Book round-up: August 2019

[sixthlight]

I thought for a while I might not read anything in August (book-wise) after everything I downed in July and also having the excuse of renewed internet and other media access, but book club and my local library picking up a few e-books I'd been meaning to read saw me through.

An Infamous Army (Georgette Heyer)

A Heyer I had never actually read, despite having purchased years ago during the annual $2 e-book sales the publisher does, mostly because I'd bounced off the lead characters about twenty pages in. I'm going to be honest, I had to grit my teeth and push through. Even though the book uses a lot of characters from her romances, Heyer's historicals are always much more wooden, and this is primarily a historical account of the Battle of Waterloo. I...guess I know a lot more about the Battle of Waterloo now? bonus? But Dominic and Mary from Devil's Cub showing up in the last few pages in metaphorical shocking colour just demonstrated all-too-clearly how much her best work outshines this.

In the Vanishers' Palace (Aliette de Bodard)

F/F Beauty and the Beast re-telling except it's post-apocalyptic Vietnam (or maybe Fantasy Vietnam, it's not totally clear) and the Beast is a (East Asian) dragon and the apocalypse was colonialism by aliens and their subsequent expulsion, and Beauty is a scholar who has to teach the dragon's teenage children, and I feel like if this is your thing you know it by now. The worldbuilding is excellent but I think the story could have stood to be longer, especially in developing the main romance.

The Mortal Word (Genevieve Cogman)

Fifth in the series following the adventures of Irene, who works for the Library, an interdimensional organisation that catalogues fiction across the multiverse and has to work between the competing forces of order (dragons, also the East Asian variety) and chaos (the Fae). This time the dragons and the Fae are negotiating a peace treaty, and Irene and her friends are called in to solve a murder that threatens the negotiations. Good solid adventure, on par with the series to date, but very much a mid-series book, and the anvil of Irene's parentage is still dangling over everybody's heads even though it's EXTREMELY OBVIOUS, FFS, TELL US ALREADY.

Underground (Will Hunt)

Book club book; I thought it was going to be about the science and geography of human underground construction and instead it turned out to be at least 50% mystic claptrap about the Sacred Underground. Some points for taking indigenous religion and beliefs seriously, but had several very serious mistakes which I recognise from my own scientific background, which make me deeply dubious about the veracity of the rest of it. At least the writing was easy enough to get through.

After Man: A Zoology of the Future (Dougal Dixon)

Re-read of an old out-of-print favourite; if you like palaeontology and speculative biology this is an absolute must-read, the illustrations are beautiful and the imaginative reconstruction of a post-human ecology is still great fifty years on, although in retrospect it leans a little heavily on the idea that rodents will take over everything, and needs more invertebrates. But I love it all the same.

The Art of Project Management (Scott Berkun)

I can't exactly recommend this for fun, but if you need to lead a project it's a good guide to key things to keep in mind. Very tech industry oriented, though.

Comments

[merit]

The Invisible Library series is at the point where I think some action-y or side character driven novellas could spice things up while the main plot continues in the novels.

[sixthlight]

Very much agreed - having to stay in one place and deal with big-scale things dragged this book down a little. Let Irene run off to some random alternate world and heist a book!