The time came to find out what was going on with Rap and Inos in Dave Duncan’s A Man of His Word series, so I broke out Perilous Seas and set myself about finding out. I am pleased to say that the third book has once again improved itself. Where the first book introduced a cool world and fun characters, and the second book pulled together the magic system and politics, this one takes all that information and starts pushing the high adventure and romance into the forefront again.

Aside from a cliffhanger that will have me reading the finale very soon indeed, my favorite bit was our heroes growing and the world getting a little smaller and less mysterious as a result (in the good way, like Robert Jordan used to be good at). Inos is busy making difficult, queen-based and woman-based decisions that it would have been impossible to guess she’d be up to in the beginning, and Rap has learned that the only person who’s going to help him save the day for Queen and country is himself, and sets about accomplishing exactly that. I know, character growth is exactly the kind of thing you expect to see in a book, but apparently it happens rarely enough to leave me overly gratified when I actually find it in this context.

Also: oy, the cliffhanger, even worse than the one at the end of The Magic Casement. So, yeah, soon. Next month at the latest.

As promised, I spent a few days reading Michael Crichton’s latest thriller, Why the Environmental Movement Is a Big Fake Lie. Seriously. This was not a good book. Now, I’m going to try to stay out of the politics of it, because probably most of the factual bits of the book were well-researched, or even accurate. Leaving that aside, it had more problems than you can shake a pointed stick at.

First of all, the opening segment reminded me of Snoopy’s novel. For about 50 pages, there was a string of seemingly unrelated incidents, scattered all around the world and involving all different characters. Was there, in fact, a dark and stormy night? Okay, maybe not, but that’s the only true divergence from the formula. After that, he went straight into a Terry Goodkind novel. That is, the plot was a thin, semi-transparent cover for a series of polemics. Which were themselves irritating above and beyond the fact of them, because they were presented in a smug, know-it-all voice (that I may be reacting to more negatively than I should, because it reminds me of a guy I used to game with) to correct the conveniently naive assumptions of first our heroes and later some Hollywood caricatures. Well, okay, now I’m being unfair, as I’m quite sure they were totally believable Hollywood types and not caricatures at all. But the point is, if you need to write this kind of thing, just write a scientific book. Oh, but wait, that wouldn’t let you trick a lot of people into hearing what you wanted to say.

The very worst part, though, is that Crichton has on occasion written a lot better than this. So if he was this invested in the message he was trying to get out, I feel like maybe it wouldn’t have killed him to be a little more subtle and apply a bit more actual talent to the topic. Because I’d probably be a lot more comfortable with his message if I weren’t so pissed at being talked to like a six year old.

Yesterday, a book was thrust into my hands. Despite the company I tend to keep and my own reading habits, this doesn’t happen as often as you might imagine. I thought the claim that I could read it in an hour and a half was probably a joke at first, but it turned out to be pretty close to true (two hours, maybe two-five?). Cleverly, Blankets is a graphic novel, though since that terminology is taken by bound comic collections, it is named on the cover an illustrated novel.

And, y’know, wow. Probably moreso for me than for the general case, but maybe not. It’s a coming-of-age story, which essentially says nothing at all, although I can conceive of it as common knowledge that this kind of thing is my bread and butter. I’m not sure precisely what it says about me that I so frequently revisit that period in my entertainment, yet have huge gaping holes in my memory about things that happened, and only the broadest brush strokes about things I can remember; and I don’t even know that I’d have the wherewithal to consider that unusual, if I didn’t know so many people who can recount events that long ago so vividly. Kind of like Craig Thompson recounting his own story in Blankets.

It’s a story about the foundations of first faith and first love, and how solid they seem, and it’s a story about how illusory and ready to crumble they really are. And also, about how similar they are. This stuff, I identify with on a visceral level. It’s possible, by which I mean probable, that it says something more about me that a lot of the things that I do remember, and as vividly as so many people seem to remember everything, revolve around these seminal events in my own life. My story has a lot less drama than his did, but the key elements are in there, and it was very moving to hear and see his story, probably the moreso for getting it all over the course of a morning. Now, I’ll spend the rest of the day in a melancholy, pleasant haze, I expect. Until I start rotting my brain right out of my head on this Crichton novel sitting on the back of the chair.

Also, I should point out that Blankets has a strong visual and thematic motif revolving around blankets. No lie.

I snagged another one of those Anita Blake novels, since the first one was okay. My initial verdict on The Laughing Corpse: still not hardcore porn yet. This time, a rampaging zombie and an unscrupulous rich, old man form the backdrop against which we learn a little more about Anita’s world. The plot twists were a little transparent, mainly because I’m not sure that our author has ever heard of a red herring. Despite that, I continue to enjoy Anita as the narrator, plus the thing where there’s still someone left with something interesting and, dare I say it, somewhat new to say on the subject of the literary vampire. In this case, she fleshed out the whole animator schtick that brings in Anita’s paychecks (that is, she raises corpses long enough to get them to answer questions, then puts them back in the ground; but there’s more to it than that, hence the fleshing) and the concept of a vampire’s human servant. Not that the idea is anything new in the genre, but she’s applying rules to it, and the inner RPG geek inside me appreciates that kind of thing.

As far as the porn thing: well, this one wasn’t, but it clearly had slipped a step in that direction. I speculate that the next one will be safe as well, but after that, I dunno. Only time will tell. Also: the title meant essentially nothing to me. I guess I ought to try to apply it to themes or plot elements, but I’m failing to, and as far as the literal name it shares with an in-book comedy club, well, that also had nothing to do with the book. So. I am mystified. Also, I am done rambling.

Hey, cool, another book-in-a-day event. Okay, it was an airport day to some reasonable extent, but still, it’s a rare thing, and I always have to groove on it when it occurs. So, yeah, another second book in a trilogy, too, this time Star Wars’ Dark Nest (which I was yesterday given to understand bridges the gap between the New Jedi Order series and a forthcoming new multi-book sequence).

The Unseen Queen picks up a year after the last book. The Jedi are in as precarious a position relative to the government as they ever were under the Old Republic (except for not being hunted down and murdered, I suppose), due to a combination of bad press over their defense of the hive-mind insects from that book and a certain moral looseness within their own ranks. And then, of course, the Dark Nest starts to make a new move that could threaten the galaxy forever. (I feel like that ought to have been exclaimed rather than stated, but: no.)

It felt like quite a bit better of a book than the last one. Luke’s discoveries about his lineage that kept me interested last time were doled out more sparingly here, but the storyline was substantially better and the Joiner aggravation reduced, so on the whole I’m happy with proceeding toward the end. (I guess the book is out already?) This is good, because it would kind of suck to dislike the bridge to an entire sequence. Contrariwise, I hope it isn’t actually about all the insect hive folks, because they’ll have about outlived their interestingness by then. I’m pretty sure it will be about something a lot better, though, if I’ve properly gauged where the recent releases are going these days, though. Something rather more Chiss, say.

I have this weird relationship with Harry Turtledove; about half of his books I see, and I roll my eyes and move on, whereas the other half I’m intensely interested in, and buy them as soon as they appear at the used bookstore. Part of it is the whole learning about history thing, as even though it’s fake history, the basis is still very solid and usable. Part of it is the style, certainly. I just like watching all these different people react to different circumstances and identical news and so forth. Part of it is an almost certainly unreasonable romanticism in my head with the South. Plucky, heroic, and just evil enough to be ultimately doomed anyway.

As for this second book of the Settling Accounts trilogy, it is by now completely unreviewable sans spoilers; the story has moved too far along. But for the most part, the specific events aren’t the point. It would be like telling a 3rd grader about the atomic bomb at Hiroshima when all he really knew was that WWII vaguely existed. Thusly, I proceed.

In short, the Confederate States have, um, risen again after being defeated soundly for the first time in their history in World War I, thanks to the charismatic leadership of President Jake Featherston, whose two-plank platform of punishing the damnyankees and solving the “colored problem” once and for all have allowed him to prosecute an excellent war plan through the end 1941 and part of 1942. However, his tenuous hold on sanity is starting to slip, now that the United States have failed to surrender according to plan. Meanwhile, the death camps have begun to turn out some real efficiency, and a secret U.S. project promises to bear explosive fruit.

So, whatever. It’s WWII, and because these are Americans rather than Europeans, some of the motivations are more clear, at least to me. The most disturbing part is how I really kind of want the bad guys to win, despite disagreeing with virtually all of their actions. It helps that the U.S. people are not particularly clean-handed in this war either (as many of them want to eradicate Mormons as C.S. residents want to eliminate the blacks), and that unlike anything I’ve ever heard about Germany and the Jews, both groups of Americans have a reason. (I do not claim that it is, or that there could be, an acceptable reason. I just mean it’s nice to comprehend how they got there. Also, I’m done being apologetic about it, ’cause that’s boring.) As usual, I’ll read the next one once I eventually see it on a shelf, probably about this time next year.