David Gillon

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold.

I'd been looking for my copy of this for months, having worked my way through most a re-read of the Vorkosigan Series. I finally found it in my laptop's Calibre library, so apparently I didn't buy it from Amazon as I'd thought. It's a fun romp. The series has mostly portrayed Captain Ivan Vorpatril, Mile's cousin, as shallow but ornamental, with the occasional hint that Ivan isn't nearly as feckless as he seems. And given by this point Ivan is the senior aide to Barrayar's military commander, he really couldn't be.

Ivan's on Komarr, staying in the local equivalent of an AirBnB, while his boss is running a bunch of inspections on the Barrayaran forces in system, when his dissolute and disreputable cousin Byerly Vorrutyer arrives on his doorstep, the complication being that Ivan knows By is really an agent for Impsec, charged with infiltrating plots involving the Vor. By's on a case, and he knows something is going to happen to a young woman, Maybe he can't save her, but Ivan's available.

Tej is working in a shipping office, quietly desperate about her situation, when Ivan arrives, claiming to want to ship a vase, and then proceeds to try and charm her into going out with him. This fails to impress, Ivan's attempts get increasingly desperate, and Tej's solution is to have him stunned by her fellow fugitive, Rish, who is blue, so they can interrogate him as a presumed kidnapper/assassin/bounty hunter. Then the real kidnappers/assassins/bounty hunters arrive.

Shennanigans ensue.

And with people beating down the door, the immediately obvious way to extract Tej and Rish, at least to Ivan's panicked mind, is for Ivan and Tej to get married.

Then the complications start.

It's a fun romp, but Bujold is possibly having too much fun with some of the sub-plots. At its core it's a rom-com about two people who end up accidentally married and then have to deal with all the complications relatives inflict on them while they try and work out how they really feel about each other, complicated by a double hidden prince gambit, and a strapped-on heist movie.

Silence Fallen, Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson 10)

A re-read of the last book I'd read in the Mercy Thompson series to get me back up to speed. Mercy is kidnapped by the European vampire king Bonarota, causing Adam to assemble his allies (including local vampire boss Marsilia, Bonarota's lost love) and fly off to rescue her from his Renaissance-style court. Of course by the time they get there Mercy has rescued herself and ended up in Prague having encounters with a certain legendary force of order. But then, as Coyote's daughter, Mercy is something of a force of chaos herself.

Storm Cursed, Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson 11)

I had a problem with the structure of this one, because once we start to see the threat driving the plot, it's immediately clear a major series character is at absolute best being put on a bus at the end (though on the clever plotting side, it also becomes clear that their replacement has been hanging over the fireplace for several books without giving the game away).

Briggs has been building up the 'Hardesty Witches' as a threat for a while, mostly in the parallel Alpha and Omega series, but this time they make a move against Mercy and Adams pack.  The Hardesty Witches are sort of a black witchcraft crime-family, so they're never going to get along with the law-and-order oriented werewolves, but it's really not clear to me what their aim was here - and it's a really high-stakes play because they're trying to disrupt a summit between the US government and the fae (who are technically at war) taking place in pack territory. I just wasn't convinced that the risk of sending the US government and its agencies after the witches was worth the potential payoff of keeping things disrupted.

Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it, but this is one where you really, really need to have read all the books that go before it to understand the forces in play.

Smoke Bitten, Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson 12)

One of the complications of Mercy and Adam's life is a playdate for their adoptive son Aiden means Underhill is coming to play, That's Underhill as in the personification of Faery, who is having an ongoing tantrum with the fae. Discovering she's installed a gate to Faery in their backyard really isn't the kind of garden feature that adds to your real-estate market value.

Also complicating things is that Adam isn't himself, and won't let Mercy in to find out what's going on. That takes a backseat when two of Mercy's friends turn up dead in an apparent murder-suicide, but Mercy can smell magic all over the supposed murderer, which makes it a matter for the pack. And as other people start to die, or be taken over, including more people Mercy cares for, it becomes clear that something lethal has escaped from Faery, and that Mercy has become the focus of its attention.

And in our heroes' copious spare time there's the cabal of outsider werewolves plotting a coup.

I read it in one sitting, so clearly I liked it, but given the number of times it's happened to date, Mercy really should be slightly more alert to people manipulating the Mercy-Adam relationship. OTOH what's going on with Adam is a piece of gorgeously evil plotting digging into his characterisation right back to day one. And the denouement does bring the return of an old friend.

Amongst Our Weapons, Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London 9)

I really wasn't expecting that title to be a quotation, so the plot direction surprised me in a way that might not be the case for other people.

Bev is imminently due to deliver twins, so as the expectant father of two baby river goddesses the last thing Peter needs is a major murder investigation being dumped in his lap. But that's what he gets when the death of a man who was apparently in the process of robbing the London Silver Vaults turns out to have a significant magical component (him being missing half his chest is a major clue). So Peter and new Folly trainee Dannii find themselves back on DCI Seawoll's Belgravia Murder Investigation Team. Things get even more complicated when they turn up a second body, and a connection back to a small group of Charismatic Catholics* at Manchester University in the 80s. And to make matters worse, Lesley is back, and apparently involved.

When Peter goes to interview one of the other group members, now the force behind a Bodyshop expy, he really isn't expecting to find himself facing off against an apparent Angel of Death, complete with wings, halo and burning spear. The outcome is a draw, but that religious link is getting compelling.

Drastic measures are called for, which means Peter and Dannii catching the train to Manchester, with Seawoll along as local guide. Things take several unexpected turns, but we meet a familiar face, and get an insight into another aspect of the Folly's post-WWII disintegration.

But in the end this is the Rivers of London, not Manchester, so it's back to the Smoke for the final showdown with the forces of erm....

Enjoyable, even if I failed the pop-culture test. There are a couple of points about the ending that make me wonder if we won't see a time skip before the next book in the series (which is currently in 2013 if memory serves).

Plus points to Aaronovitch from me for introducing a deaf-without-speech character (and for feeling no need whatsoever to point out her partner is trans) , and for this line: "Whoever had converted the warehouse into offices and flats had clearly done it in the carefree 60s, when lifts were for wimps and people with disabilities hadn't been invented."

* The Catholic church's version of evangelicals, my old physics teacher was one.

Demon's Dance, Keri Arthur (Lizzie Grace 4)

The good news for Lizzie, Belle and hot werewolf cop Aiden is that the new reservation witch has arrived, so Lizzie and Belle can go back to being coffee shop owners, not untrained stand-ins. The bad news is that there's a skin-stealing demon on the loose, and the worse news is the new reservation witch doesn't just recognise on-the-run-from-her-family Lizzie, he's her cousin Monty. Which brings a bunch of revelations about what happened between Lizzie and her father, and forced marriage is only the start of it. It's significantly heavier on the abuse side of things than I'd anticipated from earlier books.

Telling the real story buys Lizzie time with Monty, and lances some of the tension between her and Aiden. But that demon's still out there, and it's starting to look like not just one demon, but two.

This took a darker turn than I anticipated, and I'm not talking about the demons. On the negative side I don't feel I was ever quite clear on precisely what was going on with the second demon. And Arthur definitely has a thing for putting her characters through the mangle, as of the close of this book we're now up to at least two concussions, four broken limbs and sundry burns and shrapnel injuries (plus a couple of deaths of secondary characters).

Rebuilding the Royal Navy: Warship Design Since 1945, David K Brown and George Moore

Re-read, a history of warship design 1945 to 2002, from one of the people involved.
 

Currently Playing:

7 Days to Die: Definitely getting the hang of things. The last building I raided turned out to have an underground drugs lab, and hearing zombies banging about when I couldn't see them had me seriously freaked out.

Wordle: I finally completed my 100th Wordle - I've been playing intermittently since January.

Overall stats:

Failed: 1

I sat down this afternoon to try and set up my replacement hard-drive - I've had it for over a week but the packaging was still unopened as I just haven't trusted myself to handle it safely while having a flare that was making my manual dexterity even worse than usual. After a couple of hours searching for a missing power-brick - turned out to still be in the other six-way socket block even if nothing was attached - I settled down to check the status on my various external hard drives and was stunned to find the one I thought I'd beaten to death against the edge of my desk, and the reason for the new hard-drive, is now actually working again. I'm not certain how reliably - so far so good, but in the longer term? - but I've been able to confirm that the only thing on there are my steam libraries and other gaming related stuff (I thought that was the case but wasn't 100% certain). So that means I haven't lost every save game from years of gaming, plus hundreds of hours of fiddling about with stuff. Plans were rapidly rejigged to ensure I have back-ups from that as first priority. The new drive will instead be used for rebuilding the Windows disk of my desktop.

Recent Reading:

The Wicche Glass Tavern, Seana Kelly

I'm still looking askance at the spelling choices, but mostly this book is about witch/werewolf hybrid Sam finding someone to teach her how to use her newly discovered skills as a necromancer, while simultaneously finding out that her homicidal aunt is back in town and set on driving anyone she can get her claws into to attack Sam at first sight. Oh, and Sam banging her vampire fiance Clive at every opportunity. There's a fairly ruthless plotting decision that I have problems with, not just because it is so clear an attempt to pump up the melodrama levels, but because it ultimately turns into an unseen deus ex machina that seriously undermines the climax.

Overall it's a fun series, but nothing earthshattering.

Blood Kissed, Keri Arthur

I'd not read anything by the author before, but OMG she's got a lot of books out there now I look! Her thing seems to be Australian-set urban fantasy/dark romance. This one is the first of the 'Lizzie Grace Series', with Lizzie being your typical underrated heroine with a complicated backstory. As the story opens she's running a newly opened cafe in the small town at the heart of the local werewolf reservation. Among the cafe's offerings are psychic readings, because on top of being a witch Lizzie has psychometry skills, and her business partner and best friend Belle is a witch, telepath, talks to the spirits, whips up a mean potion, and is also Lizzie's familiar (and human familiars are unheard of). And despite two set of rare talents and one absolutely unique combination they've been successfully hiding themselves since they were 18 or so. Hmm!

Despite having some suspension of disbelief issues with their backstories, I did actually like this a lot. Lizzie and Belle are relatively powerful, but they aren't killing machines, and they're both very personable. Lizzie and Belle just want a quiet life, that whole hiding thing, but they can't turn away a desperate mother who needs Lizzie's psychometry skills because her daughter has disappeared, even if it means Lizzie heading out to confront an unexpected vampire on her own. Unfortunately she's too late, and that means she's standing over a dead body when local Ranger (werewolf cop) Aiden turns up, he of the tall, rangy body and the dark blond, silver streaked hair. And as soon as we find out he hates witches its obvious he and not-currently-looking-to-date Lizzie are fated to spend the series orbiting each other.

Okay, there's a lot of predictable formula at work here, but it's well-executed formula. I only really have two quibbles - my issues with the back story, and the fact that this is an awfully white Australia. There's an Asian character who appears briefly before being put on a bus ambulance, but apart from that the only non-white character is Belle, who is described as 'ebony skinned', though it seems extremely unlikely she's Aboriginal. OTOH the physical description of the Australian bush seems pretty good.

I briefly looked at the Kindle samples for the first books in a couple of other of Arthur's series and there are definite common threads in the set-up. I'm not sure if they share a common setting or not, but it seems possible, and there are thematic links if not - Australia, a near future urban fantasy setting, and sexy werewolves. Worth a look if urban fantasy or dark romance are your things.

A Call to Arms, David Weber, Timothy Zahn (and Thomas Pope)

"Book 1 of Manticore Ascendant". So the foreword explains this is basically Tim Zahn writing in Weber's Honorverse, but should really have Thomas Pope's name on it as well, because he's Weber's continuity expert for the Honorverse, but it was left off as a marketing decision. Hmmmm.

The setting is the early years of the Manticoran Navy, and having beaten off one threat a few years ago so that Manticore can live in peace the Navy is now facing internal demands to build down its strength (despite most of that strength already being in mothballs), particularly from Earl Breakwater*, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a powerful faction leader in the House of Lords) who wants to subsume it into the Customs Service, which just coincidentally reports to him. Into this scenario wanders Travis Long, an 18yo who is deeply dissatisfied with the lack of discipline in his life. Yes, you read that sentence correctly, Travis is an 18yo who is uncomfortable because there aren't enough rules to restrict what he can do. Having unknowingly let himself be cast as the getaway driver in a jewellery heist, Travis escapes the consequences because they parked outside a Navy recruiting office and he wandered inside to ask what the Navy was like. He's not sure he's completely happy with the idea of joining the Navy, but he's definitely sure he doesn't want any part of the jewellery heist's mess.

So we get the standard boot camp montage, and while there are now more rules in his life, Travis is horrified because people aren't committed to following them. And there's more evidence of venial nobles, because the Navy aren't being allowed to feed the genetically modified part of their recruits enough to live on because some noble is convinced it'll somehow lead to enhanced team bonding. And an officer with noble connections is out to get Travis because he keeps reporting that the officer is letting people cheat in their exams (given those exams are on running drive systems he may have a point). And then there's Travis's half-brother, Gavin, Baron Winterfall, who is being used by the evil vizier, sorry, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to popularise his policies with the younger elements in the Lords, and who keeps suggesting compromises that the Navy can't avoid, but which ultimately further Breakwater's plans.

Breakwater's initial scheme is to turn the Navy's nine mothballed battlecruisers into eighteen Customs Service frigates by cutting them in half** - after all, they may as well take advantage of all those multiply redundant systems even if the resulting ships will look a little odd. Producing an initial prototype takes a year or two, and by that time Travis is in space as a junior technician and on the spot when first an asteroid mining ship has a time-critical failure, and then the new Customs frigate has an oopsie. At which point the rules-loving, flexibility-hating Travis suggests an out-of-the-box way to save both ships. And a couple of officers take notice, even if the captain won't.

Fast forward another year or two and that gets Travis dragged along on a mission to the Republic of Haven, and again there's a disaster and Travis the rules-loving technician gets dragged into the decisions by the actual officers because of his ability to think outside the box.

You can possibly tell I had a problem with the protagonist. I don't know what Zahn is trying to do with Travis, put him up there as a poster boy for all kids really want discipline? But it really didn't convince me. Okay, I'm psychologically predisposed to only thinking rules are important if they make sense, which is practically the opposite of Travis, but I'm really struggling to see where he wants him to develop, and there wasn't a tremendously clear character growth in this. The other thing to annoy me is that this more evidence of Weber recycling plots*** until they've been washed clean of the last fraction of innovation - this is a re-run of parts of House of Steel (the novella in the Honorverse companion) and of the build-down under the High Ridge government in the main Honor Harrington series.

It's an okay read, and the last third is genuinely good once it forgets about the politics, but.....

* Let's not make our nominative determinism too blatant.

** Back-End/Front-End, not lengthways

*** As another example he's done war with a bunch of religious fanatics following a falsified gospel at least three times over, (Crusade in the Starfire series, Heirs of Empire in the Dahak series, and the whole Safehold sequence).