Recent Reading - Sep-21

War Maid's Choice - David Weber

Re-read on a sunny day in the garden. Noble paladin Bahzell has been attracted to Leanna since he first met her (a book or two ago), but she was fifteen when they first met and he was forty-ish (he's a Hradani, who routinely live to 200), so he thoroughly stamped on that. Only now Leanna's twenty-one and she's had quite enough of waiting, thank you. There's also a major military campaign, with added demons, and an assassination plot, but getting Bahzell and Leanna hitched is the main plot-token for the series arc.

Sword of the South - David Weber

This is a new series that picks up after War Maid's Choice, how far after is not immediately clear. Bahzell and Leanna are now running an inn (why two senior nobles and paladins are running an inn takes a long time to justify and I really don't think it entirely makes sense) and now have a sub-teen daughter, Gwynna, who has some great expectations built around her, much to their concern. Into this wanders a cipher of a man, a scarred warrior with no memory of his name or history, but who turns out to be spectacularly capable with sword, bow or harp. Kenhodan, the name he chooses, and Bahzelll are quickly caught up in an ongoing mission of Wencit, the 2000yo (and last) wild wizard, because a noble down south has been engaging in dark sorcery and she's next on Wencit's list of dark sorcerors who need dealing with. Of course, this being Wencit, there are wheels within wheels to his planning, and a quite staggering amount of pre-prepped set-up.

This is told from Kenhodans's viewpoint, not Bahzell's, which makes for a substantial difference from the earlier books, not necessarily a bad one, but a little jarring. Meanwhile Leanna is very quickly put on a bus, which is less than ideal - "you've had the kid, you don't matter anymore" is definitely a possible reading. My main worry though, is wrapped up around Kenhodan and Gwynna, because he's thirty-something, she's pre-teen, possibly sub-ten, and there are very definite indications they'll become a couple before the series is up. Weber's trying to write his way around the problem, but solving the difference in physical maturation will not make it okay, Gwynna will still emotionally be pre-pubescent, no matter how often he tells us that she'd putting childish things behind her.

And on purely personal irritation grounds, "Kenhodan" doesn't work as a name for me, I automatically want to read it as 'Ken Hodan' and I'm jarred every time it doesn't read that way.

Judas Unchained, Peter F Hamilton

Accidental reread of the 2nd part of the Commonwealth duology, all 1235 pages of it.

Salvation, Peter F Hamilton

First book of the Salvation trilogy. This is structurally interesting. First you have Feriton Kayne, who is hunting an alien hiding among the senior security executives of 23rd century Earth, He has four of them - his own corporate security boss Yuri, Callum who represents the separate liberal sub-culture, Alic an FBI troubleshooter, and Kandara who is a mercenary with a speciality in hunting terrorists - stuck with him for 48 hours on an isolated journey, and he investigates their background for anomalies by having them tell stories. So that's one level of the narrative. The next level of the narrative are the stories, in effect five short novelettes that teach us who these people are and what their world is like - Callum is the only one who would count as a nice guy. And then the third level is set in the far future, where Humanity is being hunted by its enemy, and a small clan of children - ten boys, three girls - are being taught to be the next generation of warriors in the war against the enemy. This focuses on two kids, Dellian, who is a boy, and therefore destined to be thickset and a born warrior, and Yirella a girl, therefore destined to be willowy, with a large head, and special adaptions so her brainpower doesn't overheat her while she strategizes. And part of the way they are taught is by telling them stories about the five 'Saints', the same stories those Saints are telling Feriton.

While the narrative structure is complex, it does basically work. The problem for me was I didn't like the narrative about the kids nearly as much as I liked the paired narratives about 23rd century Earth, which has deeply developed worldbuilding versus the rather blah worldbuilding of the far future.

Though strongly in its favour it does pull off a completely shocking climax.

Instruments of Darkness - Alfred Price

A history of electronic warfare in WWII, focusing particularly on the bomber campaigns. Contains some gloriously British improvised muddling through, such as Aspirin, a ground-based jammer to beat the German Knickebein beam system used to guide their bombers, which was a jammer cobbled together from a hospital diathermy set (used for cauterisation) rigged up to an aerial and installed in local police stations. When it was needed the RAF would ring the police station and the officer on desk duty would turn it on. And when the RAF realised that Germany was building a network of air defence radars all across the Continent one of the methods they used to find them was to give RAF bombers crossing occupied territory a bunch of packages to be tossed out one by one as they went. The packages contained a set of instructions saying roughly "If the Germans have been building any big weird metal things near here, can you write down where it is on the form and attach it to the included homing pigeon".

This is very good, Price knows his stuff - he was an RAF officer, and he's rewritten it at least once as new stuff came out of the archives.

Webcomics Roundup

Requiem - second webcomic in a couple of months to reach a climax that left me unimpressed. Here the problem is at least promised a fix - the author has been clear for a long time that there'll be a second webcomic to finish the overall story - it's just the way they finished this one (after c16 years of five comics a week) was to come to a complete stop. It basically ends on the primary protagonist saying "I know how we'll get them for this," 'this' being killing everyone on the planet except for the c30,000* the conspiracy of good-guys managed to get into isolated survivalist colonies. The epilogue with the two characters who've turned into effective pre-cogs telling each other "It was agony not being able to tell him his wife was going to die" didn't help.

* That 30,000 excluding pretty much every secondary character who had fallen out of the primary narrative. Half the surviving characters are now missing close relatives.

Skin Horse - seems to be headed towards its climax, which may well turn out to be "and then the mothership beamed them all up".

Wilde Life - has just introduced the long-promised antagonist, who may well be the Devil.

Unsounded - currently has everything quite literally falling down around our pre-pubescent heroine's ears, in the middle of a skirmish in a nunnery between the forces of two nations who may both be the bad guy. Meanwhile our hero has pouted his way out of her control and is having a joyful reunion with his kid brother, who may or may not be entirely aware that older brother has spent the past few years literally dead and rotting. One of the few stories to regularly surprise me with unpredicted plot-twists that nevertheless fit perfectly within the overall narrative.

Freefall - appears to have successfully set up a new scenario in which Florence and Sam will be facing off against systemic corruption in an engineering environment/sub-culture. Again.

Harbourmaster - is busy teaching Tal, its protagonist, that his being uninterested in people sexually is not a bad thing. I thought it might be headed towards a climax a few months ago, but Tal managed to successfully divest himself of his controlling family, so the crisis of pulling him out of his job to go take up his 'rightful' position never happened.

Magellan - currently in so deep a hole that the proposal to get out of it by disembowelling one of the first year superhero trainees actually sounds reasonable.

Dresden Codak - I have absolutely no idea where this is going from page to page, but it looks so gorgeous.

Dicebox - seems to be updating regularly again, this is good!