I Hate The Heat, And REVIEWS!
I know some people are sun bunnies. I know they love that big fiery thing in the sky and butter-in-a-skillet temperatures. I am not one of them. I am a temperate person, I expect temperate weather. The heat really gets to me, as does the high and changing barometric pressure. Ugh. Double ugh. I live in the Pacific Northwest because I LIKE the rain and the gloom and the temperate weather, thankyouverymuch.
Yesterday I finished Emma Bull’s Territory. I also read a bound proof of Patricia Briggs’s Moon Called, courtesy of my UK editor. And when I say read I mean start to finish, barely putting the book down.
First, Territory. Imagine the Old West. Now add sorcerors, loyalty, and silver mining. Beat in the gunfight at the OK Corral and you have something very, very good. I highly recommend this book–of course, I like Emma Bull. I loved War for the Oaks (mostly for the phouka, I must admit) so much that I was almost afraid to read Territory; but I needn’t have worried. There are some moments where I was upset at the heroine, but only because of her upbringing. Ms. Bull really thought about what it meant to be a “respectable woman” back in those days, and the social cost of not being one even out on the fringes. Plus, it tackles one of the populations you don’t often see in westerns: the Chinese.
Slight side note: I recently read Jane Tompkins’s West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns, where she points out that horses and Indians are all but invisible in Westerns. They serve to play out psychological drama for the hero, not to be people in their own right. It’s a classic Western trope, and it has its reasons buried in the very heart of the genre. I was thrilled to see Ms. Bull defying that trope and still using the canonical elements of the Western to bring out a fabulous story. (BTW, I highly recommend Tompkins’s book no matter what genre you write in, there is so much packed into that slim volume that will help you understand writing.)
And everyone can tell we’re all a fan of Doc Holliday more than Wyatt Earp. *le sigh* *le flutter*
On to Moon Called, which I read mostly in one chunk. It was smooth and engaging, and the heroine–Mercy Thompson–is, thank God, not TSTL. She’s a coyote in a werewolf’s world, making up for her lack of strength and ferociousness with cunning, smarts, and loyalty. I really enjoyed a kickass female character who has to use her brains to overpower the dangerous situations she finds herself in. I like characters who are not endlessly competent, who have flaws and limitations. It’s why I love the Harry Dresden series.
There are some uneven things in the book–for example, the manipulative behavior of the alpha werewolves really starts to grate after a while, and the “Mercy is everyone’s friend” thing gets a little old. I would have liked more exploration of her having to leave her home as a teenager and more of a reaction to the idea that Sam was “using” her, but those quibbles were overpowered by narrative drive and the sheer fun of the wisecracking heroine, done very, very well.
It says something for both books that I finished them in one day. (I was on page fifty of Territory yesterday morning, hen I started my gallop.) It’s not often that I find two books I can sink into and really race through at breakneck speed, enjoying myself all the way, with no snags and snarls to pull me out of the story and make me go elsewhere. I was up until two in the morning reading about Mercy because I couldn’t put Moon Called down. I just wanted to know what happened next, and was very satisfied when I finally turned the last page. Whatever unevenness remains in the book is, I think, the result of me reading Emma Bull first (because let’s face it, Ms. Bull is a master and pretty much anyone suffers by comparison) and Moon Called being a first book in a series. No doubt the slight stumbles I saw will smooth themselves over in later books.
So, all in all, two thumbs up. And next on my reading docket is Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, which promises to be extremely interesting. (I read a review of it in the Economist.) What can I say, I’m a geek.
I’m going to close up the house soon and turn the AC on. Lord, I hate the heat. But good books make it easier to bear…
