When I packed to travel out of state to help care for my
best friend and her family during her final weeks of life, I had no idea how
long I would be away. The ereader my daughter had passed on to me provided the
ideal solution of how to carry a variety of books with me. I read at night as
part of my bedtime ritual and I couldn’t anticipate what I would need at the
end of each day. Horror, which has never previously appealed to me, might resonate
with the depth of the grief of this entire household as we let go of hope and
say goodbye. Maybe not, but should I bring some just in case? What about my
favorite and unabashedly unguilty pleasures – fantasy and science fiction?
Something to challenge my mind and make me think? A genre I don’t usually read?
Mystery? Nonfiction?
I loaded up my ereader with a stack of books from Book View Café,
picking a few from authors I’ve loved and choosing others practically at
random. Here’s what I’ve been reading and why.
I started with three pieces – two novellas and a novel -- by
Marie Brennan. I’d never read her work before she joined Book View Café, so
when I found Midnight Never Come in a
bookstore (and it looked interesting), I grabbed it. It’s the first of a series
called “The Onyx Court,” set London during the reign of Elizabeth I. My husband and
I had gone through a phase of watching every film biography of Elizabeth I that
we could find, so that was an automatic plus. Brennan created a second, faerie
court, hidden belowground but interacting in secret ways for England’s benefit.
Fits right in with Sir Francis Walsingham and Dr. John Dee, and other
historical characters. I enjoyed the book immensely, so the first thing I read
was more Brennan, a novella set in the same world although slightly later in time.
Deeds of Men is a murder mystery,
with characteristic Brennan twists. I was glad I’d already read Midnight Never Come because I was
already in love with the main character, but this would also make a good
introduction to the series. I also picked the two “Welton” pieces, a prequel
novella called Welcome To Welton and
then the novel Lies and Prophecy.
Both reminded me a little of Pamela Dean’s excellent Tam Lin, only set at Hogwarts if Hogwarts was a college and magic
was public and widely spread. What kind of curriculum would a college offer?
Dorms, room mates, cafeteria food, professors, meddling parents, the whole
shebang. But Brennan doesn’t leave the story there; it turns out that the
reason people have magical abilities is that they’re descended from fae who
mingled with humans during a time when Faerie was closer to Earth. And now the
two worlds are drawing closer again, and the Seelie and UnSeelie Courts are in deadly
competition for who gets to rule, whether to enslave or ally with humans. And
our college kids are caught up in it all. Brennan’s easy prose and likeable characters
drew me into her world, a lovely escape at the end of each day.
Why, oh why, did I wait so long to read Chris Dolley’s What Ho, Automaton!? Obviously because I
needed to have not only read P. G. Wodehouse, but have seen the hilarious Jeeves and Wooster with Hugh Laurie and
Stephen Fry. Transport the impeccable “gentleman’s gentleman” into a “gentleman’s
gentleautomaton” and give poor Bertie Wooster a few more brain cells – but not
too many – and you have a delightful, pitch-perfect series of adventures.
Steampunk with class and mannered style!
After that, I flipped to the beginning of the alphabet with
Patricia Rice’s All A Woman Wants.There’s a certain delight in having no expectations of what I’m about to dive
into. This is a Regency Romance, and while I have read Jane Austen’s novels
about a gazillion times (not to mention another marathon of watching the movie
versions), I’m not a Romance reader. The covers turn into pretty much impenetrable
barriers. I decided to give this one a go. To my not-so-great surprise, I
enjoyed both the setting and the dance of attraction and complication between
the two main characters. There were times when I wanted to grab each of them by
the lapels and scream, “Will you get off it and admit you’re in love with each
other?” The question isn’t whether they will do that – we know they will at the
end of the book, but how they get there.
So we’ve got an American sea captain who’s just kidnapped his late sister’s two
kids from their abusive but aristocratic dad, and a newly-orphaned spinster who’s
trying to run a sizeable estate with no education or training but a good deal
of determination and compassion. While waiting for his ship to be ready to hie
him back to Virginia, he hides the kids from the aforementioned deadbeat drunkard-but-powerfully-connected
dad at her estate in exchange for teaching her how to run the place herself. I
loved her insistence on wanting to learn, to understand and be truly independent,
and I often laughed aloud at how he could be so competent in one area and yet
fall apart at the prospect of dealing with two utterly charming hellion kids,
not to mention a woman who insists on “worrying her pretty head” about her responsibilities.
At the end, I came to a new appreciation of how soothing it can be to immerse
myself in a time and situation where love does prevail, but not at the cost of
integrity for both parties. 
Also in the A’s I spied a couple of Judith Tarr novels and
selected one at random, Arrows of the Sun.
I was pleased to see it was Book I of something but not until I finished did I
discover it was Book I of a second trilogy. This is important because I still
had a wonderful, satisfying reading experience. So many long series assume you
are going to start at the very beginning and not skip a volume. I know readers
who won’t even start a new series until they have all the books in hand. I
guess they’ve been burned by authors who, for one reason or another, fail to
finish a series or fail to do so in a timely manner. This book, while
undoubtedly related to the others I have yet to enjoy, stands beautifully on
its own. It’s got so many of the elements I love in a fantasy: a strong woman
character (more than one, each in her own way!), a conflicted, sensual, earnest
male character, cool horse-like creatures (with horns!) and even cooler
cat-like things, magic and mages and interdimentional Gates, oh my! And plot
twists, lots of flavors of sexuality and love, jealousy and generosity, and characters
that turn out to be not at all what I expected. I won’t offer any more
specifics for fear of spoiling the show. The only thing left to decide is
whether to go back to the first book of the first
trilogy or to continue with this one.
Next up was Vonda N. McIntyre’s delightful and essential Pitfalls of Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, a
collection of short and pithy essays from a master in the field. In fact, with
a few variations, I’d feel safe in saying it should be required reading for all
writers.
Ready for another leap into the unknown, I picked a new author
and a book I knew nothing about: Girl’sGuide to Witchcraft by Mindy Klasky. Having worked in a college library and
revamped one for a local elementary school, I’m a total sucker for librarians
as hero/ines. Librarians are my heroes, any day of the week. A fun, breezy
style, immediately likeable characters . . . I’m hooked. Hooray! There are more
in the “Jane Madison” series!
I hope you’ll check out some of these books and many more (and maybe some
of my own, also at Book View Café).
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