Booklog: Fiction Dump

[nebroadwe]

Yargh. Time to get the booklog back up to something like date:

Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy

Reread. Widowed Sir Horace Stanton-Lacey, departing for Brazil, asks his sister Lady Ombersley to look after his daughter Sophia. Expecting a delicate soul in need of mothering, she agrees, but when Sophy arrives in state (complete with pet monkey), it's clear that she's quite capable of managing both her own life and the lives of everyone around her. Which sets her slap in the path of her cousin Charles, who's taken his feckless father's place as head of the family and considers himself the proper person to deal with his sister's inappropriate affection for a dreamy poet, his younger brother's wild oats, and his family's lack of enthusiasm for his own sanctimonious fiancee. But the Grand Sophy is never at a loss ... My second favorite Heyer, hands down -- nothing beats the climax for tightly-plotted comedy, as Sophy's matchmaking comes to fruition in a dilapidated mansion, occasionally interrupted by a poet's search for light, a gourmand's demand for eggs, a hypochondriac's distaste for chill, and an overflowing box of ducklings. Sophy is independent and managing without being anachronistic or overbearing; her foil, Charles, is a typical grumpy Heyer hero with a saving leaven of humor. One episode is marred by the casual anti-Semitism that dogs writers of Heyer's generation (which is why this is my second favorite Heyer, though probably her best-written). Otherwise, however, I can't recommend this one enough.

CLAMP, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle 1-16

Reread. Sakura, Princess of Clow, is sweet on Syaoran, adopted son of an archaeologist investigating the ruins for which Clow is famous, and he reciprocates her affection. Before either can confess to the other, however, an attempt to steal Sakura's hidden powers -- her "wings" -- scatters her memories in the form of feathers throughout the multiverse and leaves her unconscious and dying. Syaoran is sent with her to Yuuko, the Time-Space Witch, who grants wishes for a price. There he meets Kurogane, a warrior banished by his liege until he learns what true strength is, and Fay, a magician escaping a sleeping enemy. No one of them can meet Yuuko's fee, but together, they might be able to offer enough ... And of course they do, and we're off on a tour of the CLAMPverse -- or, rather, of the CLAMP character set, kept fresh by their insertion (sometimes in multiple iterations) into new scenarios or old scenarios with a new twist. Some arcs are stronger than others (Piffle World goes on forever with very little payoff, while Acid Tokyo piles on the character and plot developments with a shovel), but the main characters are engaging people and the story definitely appears to be taking them somewhere. Not as logically plotted as Fullmetal Alchemist, which may portend difficulties in explaining and resolving what looks to be a complex set of plot machinations. Hitsuzen can only be invoked so often before it stops looking like fate and starts looking like authorial contrivance. For now, recommended.

賀東 招二 (Gatou Shouji), Full Metal Panic: Fighting Boy Meets Girl and Full Metal Panic: One Night Stand (tr. )

Like many another student, Kaname Chidori just wants to survive high school -- no easy task when you're on your own in Tokyo while the rest of your family follows your father's job to New York. Still, she's smart, pretty, popular and determined, and therefore doing just fine, thank you. That is, until transfer student Sousuke Sagara shows up. When he's not creating havoc by bringing guns to school (and occasionally using them), he's dogging her footsteps and insisting their meetings are just coincidence. Cute he may be, in a clueless way, but he's getting on her last nerve. And now her class trip has been hijacked by terrorists. What's a girl to do? Having already seen the anime, I was surprised only by the quality of these light novels -- at last, something that isn't pitched too low (e.g. Makoto Inoue's Fullmetal Alchemist stories) or suffering from translation issues (e.g. Crest of the Stars). Gatou moves easily between his two worlds, handling technobabble and teenagers with equal skill. His characters are drawn in broad strokes, but he deploys them to decent comic and melodramatic effect; the action is well-timed and the plot keeps rolling forward, with hints of larger machinations than our heroes yet comprehend. Good fun of the mind-candy sort ... though I'll be interested to see how the as-yet-unanimated volumes stand on their own, if the series retains sufficient popularity to be released in its entirety.

Delia Sherman, The Changeling

Neef is the only Changeling in Central Park -- the Central Park of New York Between, that is, home of the Folk: folktale creatures and literary characters. She's proud of her position and loves her fairy godmother, Astris, a white rat. But when nasty Peg Powler tempts Neef into attending the Solstice Dance, she finds that she's been tricked into breaking a geas and will be thrown to the tender mercies of the Wild Hunt unless she can bring the Magical Magnifying Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, the Scales of the Dragon of Wall Street, and a ticket to Peter Pan to the Genius of Central Park. An amusing romp, but it takes a head-scratching piece of stupidity on Neef's part to get it rolling: she knows Peg Powler is inimical and that Astris loves her, but she doesn't even ask Astris about Peg Powler's insinuations before deciding to act on them. I'm not convinced. I also found myself much sorrier for Neef and her opposite number than the narrative may have intended; the ethics of exchanging children into a situation where they are eternal outsiders was never really addressed, as far as I could tell. On the other hand, the Folk and their environments are inventively realized -- Broadway and its chorus lines, vampire actors, and Damon Runyan-esque Producer tickled my fancy, as did the Bull and Bear of Wall Street. Everything ties up neatly, but the characterization and thematic holes prevent me from recommending this wholeheartedly.