Another Green World

Paladin's Hope, by T. Kingfisher. Saint of Steel #3. This time we're matching up the most destabilized of the broken berserker paladins with the "lich-doctor" (forensic pathologist), both men. They head off with a gnole guard (a person from a badger-like species who has joined the human guard corps) to investigate a peculiar series of murders. As usual T. Kingfisher has a light touch with her horror elements, and the romance is satisfying as the two were surprisingly well matched.

Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life, by Clare MacCumhaill and Rachael Wiseman. This is the interesting story of how, in the late 1930s, the younger generation of male philosophers at Oxford fell under the spell of A.J. Ayer, who declared metaphysics dead and that philosophy should henceforth focus on a rather mathematical study of language and logic – but then the men went off to war, and the female students at Oxford concluded that Ayer’s position was nonsense and that we really do need philosophy to consider questions like ethics and meaningfulness and actions in context. The four women who worked on this problem most prominently were Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgely Midgley, and Iris Murdoch. I’d read quite a few Murdoch novels when I was a teen but hadn’t gotten to her philosophy – and now that I know she was critiquing Sartre and building on Buber, I am much more interested!

The book was at its best when focusing on just one of the women at a time, and also when talking about their ideas (as the authors are themselves philosophers). Their focus was largely biographical, while another book published just a year earlier focuses more on the four women’s specific contributions to ethics. Sometimes it was confusing, especially before I had a clear image of each of the women. For example, around page 107-109, they’re talking about the friendship at one point between Iris and Mary, then they focus on Iris’s romantic relationships at that time, then they spend three short sentences telling us that Mary was reading Clarissa while commuting from her parents’ house but in the very same paragraph they launch into an extended discussion of Iris’s living situation. I’d rather Mary’s living situation had been addressed separately, as it really broke up the flow, and it wasn’t the first time that details about one woman were awkwardly tacked onto a more extended discussion of another. I am sure I would have also gotten more out of the book if they had taken more care to introduce the many other people whose names were casually dropped here and there, and especially a bit more discussion of how their contributions to ethics were different? more important? than the Oxford men who apparently were soon working on the same general topic once the war ended. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book overall.

The Towers of the Sunset, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Recluce #2. The first five Recluce books pretty much comprise a single story - what was happening with Lerris, how the world got that way, and then finally back to Lerris for the resolution. This is the first of the three books about how the world got that way, jumping back 950 years to when Creslin and Megaera founded the community that grew to govern all of Recluce, under the Black (order-based) mages against the White (chaos-based) mages dominating much of the larger continent of Candar. The story is interesting, but there are several things that bug me about the writing style. Most of all, I find the dynamics of the relationship between our two main characters to be pretty irritating until they finally are comfortable as a couple. I also don't care very much for present-tense narration, which is what the author uses for every point of view other than Lerris's throughout these five books. (Later Recluce books have the more normal, past-tense style.) Also, sometimes he introduces a scene by referring to "a man" who often but not always turns out to be Creslin; that's not my favorite either. Other readers don't like the author's use of onomatopoiea, where he transcribes lots of sounds like the horses whinnying, bells tolling, birds crying, explosions booming, and I've learned not to mind it, but it's nice that there's a lot less in this book than the first.

Now, on to Dorrin's story. The first time I read it I really liked it, but the second time, the present-tense narration really bugged me. Which will it be this time?

Paladin's Strength, by T. Kingfisher. Second in its series. In the first book, we meet a small group of "broken" paladins - their god has died, and because they've spent their lives as berserkers in his service, they are experiencing PTSD, in a variety of forms. One of the paladins in the first book, Istvhan, is a main character this time; he's investigating a creepy phenomenon from the first book, but now he finds himself also helping a lay nun to find her abducted sisters. Istvhan is very large, and Clara is also strikingly large, so they find themselves curious about each other - and since it's a romance novel, we can reasonably predict that they'll end up together. However, Clara has an interesting secret, one that's gotten in the way of her previous relationships. Istvhan is uniquely qualified to appreciate her anyway, but it takes a while for her to trust in these new possibilities. It's a fun read, with memorable characters and scenes - the fulfillment of the reason the nuns were abducted is particularly creative and different. Excellent fare when one is otherwise stressed and/or tired.

Double Share, by Nathan Lowell. Fourth in the series. The first three books saw Ishmael Wang on his first ship, which was a really great place. Then we had a time-skip for him to attend the officer’s academy, and now he’s Third Mate on a very different merchant ship, where the crew and its practices are serious dysfunctional. Can Ish use his past experience, people skills, and wits to help fix things? This one was rather less “Mary Sue” than the previous ones – he’s no longer the best at everything he tries, and he certainly doesn’t solve the ship’s problems single-handedly. I found it quite enjoyable and well-plotted.

Half Share, by Nathan Lowell. This is the second book in the series that started with Quarter Share, the story of a young man's new career on a merchant ship in space. For the first half of the book, we stayed focused on Ish's career path and his new job on the ship, but then it shifted gears to his social life, becoming a rowdy exploration of what it's like to be part of a crew with a no-fraternization policy. That was okay, but I hope that in the third book the emphasis will either return to his work life or at least integrate the two together in a balanced way.

The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller. This wonderful and beautifully written novel is the story of The Iliad from the perspective of Patroclus, the lover and soulmate of Achilles. I've read it before and didn't really intend to reread it, because the story is so sad, but it was my husband's book club book this month, so I read it again after he'd read it for the first time. I'd give it 4.9 stars out of 5, because I need to reserve 5 stars for the author's Circe, which I think is even better. I especially appreciate that they don't even head toward Troy until the book is halfway over; their time together elsewhere is so much nicer to read about. I read The Iliad when I was 15ish, and with this book it finally makes sense, showing us how awful Agamemnon was and what could have been going through Achilles's head.

Turning Darkness Into Light, by Marie Brennan. This sequel to the Memoirs of Lady Trent series takes place perhaps 30 years later, with her granddaughter Audrey as protagonist. It's not easy being Lady Trent's granddaughter - everyone in the family is highly accomplished, and Audrey hopes to make her mark by translating certain ancient texts. I'm torn between explaining the interesting political situation in the book and staying quiet to avoid a major spoiler from the final book in the original series, but I can say that Audrey lives in what we might describe as a "late Edwardian" era fantasy version of England - they have old-style society balls, but they also have telephones. I can also say that the story relates to my own work in a cool way - what are the implications of origin myths in the modern world, especially where a tiny, highly vulnerable, and easily identifiable minority population is concerned? There is plenty of derring-do but not much travel, and the book is very much about scholarship, so it might not appeal to everyone - and readers should definitely have already read the original series. I liked Audrey, but I really liked her colleague who travels some distance to help with the translation, and I absolutely loved her "assistant" Cora, who is clearly both brilliant and autistic and thus very much in need of mentoring and friendship.

In the Labyrinth of Drakes, by Marie Brennan. Memoirs of Lady Trent #4. This time, Isabella and her colleague Tom (a man of working class origins, who thus also has challenges getting respect from their fellow scholars) are assigned to help their government's dragon breeding program, located in their world's version of Arabia. They don't travel quite as much (just between the city and the desert, a few times), but they spend more time in proximity to living dragons, which their people want for the strength of their bones, useful for military and industrial purposes. There are definitely some exciting moments!

Since I've been reading these books at bedtime, by the light of my bedside lamp, I hadn't noticed (and had forgotten) the unusual colors of ink used in the first three books (shades of green and blue). This one's medium brown, however, was quite pronounced, and reminded me to get the other books back off the shelf and look at them in natural light. So cool!

Voyage of the Basilisk, by Marie Brennan. Memoirs of Lady Trent #3. Isabella is now sailing the world to see more types of dragons in person, and she gets involved in complications arising from international politics. This is the book where it becomes obvious why the author has chosen to create a whole new world that just happens to have its societies based on real world Victorian societies instead of using our own world, because for this book, the land based on Mexico is just north of a great sea that has a land based on East Asia at its south and a lot of Polynesian etc. islands in between. They spend a great deal of time shipwrecked on a land very like Hawai'i, and she has thrilling adventures there.