Review: 2013

I am beside myself with post-Christmas reading excitement. While many a family find the time proceeding the big turkey day for more family gatherings and adventures in retail therapy, in our house we progress quickly to full sloth mode. Days come and go in which PJs are changed from dirty to clean without ever really contemplating putting on day clothing. The husband of the house may not be seen until 2 in the afternoon, from which he rumbles down the stairs in search of food and subsequently his family. The son, just shy of 4 sports not one, not two but five well-placed DC comic tattoos across his little body as he runs from one activity to another, happily munching on candy canes with side orders of turkey. As for me, the momma, I read and I read and I read, read, read, read. 

Sitting at my feet are a pile of books, the very books I have asked for on my wish list, plus a few more. There is no greater level of excitement for me than a pile to read through and time to do that very deed. As I sit here typing, the books seems to wink at me, whispering to put the computer aside, bidding me to come and start a new literary adventure. Before I fall into the reading trap I find I must get this one last post out before the new year, after all it has been two years of posting with 2013 being a remarkable year for books.  

I became part of the Liaden Universe, seriously immersing myself into it's expansive folds of romance and space operatic thematics becoming a fast fan of Lee and Miller. Thanks to a blogger friend I picked up Primary Inversion, falling completely head over heals and as quickly falling out of favour once I moved further into the series. My intentions for Girl's Guide to Sci-Fi has always been two-fold:  convince people to read SF while on a personal note become a more rounded SF reader.  I found myself picking up books by Pratchett, Banks, Novik, Robinson, Mieville reading old themes and with relief some new. I liked some, raved over others and found disappoint in more books than I thought I would.  2013 was my year of exploration, pushing myself to see how much I truly knew the genre and whether there are parts to it I have left to read (Steam Punk, you on my list for 2014). I pushed myself so far that I burnt myself out, having to reset my gears with a string of mysteries at the end of year.  


2013 began with a bang with the discovery of The Rook and the continuation of the Expanse series; I was lost in tales of magic and space operatic horror. Daniel O'Malley became my new author to troll, maybe stalk, discovering if and when the sophomore narrative of his magical world would be out (not it appears any time soon). The process of waiting for an author to a complete, edit, publish and distribute a book was the bane of my year. With many of my favourite reads parts of trilogies, my world of waiting seemed an endless process. To complicate the matter, I decided to return to the library, relinquishing my buying power for good old common sense/cents.  And so with library card in hand, I became number 42 on many a waiting list, suddenly having to learn patience and new found willingness to read authors unknown or who I thought were too SF even for me. As you may have predicted, it turns out that nothing is too SF for me, too fantasy yes, but too SF, never.

With 2013 closing, my heap of books are ready for 2014. I expect great things this coming year, as should you all.  Happy reading!

Choose Wisely: A Review of The City & The City, China Mieville

Lollygagging my few minutes to myself away, my thoughts are set in the future rather than the task of this post.   Abaddon's Gate is out, available and people are reading it.  People being not me, as I for some reason not only have not read but worse do not a copy of my very own.  At what point in my life did I lose sight of what matters?  Sigh....  

Holy shit balls

And so I sit, wishing I was reviewing THAT book rather than THIS book:   The City and The City .   For a book that has received quite a bit of buzz, The City and The City doesn't deserve such a poor intro.   Weirdly enough, I am not too sure how I would rate this book.  Have you have ever been excited to read something but the timing of it did not sync with your life?  Timing seemed to doom my first few attempts, I never could get into it.  And "getting into it" is the key, because the success of the book requires the reader to accept the codes and laws that dictate this world reality without too much up-front information. 

At it's basest descriptive level, The City and The City is a SF Detective novel.  Chapter One opens to a murder scene with the plot then expanding rapidly around the actions of the police properly identifying the young women and her killer.  The lead character, Inspector Tyador Borlu from the Extreme Crime Squad of the European city-state of Beszel is like most detectives you meet in fiction:  moral with a hint of shady to him.  You know,  a good guy with a past who, while having seen it all is still attempting to keep things right in the world.  Maybe I exaggerate him slightly, being a policeman's daughter, but overall he is likable and complex enough to want to follow from page to page as the intrigue develops and darkens.  This is a job well-done by Mieville;  a good novel is marked by it's character development.   

While the characters are vivid, and the plot multi-layered, the real star is the city, times two.  Inspector Borlu, a Beszel citizen lives in two worlds, or more poignantly, lives in one world while actively ignoring the other.  Beszel shares its geographical space with the city-state of  Ul Qoma.  Sharing is misleading as these two city-states  have an entwined tumultuous past, present and in all probability, future. They exist out of defiance of the other; holding true to their perceived uniqueness, to the extreme of unseeing each other.  Citizens of both are raised to be culturally unaware, taught to un-see, un-smell, un-react to the vibrancy of the other city.  Fascinating concept and it was this that first intrigued me and subsequently forced me to actually sit down and work through the book.   Work it was, but in a good way.  You need to be present in this book, actively aware of each word because the stories of the The City and The City is revealed not by page by page but by word by word.  

So why does my frustration linger? There is nothing inherently wrong with the book, Mievelle is clearly a masterful writer able to pull together unique ideas, to the point of legitimising them in the context of this world reality.  The detective story is as creative as P.D. James has ever penned, so why do I not like it as much as I know I should.  It all comes back to timing; I am sure if I read this during my apocalyptic  world's colliding stage, rather than my fantastical, space opera stage this review would be very different.  As the knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade said, "You must choose, but choose wisely".