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

... you answer a knock on the door at 11PM to find a policeman on your doorstep! Apparently someone had reported a little old lady wandering around the estate, they were trying to find her to do a welfare check, and wanted to know if I'd seen her. I told him no, but I'd check my back garden. No idea what came of that, though they were wandering around shining torches into all the bushes for a while.

 I picked up my tickets for my trip north earlier. Annoyingly my right shoulder* seems to be finding pushing the chair irritating at the minute, though fortunately I don't have a great deal of pushing to do en route. Particularly annoying is that it was fine when I was out on Friday. I mentioned it on twitter and someone noted that EDS is clearly evil and stores up these things for when we most need our bodies to work.

* AKA my good shoulder

I considered booking 1st Class for the trip, but the difference in price was over 50% and looking at the seat plans (I've not yet travelled standard class on the new Azumas) there's not much to choose in extra distancing from other people in the wheelchair spaces between 1st Class and Standard Class. But looking at my tickets, my reservation is definitely in coach A, which is 1st Class. All upgrades gratefully accepted!

Ongoing Bujold Re-read

Komarr Miles goes to Komarr to investigate a space disaster, which turns out to be political sabotage. This is the book that introduces Ekaterin, the future Lady Vorkosigan, and the book's portrayal of someone squeezed down by an abusive marriage is some of the best writing I think she's done.

A Civil Campaign More of a comedy of manners than Vorkosigan stories usually are as Miles tries to woo Ekaterin without actually letting her in on it, all complicated by Emperor Gregor's impending marriage and Vor shennanigans. I'm not happy that Illyan's short term memory loss is used to drive the fatal spike into Mile's initial stratagem, and I've belatedly realised that we should be looking at Mark's disabilities as perhaps even more serious than Miles', despite the colourful language used to describe them. And on top of that there's the disturbing Lady Donna/Lord Dono sub-plot - gender identity is not something you change for convenience. (I'm only halfway through, so perhaps more later).

I've yet to find my copies of Cryoburn and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. I think I'm going to have to dig into Amazon to find out what format I bought them in. My Kindle denies all knowledge of them, but I'm not convinced.

I pressed the wrong button using my kindle last night, and got recommendations rather than my library, which told me that Lois McMaster Bujold has finally written a Penric and Desdemona novel, "The Assassins of Thasalon" - hello, yes, mine now!

Sequentially it's currently the last in series, set two years on from Pen's encounter with plague in "The Physicians of Vilnoc". Pen's still court sorceror to Duke Jurgo, and is fortuitously on scene when someone tries to magically assassinate his brother-in-law Adelis - the theological issue here being that a sorceror can only kill once, the inevitable result being the Bastard ripping away their demon and leaving them incapable of magic.

A cunning trap catches the assassin when she tries again, but when Pen summons a saint of the Bastard to remove her demon pre-trial (because executing a sorceror just means their demon jumps to the next nearest person) things don't go entirely to plan, because clearly the Bastard has plans for everyone involved, including the demons. Which leaves Pen and Des responsible for a saint who just wants to sit by the riverside and fish, and a baby sorceror whose 5yo son is being held hostage to ensure her actions by the dominant figure in the snake-pit politics of the neighbouring Cedonian empire.

Rose Lemberg has a really very good article about Bothari and the way Bujold handles disability in the Vorkosiverse (I'm not sure that 'early' strictly applies given they also talk about Mark).

However, the essay is discussing Bothari, and his arc includes a lot of very unpleasant, if not outright disturbing stuff, so trigger warnings are provided for

• Ableism
• Abuse
• Child sexual abuse
• Mental health issues
• Rape/sexual assault
• Shaming
   

It's very thought provoking, and I'd personally have added the artificial way Bujold lumbers Miles with a seizure disorder just at the point his fracture disorder is rendered no longer quite as limiting via bone replacements. Good writing should make disability incidental to the plot, not blatantly pitch in another layer in order to retain your character's unique selling point.

The article can be found here.

Currently Reading

Penric's Mission, Lois McMaster Bujold

The certainties of Penric's life in the World of the Five Gods have changed since last we saw him in Penric and the Shaman. He's now around 30, though still taken as younger, the Princess-Archdivine has died, medicine has lost its attraction, and he has moved on to a new Duke's court. His new lord has decided he might make a useful spy, which is quite a change for a Sorceror-Divine (and almost a doctor) of the Bastard. The change in role clearly excites Penric, but things don't go so well, and soon he's quite literally in a hole, with Desdemona, his inner demon, she of the 11 prior lives, all female, called on to perform a little life-saving self-surgery. Still, it's difficult to keep a good man, and his demon, down in a hole and Penric and Des manage to figure a way out. Which still leaves him overseas, in a city where he is visibly a foreigner, and there's the small matter of the man he was sent to meet, who will have been thoroughly incriminated by the documents he was carrying.

Penric is rather too late to prevent his contact's thoroughly Byzantine punishment, but his stubborn side, and maybe also the Bastard, mean he's not about to abandon him, or his interestingly widowed sister, even if that means taking up doctoring again. It's perhaps surprising just how dangerous a spy Penric could be, but he's constrained by his ethics as both doctor and divine, though of course that's a divine of the Bastard's order, and the Bastard's ethics are interestingly flexible (I loved the way Penric finance's himself). And only Penric could interrupt a duel to the death to tell his opponent 'look, you're doing it wrong' and deliver theological advice.

Grand Central Arena, Ryk Spoor

Ariane Austin is your typical space-racer pilot, bar the blue hair and the all-powerful AI in the box on her belt, in a post-scarcity society that has expanded to dominate the entire solar system, but can't make the jump to an interstellar society for some reason. Then up pops Dr Simon Sandrisson, who just happens to have figured out a jump drive, but can't get it to work as all the automation fails the instant his test probes jump. So he needs a pilot, and the rest of a crew. Cue crew assembly montage, mostly focused on power engineer Dr Marc C DuQuesne, who is More Than He Seems.

The jump drive is based on the everything's closer in warp space principle, what they hadn't bargained on is warp space being full. There is a mini Dyson sphere for every star system, and at the centre of everything is the Arena. It's sort of the Babylon 5 scenario, but rather than a beacon of hope, all alone in the night, the Arena is a beacon of full-contact sports, where everything is up for challenge. The Arena is old, and ruled by what is presumably an AI, but no other AI works in Arena Space. Nor do nuclear reactors, which is a bit of a bugger when you need your fusion plant to recharge your jump drive. The Arena is also the meeting place for the various factions of Arena Space, and the medium of commerce is betting on formal Challenges. But that's okay, Humanity is a society of insane risk-takers by Arena standards. (Of course we are, got to have that human exceptionalism) So it's up to Ariane, as newly designated leader of the Faction of Humanity, to figure out a way to refuel their ship.

Obviously this means Humanity variously bonding, having scientific meet-cute, or thoroughly annoying all five main factions in no time whatsoever. The Molothos are your typical aggressive xenophobes, the Vengeance think it's all an alien plot, the Faith are the Arena's version of B5's Vorlons (the cuddly Kosh version, not the fascist planet destroyers of Season 4), the Analytic are scientists and the Blessed to Serve are the biological slaves of an AI dominated society. And then there's Orphan, clearly the same species as the Blessed, and leader of the Liberated, a faction of one, who serves as their guide to the Arena. And lurking in the backgroud are the Shadeweavers, the polar opposite of the Faith, with more than a touch of B5 techno-mage about them.

And it's up to Ariane to win the prize of a trip home.

If you imagine Babylon 5 crossed with Golden Age SF you'll get the right feel for this, it's space opera on a grand scale, with all humanity's fate in the hands of Ivanova Ariane, backed by a certain power engineer whose name is a flaming banner he's more than he seems.
 

Spheres of Influence, Ryk Spoor

The sequel to Grand Central Arena. Ariane and the others have been back to the Solar System, to explain why Humanity is now at war, and the politicians and diplomats are Not Happy. But it's time to head back to the Arena ahead of the official mission, but with a new recruit to the crew. Marc thinks Ariane needs a bodyguard, and he has just the 'man' for the job, Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King.

Meanwhile, back at the Arena, everyone is plotting, especially those factions Ariane managed to humiliate the first time around. And the plotting gets worse with the arrival of two human diplomats, and a wildcard. But Ariane was difficult to beat the first time around, and this time she's got the Monkey King backing her.

I liked this just as much as the first, but there are two major flaws. The first is it loses a little focus on what makes the Arena so attractive a storytelling venue, the second is the real problem, the story seems to be missing about it's first sixth. There's a back-story summary that includes about a page of 'and what happened in between' that's actually fairly important to the plot. I'm not certain whether that means it was written as a separate novella, was a late editorial deletion, or what, but it should definitely be there at the start, and it isn't. It's still a thoroughly entertaining story, but it's a flawed entertaining.

Shadow of Victory, David Weber

I'm a fan of the Honorverse, and Weber in general, but I found this seriously irritating. That's not to say I didn't also thoroughly enjoy it, I read all 800 pages in under 24 hours, but it has some serious issues. This is the latest in the Shadows sub-series, which concentrates on the exploits of Admiral Michelle Henke and Captain Aivars Terekhov and his crew in the newly annexed Talbot Cluster (because Honor is now far too senior for the ship-to-ship stuff), and the main problem is it's a thematic repeat of Shadows of Freedom, the previous book, with walk-on parts for A Rising Thunder, the last mainstream Honor Harrington novel and Cauldron of Ghosts, the last novel in the Crown of Slaves Zilwicki/Cachat sub-series. Essentially we're getting three years of history we've already seen three times over, from a fourth perspective.

Shadows of Freedom was the Mesans (slave-creating, ubermensch, behind-the-scenes manipulators) using agents of the Solarian League (the 800lb gorilla of oppressively corrupt bureacratic states) as puppets to set up local liberation movements/terrorist cells to oppose the Manticoran annexation of the Talbot Cluster (never mind the overwhelming majority of Talbot cluster residents being firmly of the thank god you got here before the Sollies, where do we sign up to be imperial subjects opinion). Victory has them repeating the same stunt, but in Solly territory, telling the liberation movements on various Solly client states that they're the Manticorans, here to help them break free of Solarian oppression, and that the Navy will be there when they do rise up to keep the Solarian headbreakers off their backs - the operational concept is for all these efforts to fail and tarnish the Manties' rep.

So you have the Polish planet with its football-based liberation movement, the Czech planet with its party-based liberation movement, the Celtic planet with its forestry-based liberation movement, the US planet with its redneck liberation movement, and the other planet with its non-denominational liberation movement. All expecting Mantie help and the Manties none the wiser. Results are varied, for values of varied ranging into circa 10 million dead. (I'm not convinced having both Polish and Czech liberation movements was wise, I got thoroughly confused as to which character belonged in which movement).

There aren't actually that many new characters. A couple of Solly intel types who are beginning to figure out the Mesans are manipulating them (of course we already had a couple of Solly intel types who are... etc),  a new Mesan junior spymaster and his sociopathic deputy, and Aivars Terekov's wife Sinead, who is A Force of Nature - a significant chunk of the book is Sinead flattening anyone who stands between her and her husband after he's redeployed after precisely two nights at home. For fan-service Ginger Lewis finally gets her own ship, but having built her and it up, she and it aren't even present for the culmination of her own arc. And at the end of it all the overall series narrative has moved on a whole 12 hours from Cauldron of Ghosts.

Irritating.

Other observations. Not having read any Honorverse in a while, the relative lack of familiarity rather beat me about the head with just how keen Weber is on tall, thin female officers with 'exotic' looks. Here including a literal catwoman. And his mainstream characters do seem to be rather predominantly Western. Oh, Manticore's Queen Elizabeth (and her cousin Michelle Henke) are black, so it's not the white man's burden, but anyone of Asian background is overwhelmingly likely to get exotic hung on them (this includes Honor and her mother). I don't think we've seen an Asian-derived society in the entire series, while even the Czechs now have a star-system to call their own. The non-denominational liberation movement does have a Thai family involved. They run a Thai restaurant where the coup leaders meet, and the family patriarch goes by Thai Granpa. Seriously?!

ETA I remembered last night that the Honorverse's Andermani Empire is ethnically Asian, but culturally it's explicitly modelled on Prussia. *Headdesk*

Anno Dracula, Kim Newman

I've now read the last two books (to date) in the series, Dracula Cha Cha, Cha, and Johnny Alucard, but this is big enough already, so I'll save those for a separate update,

Up Next

Not certain, I'm tempted to re-read the entire Eric Flint/Ryk Spoor Boundary series, I'm probably 30 pages into Boundary, but might settle for just Castaway Planet, which is the next in the series after the two I've read. It's a shared setting, rather than a related plot, so the re-read is optional.

He’s a wampyr, she’s a Lady, they fight crime!

Lady Abigail Irene Garret, Th.D, Detective Crown Investigator, forensic sorcerer, with a scandalous reputation, a once noted beauty, and connections in the highest places. Now one of only three DCIs in Britain’s New Netherlands colonies, and the only one who is actually competent.

Lucifugous, Over the Atlantic, March 1899

Don Sebastien de Ulloa, renowned Great Detective, less well known as a wampyr, is fleeing Europe and its memories in the company of his protégé Jack Priest by airship, when a passenger goes missing.

Wax, New Amsterdam, April 1901

A disturbed night and a body in the street leads to the discovery of an entire household vanished leads to a case for Detective Crown Investigator Lady Abigail Irene Garret, soon joined to her evident annoyance, by Don Sebastien de Ulloa. But with the case setting her between the Lord Mayor of New Amsterdam, and her lover, the Duke of New Amsterdam, Abby Irene is soon grateful for the help.

Wane, New Amsterdam, March 1902

Abby Irene receives an invitation from an old lover, Prince Henry, the heir to the throne. But there is murder at the ball, a royal reputation to protect, and once more Abby Irene finds herself caugtht between the Lord Mayor and the Duke.

Limerent, New Amsterdam, October 1902

A wealthy Fenian is found dead inside a locked room, a pistol in one hand, a Rosary bead clutched in the other. But if he knew he was in danger, how did they get to him? And then there is the bigger, political, question, is his business partner, pro-independence Lord Mayor Peter Elliot, involved? And will his political opponent, Abby Irene’s patron, boss, and lover, Richard, Duke of New Amsterdam, accept any answer bar guilty?

Chatoyant, Boston, December 1902

Someone is killing high class male courtesans, and if Sebastien can’t investigate, then Abby Irene, newly fled from New Amsterdam, can. And then a figure from Sebastian’s past arrives. And war breaks out.

Lumiere, Paris, December 1902, January 1903

Sebastien and his court have travelled to Paris, the city of Light, city of Tesla’s marvellous broadcast electricity, to seek French aid for the rebels in the American colonies. But aid comes at a price. Ghostly wolves are invading Paris during its harsh winter, and someone needs to hunt them down.

Overall it’s a rock-solid collection. The political aspect took me by surprise, but the forensic sorcery aspects were everything I had hoped for, with a well thought out magic system. And each story stands as a competent mystery in its own rights, while simultaneously contributing to the overall arc.

Garret Investigates, (New Amsterdam #5), Elizabeth Bear

Five more stories from Bear’s New Amsterdam sequence. I actually read this straight after New Amsterdam as I wanted more of Abby Irene

The Tricks of London: London, April 1879

Told from the PoV of a young detective sergeant, London faces the return of an old threat, and a young Lady Abigail Irene is the Detective Crown Investigator charged with hunting it down

The Body of the Nation: New Netherlands, April 1897

A locked room mystery, on a river steamer, with a dead Bavarian princess, and bonus Sam Clemens.

Almost True: New Netherlands, 1900

The first Abby Irene story written, this sees her caught up by an attempt to assassinate her lover, the Duke of New Amsterdam. She’s a rather more physical force in this than in the other stories.

Underground: Paris, April 1941

Despite the collection’s title, this one doesn’t actually involve Abby Irene, the focus here is her former housekeeper, Mary Ballard, now working for the Resistance against Paris’ Prussian occupiers, and charged with getting someone hunted by every side out of the city.

Twilight: London, 1941

The last Abby Irene story. She’s an old woman now, but preserved by her sorcery, and she and Sebastien have not sat out the Prussian occupation. But now the Prussians are fled, the King is back, and the intention seems to be to pension off not just her, but the entire Crown Investigator service. But not before one final case that draws in all Sebastien’s surviving court.

The collection is a little varied, but well worth reading if New Amsterdam left you wanting more of Abigail Irene.

The White City (New Amsterdam #3), Elizabeth Bear

In this double-stranded addition to Bear's New Amsterdam tales, the wampyr Don Sebastien de Ulloa takes his court to Moscow both before and after the events in New Amsterdam and Paris, and both visits are marked by murder. (If the order I'm reading these seems odd, I'm trying to read them in chronological order rather than publication order).

The stories are interwoven, and the second finds his court marked by grief, so this may not be the best place to start (try 'New Amsterdam' for that), but if you like the structure it's well worth the time. Unlike the other books I've read in the New Amsterdam sequence, this is a single short novel (182 pages), rather than a collection of short stories.

In the earlier thread, Sebastien's protege Jack continues his habit of running with the revolutionary crowd, seduced by the artist Irina, and introduced to someone who may have the potential to be this universe's Lenin (Ilya Ilych Ulyanov? - that patronymic and surname combination is too big a coincidence), only for Irina to find herself framed for murder, allowing Sebastien to roll out his Great Detective persona.

The later thread again revolves around Irina and her acquaintances, as Sebastien stumbles on a body in her studio, and into the orbit of the Russian investigator Dyachenko, which allows Lady Abigail Irene to dust off her forensic sorcery skills. There's an interesting contrast in this one as the Russians have done away with forensic sorcery, and invented conventional forensics, so Abigail Irene and Dyachenko get to play 'let me impress you', to the amusement of Sebastien.

And lurking in the background to both stories is the enigmatic wampyr Starkad.

I really liked this, and Bear's prose continues to be gorgeous, but the resolution jarred a little - it makes sense, but there's a sequence that goes 'Ah, it was about A. Oh, it was really about B. Ah, so it was actually about C' that left me a little whiplashed


Penric and the Shaman, Lois McMaster Bujold


Four years on from Penric and the Demon, Penric is a fully qualified sorcerer-divine of the Bastard's Order, once more living in Martenbridge in the court of the Princess-Archdivine and spending his time trying to spread the medical knowledge of Learned Ruchia, the previous host of his demon, Desdemona, through a rather clever spell.

And then, just as winter sets in, there arrives Oswyl, a Locator in the Father's Order, hot on the heels of Inglis, a Royal Shaman, who is suspected of murder. Oswyl is very, ahem, dedicated to his work and the rest of his team have headed off in the opposite direction, convinced they know better than he does which way Inglis will have gone. Penric isn't exactly enthused by the prospect of a trip into the high mountains in winter, but being a sorceror-divine of the Bastard, the god of everything else, means his job is whatever comes his way.

Meanwhile, up in the mountains, Inglis has gotten himself into a bit of a pickle.

Oswyl, and most everyone else, start off dismissing Penric because of his youth (he's 23 in this story), but Penric has matured into his role, and he's actually far more at home in the outdoors than any of the other protagonists. It's also not the first time he's gotten caught up in the affairs of gods, and their habit of tugging the strings of their pieces on the board is one he's a lot better placed to recognise than most.

If you like the world of the Five Gods, this is another solid entry. It's written as rotating third person limited point of view, but once or twice I found myself having to page back to check whose PoV we were in. It's mostly not a problem, and the story works better for it (and maybe I was just tired), but worth your while to pay attention to PoV shifts at the chapter starts. About my only other criticism is we don't see enough of Desdemona. She has her moments, but this isn't a tale that requires overt sorcery, nor much reference to her well-travelled background. If you're new to the world of the Five Gods, this works more than well enough as a standalone, but you'll get more out of it if you've read both the first Penric novella and, especially, The Hallowed Hunt, which establishes the background of the shamen in Wealds society. Marketed as a novella, but at 160 pages it's definitely pushing into short novel territory.

Up Next

Probably Seanan McGuire's Velveteen vs the Seasons if it's out in the UK, S L Huang's Plastic Smile, the new Cas Russell book, if it isn't.

ETA:
Forgot to mention I've started following another couple of webcomics: How to Be a Werewolf, and Kismet, which has one completed long story, Hunter's Moon, and another, Suncutter, in progress.

How to Be a Werewolf is contemporary set fantasy, the protagonist, Malaya, is a 20-something Filipina-American barista who was bitten by a werewolf when she was five, but has never had contact with a pack to learn how to be a werewolf, and has led a deliberately sheltered life. Now someone has found out about her and she's in trouble, but she turns out to have more allies than she realized. Several great gay characters and a core mixed race family.

The Kismet stories revolve around the eponymous moon, home to a small colony basically run by crime families, which makes it pretty idosyncratic. Hunter's Moon is about the local offworld militarists running a particularly nasty plot to take out an old terrorist threat. People die. Lots of people die. Suncutter is a separate tale running partly in parallel, about a bootleg spacedrive development programme also being run on Kismet by those same militarists, with some deep family linkages between the two stories, but only limited crossover characters. Despite that I'd definitely read Hunter's Moon first.