Wars, various
Sep. 13th, 2006 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraI'm reading three books currently that intersect in 1941, but I've only finished one of them (the other two being Irène Némirovsky's Suite Française (an opportunity to see if those special characters work) and Sybille Bedford's Quicksand). And then I started a CJ Cherryh omnibus and spoilt my theme.
I've been intending to read her Campion books for some time, mainly in the hope of finding another British detective story author I enjoy even half as much as Dorothy Sayers, or Josephine Tey. The problem with this series has been finding them to see if I like them enough to start tracking obscure copies across the internet. I read Coroner's Pidgin last year and liked it well enough, but it's late in the series; this one is, chronologically, immediately before. It's a massive conspiracy story, which is a type I need a lot of persuading on. Fortunately, this one has a few twists that make it better than all those Agatha Christie international cabal ones (The Secret of Chimneys being a particularly bad example, although due to a childish crush on Hercule Poirot I exempt The Sign of Four) and, in the broader sense, I do find it fascinating reading a book both set in and written in World War Two, before anyone knew what was going to happen. Or, on the darker side, what was happening; Sybille Bedford has hinted obliquely at the fate of the Jews in WWII Europe (she's writing in 2001), but neither of the others mention it.
I think again that this story would work better if I came to it at the right time in the series, and Campion himself is not really grabbing me. There are extenuating circumstances, given that he spends three-quarters of the book in a state of amnesia; however, I don't think I should feel quite so much regret when he regains his memory. I like the moments when, still amnesic, he discovers his own body's skills (climbing and so forth), and I like Lugg, and I'll read another one when chance puts it in my path, but I don't think I'll make special attempts to look for it.
CJ Cherryh, Heavy Time. I bounced off CJ Cherryh half a dozen times before I thought to try Cyteen, which I really enjoyed. It's a book that sets itself a number of limits and does excellently within them; I particularly like the way she manages pace despite almost all the action being internal. When external action happens (my copy's not here, but the scene I'm thinking of is where something explodes, and Florian and Caitlin are involved) as well it's competently done and exciting, but it's just not a priority.
I liked this one as well - two asteroid miners pick up a drifting spaceship and its damaged pilot, and this event ultimately exposes the corruption in their society and forces some degree of change. None of the characters are "special" - they're competent, yes, but I believe that for each of them there's at least one other person out there who can do the same thing better, and that's sadly rare in genre. Tight worldbuilding, and the three main male characters are well-drawn. The two women are less distinct; physically, they're more so (I could give a description of both of them, whereas all I know about the men is that Dekker's attractive), but I don't ever feel I know them as well as the others.
My copy is omnibused with Hell Burner, which I started reading and which may be a mistake. I can enjoy Cherryh, but I get the feeling that the things about her work I like may be the things she puts up with, and vice versa. Broken but pretty men and wilfully unlikeable characters are probably the first two that spring to mind, mainly because from the opening chapters of Hell Burner it's clear I'm going to be stuck with Ben as a major pov and Dekker's drugged, damaged and babbling again. I may retreat back into the 1940s.
I've been intending to read her Campion books for some time, mainly in the hope of finding another British detective story author I enjoy even half as much as Dorothy Sayers, or Josephine Tey. The problem with this series has been finding them to see if I like them enough to start tracking obscure copies across the internet. I read Coroner's Pidgin last year and liked it well enough, but it's late in the series; this one is, chronologically, immediately before. It's a massive conspiracy story, which is a type I need a lot of persuading on. Fortunately, this one has a few twists that make it better than all those Agatha Christie international cabal ones (The Secret of Chimneys being a particularly bad example, although due to a childish crush on Hercule Poirot I exempt The Sign of Four) and, in the broader sense, I do find it fascinating reading a book both set in and written in World War Two, before anyone knew what was going to happen. Or, on the darker side, what was happening; Sybille Bedford has hinted obliquely at the fate of the Jews in WWII Europe (she's writing in 2001), but neither of the others mention it.
I think again that this story would work better if I came to it at the right time in the series, and Campion himself is not really grabbing me. There are extenuating circumstances, given that he spends three-quarters of the book in a state of amnesia; however, I don't think I should feel quite so much regret when he regains his memory. I like the moments when, still amnesic, he discovers his own body's skills (climbing and so forth), and I like Lugg, and I'll read another one when chance puts it in my path, but I don't think I'll make special attempts to look for it.
CJ Cherryh, Heavy Time. I bounced off CJ Cherryh half a dozen times before I thought to try Cyteen, which I really enjoyed. It's a book that sets itself a number of limits and does excellently within them; I particularly like the way she manages pace despite almost all the action being internal. When external action happens (my copy's not here, but the scene I'm thinking of is where something explodes, and Florian and Caitlin are involved) as well it's competently done and exciting, but it's just not a priority.
I liked this one as well - two asteroid miners pick up a drifting spaceship and its damaged pilot, and this event ultimately exposes the corruption in their society and forces some degree of change. None of the characters are "special" - they're competent, yes, but I believe that for each of them there's at least one other person out there who can do the same thing better, and that's sadly rare in genre. Tight worldbuilding, and the three main male characters are well-drawn. The two women are less distinct; physically, they're more so (I could give a description of both of them, whereas all I know about the men is that Dekker's attractive), but I don't ever feel I know them as well as the others.
My copy is omnibused with Hell Burner, which I started reading and which may be a mistake. I can enjoy Cherryh, but I get the feeling that the things about her work I like may be the things she puts up with, and vice versa. Broken but pretty men and wilfully unlikeable characters are probably the first two that spring to mind, mainly because from the opening chapters of Hell Burner it's clear I'm going to be stuck with Ben as a major pov and Dekker's drugged, damaged and babbling again. I may retreat back into the 1940s.
