambled to make sure they got their quota of males. It’s something that has happened in the real world as well, not that outrageous a prediction to be sure, but Bujold pulls that sort of thing all the time, hidden in plain view in the background to Miles’ adventures.

Books read October

Published on November 2, 20103 Comments

I was going to read more this month, but my Essentials project got in the way. Unlike some bloggers, I don’t count comics towards my book reading. It just feels like cheating. So only four books this month, all science fiction or fantasy.

The Restoration Game — Ken MacLeod
Ken’s latest novel is as good as always, but somewhat of a departure from his last few, more philosophical perhaps.

Brass Man — Neal Asher
Another almost indecypherable Polity novel depending for its impact on a lot of prior knowledge on the part of the reader, knowledge I don’t have. It reminds me of first getting to grips with the Marvel Universe, the same hints about earlier stories being dropped, the same characters with unexplained backstories. I like that sort of thing, you may not.

The Ship of Ishtar — A. Merritt
A classic pulp fantasy story from 1924, long before Tolkien codified our expectations of that genre. Interesting to read, but every now and again needs effort to continue.

Komarr — Lois McMaster Bujold
The first book in a campaign to make up for my deficiencies in reading science fiction and fantasy written by women. A reread of the first Miles Vorkosigan novel I’d ever read. What struck me this time was how quietly feminist this book is, something I need to write about in greater detail.