Lion’s Blood
Apparently Steven Barnes, whose
Lion’s Blood
I recently read and enjoyed and whom
Kendall saw
speak today (lucky bastard) and whose
Zulu Heart
was supposed to
come out in March (come on people its almost April, you’re making me wait!),
has a short story in the
conjure
tales anthology next to Gaiman. This is a good
sign.
Lion’s Blood is a much more intriguing and rich alternate history then
Ruled was;
I recommend it highly. One minor quibble, occasionally its ambitions as a parable
get in the way of its story telling, leading, I think, to a time line with too
many parallels to this one. Really only noticeable
if you compare it to a master alternate history like
Card’s Pastwatch.(which has a
much subtler, is not nearly as enlightened, agenda)
Ruled Britannia
Ruled
Britannia
ended predictably I’m afraid. I hoped until the very end for
some surprise of substance, but it was not forthcoming. The 3 page historical
end note on the other hand was fascinating. Turtledove talks about what would
have been required for Spain to have invaded England at that time, and where the
verse for the fictional
Boudicca came from. In his estimation if the
Armada had gotten lucky enough to land the Spanish
infantry would have trounced their English counterparts. I wondered about
Boudicca, as it seemed awfully good, and in fact Turtledove borrowed much of it
from a play
Bonduca, by Shakespeare contemporary John
Fletcher, and from Marlowe’s
Tamburlaine.
This is both clever and cynical, for
the effect would have be utterly ruined if the reader had recognized the words.
(as was the case with his more obvious borrowing from Titus to account for the
bulk of King Phillip) I wonder as the body of human literature grows with the
passing years if each literary age will be boiled down to a single known
author, the rest forgotten?
A Storm of Swords
After I finished
A
Clash of Kings, I told myself I was done with George Martin’s Ice and
Fire series. The books were nasty, brutish, and grim; favored characters die
like flies, 10-15 pages will be spent introducing a new player sympathetically
merely to kill them off, good deeds are consistently punished, and much of the
action is very, very dark. They are however, anything but short, and when you’re
on a serious reading jag its nice to have some book whose length you measure in
inches between covers (without being as insipid as Jordan’s Wheel of Time
novels).
A Storm of
Swords
takes an entirely new turn in the plot. Many of the
now 1600 page old subplots advance, but the really innovative new material comes
from the new subplot about the Starks, recently cast from their ancestral home,
and their new mercantile endeavors. Seems Brandon (you remember, the boy
who Martin lavishes praise on for 30 pages in the first book, then cripples)
is a wizard for marketing, and the few remaining Starks spend most
of Storm
launching a line of winter outerwear under their famous family words,
“Winter is Coming”(tm). Storm closes with Brandon masterminding
an innovative
new line of winter sports gear under updated classic, “Winter is
Now!”(tm), in an effort to battle off the encroachment of the “big box” stores
from the South, and online, discount e-tailers from the North. Martin is really
doing something new, and unprecedented with high fantasy. I’m looking forward
to his take on the gentrification of King’s Landing in the upcoming
A Feast for
Crows.
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