December Book Catch Up 2

This should catch me up all the books in my backlog (as of the end of October when I write this) and everything else in my backlog too. Onwards to fresh new reviews, a mere six weeks out of date!

****

1. The Inheritance

A collection of stories by Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb, who are the same woman. Lindholm’s stories tend to be set in a more or less recognisable America, especially on the grim and gritty side. Minimum wage jobs, welfare, domestic violence, drifters and so forth. With a touch or more of fantasy (or science fiction) making its appearance. (There are exceptions).

Hobb’s three stories are set in her Realm Of The Elderlings, from the Assassin/Liveship/Dragon books. In each case women are making the best of bad situations, despite the attempts of (mostly men) to make things worse. Delving a little into the Rain Wild Traders (and memory stone), the Bingtown Traders (wizard wood) and a tale that is set in Buck Duchy and sort of uses the Wit magic; this last one, the most interesting, could just as easily not been set in the Realm. It has a cat.

Lindholm and Hobb, in their own ways, don’t look away from violence and being trapped. From how love can be – perhaps will be – betrayed. And cleaning up the mess afterwards.

Read This: Some cool fantasy stories that don’t shy away from hard edges
Don’t Read This: If you want realistic dilemmas, you don’t need magic or aliens or talking cats

****

2. Daughter Of Smoke And Bone

Karou is at art school in Prague. She’s been brought up by Brimstone the wishmonger, and other monstrous creatures. Sometimes she does jobs for them, going across the world through the moving door, offering wishes for teeth.

But then she encounters Akiva, an angel. He has been sent to this world to seal the doors, to cut off the supply of teeth and stop Brimstone doing his magic.

When this was recommended to me I found myself asking “why am I reading an angel romance?” But, at every moment, the story gets harder, and the choices more difficult. Magic is based on pain, something Karou has to learn and Akvia knows already from the time he fell in love with Madrigal, one of the monstrous Chimerae. They have been at war with angelic Seraphim, a war that can’t be won.

A smart, imaginative and well-crafted fantasy novel, that’s also an angel romance – a tragic one.

Read This: What seems a cute magic portal adventure becomes something stranger, larger, gloriously dramatic and heart-rending
Don’t Read This: It’s taking a lot of sideturns but it’s still an angel romance

****

3. Billion Dollar Brain

In the fourth of Deighton’s 60s spy thrillers our protagonist is given cover as an Irishman called Dempsey, and sent to Finland where a journalist claims to have uncovered a British spy network. No such network exists, but spies regularly claim to be working for different organisations when recruiting assets. The Finnish journalist is dead and he meets Signe, a Finnish woman who tries to recruit him into a British spy network. She is involved with Harvey Newbegin (from Funeral In Berlin) who admits it’s a private intelligence outfit run by Texan billionaire General Midwinter.

Midwinter has spend a billion dollars on the organisation’s head quarters, the centre of which is a computer called “the brain”. It’s very powerful because it’s not digital (Deighton’s description is a little opaque but I think this is supposed to an analogue computer, which still had strong proponents at the time this was written). Agents call it up and it gives them instructions, code phrases etc. Midwinter plans to finance an uprising in Latvia, which will overthrow the USSR and end communism.

Unfortunately for the brain, GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. Newbegin is working more than one side, our protagonist is lying, there’s a confused plot involving virus laden eggs from a British research institute and the affable Colonel Stok of the KGB knows much of what is going on and is using it for his own ends. Which are mostly to avoid higher authority paying attention to his work as that never ends well.

Read This: A complex, strange and often funny spy thriller
Don’t Read This: A billionaire who believes America is on the path to godless communism and spends money on a private army is not fun

****

4. Tehanu

Twenty years after the initial Earthsea trilogy, LeGuin continued the series with this novel. We return to Tenar, the narrator of the Tombs Of Atuan, who chose not to live as an aristocrat on Havnor after returning the ring. Instead she lived on the island of Gont, first with Sparrowhawk’s old master, the magician Ogion, then deciding against a life of knowledge and magic, married a farmer.

The novel opens before the end of The Farthest Shore, when the bad times are still on Earthsea. Tenar, under the name Goha, is a widow and her children are grown and gone, her son as a sailor, her daughter married. She has adopted a child, Therru, who was raped, burned all down one side by her parents and the other adults she was with, then abandoned.

She visits Ogion in Re Albi on his deathbed and he tells her to teach Therru all, and tells her his True Name. When two wizards arrive and discover that they are late, they think that his True Name is lost until she tells them, not thinking that Ogion would have told a woman.

And here is the heart of the novel, outside the story (which we’ll come to), the intersection of women’s work, and women’s power, with men’s work and their power. The power of kings and wizards, and also of lords, fathers and of sons. This interweaves throughout the novel, both explicitly in conversation and Tenar’s musing, through the daily work, and down to where and how people choose to live.

Anyway, the story. The end of The Farthest Shore happens and Sparrowhawk is dropped off by a dragon on the cliffs near Ogion’s cottage. Tenar speaks with the dragon, using her remembered parts of the True Speech. This, of course makes her a dragonlord, one who has spoken with dragons, one of the rarest of titles a mage can have (I think Sparrowhawk was the only living one?) Sparrowhawk has lost all his magic sealing the hole between living and dead and defeating the evil magician Cob.

Tenar helps him heal, with the help of Moss, a local witch. Therru too seems to be getting stronger and less withdrawn. But there are those searching for Sparrowhawk, for the king, who wishes to honour him, and from the wizard school, who seek a new Archmage. She protects him from them, as change comes to Gont, known for it’s pirates.

LeGuin is a little sly about this; the King’s proclamations empower local communities to appoint bailiffs and officials to enforce laws. Almost like an anarchist ground-up governance model. As though all they need is to be given permission to rule themselves. Though it’s backed up by King’s justices and ships.

Sparrowhawk hires out as a herdsman in the high pastures for the summer and then Tenar finds herself at odds with the local wizard of Re Albi. And Therru’s family appear, threatening her, and demanding she be returned.

Tenar, a woman of little standing, leaves when the wizard curses her, and out of range recovers. On her own farm Sparrowhawk returns in time to help her fight off Therru’s family. But even her own farm is no refuge, as her sailor son comes home for his inheritance after his captain and ship are arrested for trading in pirated goods. Again, she is a woman in a world dominated by men’s power, the consequences falling downhill until they end with her.

Sparrowhawk, Tenar and Therru head back up to Re Albi where they discover the local wizard doesn’t just hate women and disfigured people, or rather that’s merely a part of his malice. He was a follower of Cob, the necromancer, and plans to take revenge and re-open the breach to the dry land of the dead. But the king exists and rules now, and the Rune of Binding is whole. It’s possible, now, for them to save themselves.

In another writer’s hands this might have seemed preachy. But LeGuin has always known this about Earthsea, the seeds were in the earlier novels. It is the same world and same story, seen from a new angle. And the writing of it is magnificent.

Read This: The second, powerfully political stage of Earthsea, as good as the first trilogy
Don’t Read This: Don’t mix dragons and feminism