The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch

I don't make any secret of the love affair I have with Audible. I know the literary world has some extremely valid concerns about Amazon as a company (which has thankfully been resolved in Hachette's favor) but it's so hard as a consumer to get past the sheer convenience of both Amazon ebooks and its subcompany Audible. I use my existing device! There's no cd's to get lost! I can sync between multiple devices! The user interface of the Audible app is super easy and intuitive! But most of all? I don't have to stop reading books just because I'm doing something extremely silly like driving or cleaning house. I mean, eff that.

So I listened to The Lies of Locke Lamora as an audiobook, narrated by Michael Page. It's truly a different experience listening to a book rather than reading it, especially when you've got a great narrator. Each character's voice is made distinct in Page's mouth, and I don't know how he picked some of the accents used, but I really enjoyed the variety. There's a fine line between a good accent and a supremely obnoxious one, but Page stays just this side of it and keeps it entertaining. His Father Chains is especially entertaining.

Though that leads me into one downside of audiobooks: I never know how names are spelled. I had to look that one up. I run into this with Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series as well: how was I to know if Vorkosigan's name was Aral or Errol? It's not so bad in The Lies of Locke Lamora though, because everything is fairly phonetic.

Summary:
Locke Lamora is an orphan of the city of Camorr, who is especially smart and especially gifted at lying. This earns him a place in the Gentleman Bastards, a group of children lead and taught by Father Chains, who are essentially world-class scam artists. They are cloaked three times: to the city at large they are priests of the order of Perelandro; to Capa Barsavi they are his sworn band of simple thieves that pay him fealty; but underneath all that they are a group of liars who prey on the wealth of the nobility. All that changes when the Grey King, a mysterious figure terrorizing Barsavi and his underlings, uses Locke to enact a long-ranging plan of revenge against Barsavi.

As a reader:
One of the first things that I really realized about Lynch's worldbuilding here is how gender-equal everything is. Sure, laugh if you want, but fantasy as a genre is chock-full of a wide range of dude-types and a narrow range of woman-types, or sometimes characters who are only remarkable because they do something particularly deadly/strong/clever as a ~woman~. Lynch bypasses all that by literally making it a nonissue. Some of the thieves are boys. Some are girls. There's no real distinction. The mysterious organization that oversees all of Camorr and is lead by the terrifyingly clever Spider? Yeah, woman. Old woman, at that. It's not necessarily an important distinction to make, but I just have to say that I appreciate the general neutrality on gender here. (Note to self: write a story where the gender of each character is determined by coin flip.)

There were parts that didn't really feel satisfying to me, however. I don't feel as if I have a very good mental picture of this world. We touch on a few different nationalities but other than descriptions of clothing I don't really know the differences between them. I'm not even sure what most of the characters look like, aside from Jean is large and Locke is small. While some of the settings are downright cool--elderglass rose garden, where each petal and leaf is razor sharp and drinks up any blood they spill--I don't have a very good picture of the city. Part of that may be due to the audiobook rather than the written word, I'll admit. It can be really easy to gloss over details when you're hearing them, and I'm never like, just listening to it without doing anything else. So your mileage may vary.

As a writer:
I found the structure of this story to be particularly interesting. We start in Locke's childhood, which is downright cliche, and something that generally makes me roll my eyes. But we diverge after that into the 'present' time, where Locke is setting up a scam as Lucas Fehrwright, and intersperse flashback chapters of Father Chains teaching the boys their craft. I think this is a nice way to give the reader a backstory without boring them to tears, by putting it in tiny digestible bites. Plus it's a way to work Chains into the story, who really is a damn fascinating character. Given that he's dead in the present time, I wouldn't get to see any of him without these jumps back in time.

Lynch writes fantastic dialogue, as well. It's probably enhanced by the skills of Page as a reader, but so many of the lines made me laugh out loud for their sheer snappy wit.

“Some day, Locke Lamora,” he said, “some day, you’re going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so overwhelmingly that the sky will light up and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comets with glee. And I just hope I’m still around to see it.”

“I cut off his fingers to get him to talk, and when he'd confessed everything I wanted to hear, I had his fucking tongue cut out, and the stump cauterized."

Everyone in the room stared at him.

"I called him an asshole, too," said Locke. "He didn't like that.” 

But what I didn't like? The so-called mystery surrounding Sabetha. Every time she's mentioned I know the reader is supposed to go, "Oh, Sabetha! They used to be lovers! Locke still hurts! I want to know what happened!" But in order to care about a character we have to have something to go off of. I know nothing about Sabetha, and so there's no reason for me to care. I'm sure Lynch is saving it for a following book, but jesus man, that dangling carrot isn't tempting, it's just obnoxious. Get it out of my way so I can see better.

Overall: 4 stars

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More reviews: The Lies of Locke Lamora on Librarything (Average 4.24 stars)

The Lies of Locke Lamora on Goodreads (Average 4.28 stars)

The Casual Vacancy - J.K. Rowling

I spent New Year's at a friend's apartment, wearing funny hats and making funny noises with whistles while we ate calorie-dense jalapeno cheese dip and drank as much champagne as possible. Somewhere during that stupor I spotted a really fantastic box set of the Harry Potter books where the spines made up a picture of Hogwarts.

This is mostly unrelated, but look at it. It's great.

After I was done drooling, I also spotted a copy of J.K. Rowling's first book for adults, The Casual Vacancy, and immediately drunkenly demanded that I be allowed to borrow it. She agreed, after admitting that she only got about halfway through before giving up. That didn't seem to bode well for me, but I took it home anyway.

Summary:

The Casual Vacancy takes place in the town of Pagford, England. At the opening of the book, parish councilman Barry Fairbrother dies of an aneurysm, leaving an opening on the council. Some characters see this opening as an opportunity to further their own agenda, namely, placing someone in that council position that will help them unload The Fields, a poor neighborhood full of all that the town considers undesirable, onto the next town over. We follow a good handful of characters through the changes the death of Barry Fairbrother wreaks on their lives.

As I am writing this, I discover that there is now a BBC adaptation. Well then.

As a reader:

Damn girl, there are a lot of characters here. After Barry Fairbrother dies, there's his wife Mary and their kids; a boy named Andrew Price and his abusive father, doorstop mother and brother; a boy named Stuart 'Fats' Wall, his mother who councils at their school, his father who is the school's principal, has a weird anxiety disorder and is sure he may have at some point molested a student (but really doesn't seem to have); a girl from the Fields named Krystal Weedon who shags Fats, tries to keep her drug-addicted mother going to her rehab clinic and takes care of her little brother; Howard Mollison on the council who is trying to push his son Miles Mollison into the open seat, Miles' wife Sam who ends up snogging Andrew, Miles' business partner Gavin who is secretly in love with Mary Fairbrother but is currently dating Kay Bawden who moved to Pagford for him; her daughter Gaia who Andrew is in love with; the local doctor Parminder Jawanda who Krystal thinks killed her Nana Cath and who secretly hates Howard Mollison enough to lose her job over; and her daugher Sukhvinder who is relentlessly bullied by Fats, befriended by Gaia, and ignored by everyone else who really ends up being the damn hero of the whole mess.

Are you confused? Yeah, that's normal. Rowling's constructed a pretty elaborate narrative here that, I'll be honest, was a huge slog for the first half of the book. I'm pretty good with keeping many characters distinct--Game of Thrones taught me that, thanks--but I found myself tripping up a few times with trying to remember exactly who was who. There's a learning curve here, and thankfully by the second half of the book I've got it. But you've got to have the patience to get there first, which can be a challenge.

Being that Rowling cut her teeth on writing teens, it seems somehow unsurprising to me that the teenage characters in this book are the ones that most hold my interest. Krystal is a tragically identifiable character and, personally, the one I'm most invested in. They are the ones that are driving the major plot points of the story, since three in turn post the damning accusations about the adults who are running for the open council position. It isn't until the teenage characters really start to make these kinds of decisions that the plot really picks up in an interesting way.

As a writer:

Not to harp, but I think the slow pace of the first half of the book was really damning. Goodreads reviews average only 3.24, and the general consensus seems to be that this adult debut just did not live up to the hype of following Harry Potter. If I didn't have a weird obsessive desire to push through even books I don't like, I wouldn't have been able to find the parts of this book that I do.

But I think that is in part made up for in Rowling's fantastic characterization. Of the characters that we spend a significant amount of time with, not a single one is less than fully developed. Even Terri Weedon, Krystal's drug addict mother, has faucets to her personality that exist outside of the generic 'addict' persona and make her a real, believable character.

Lastly, the utter complexity of the narrative is pretty fascinating when you start seeing all the different connections between the characters. The death of this one man triggered so many events: dissolution of a relationship, a complete u-turn of a personality, the deaths of two tragic characters. Each event keeps being tied back into a previous situation, a previous character, or a previous thought. Three other major characters pass by in the final climactic event, and only realize afterwards how close they had been, if they had chosen to intervene. We end on a funeral, with this feeling that they're all looking back, and not so comfortably.

In closing:

"Oh, you think that they should take responsibility for their addiction and change their behavior?" said Parminder.

"In a nutshell, yes."

"Before they cost the state any more money."

"Exact--"

"And you," said Parminder loudly, as the silent eruption engulfed her, "do you know how many tens of thousands of pounds you, Howard Mollison, have cost the health service, because of your total inability to stop gorging yourself?"

A rich, red claret stain was spreadng up Howard's neck into his cheeks.

"Do you know how much your bypass cost, and your drugs, and your long stay in hospital? And the doctor's appointments you take up with your asthma and your blood pressure and the nasty skin rash, which are all caused by your refusal to lose weight?"

As Parminder's voice became a scream, other councilors began to protest on Howard's behalf; Shirley was on her feet; Parminder was still shouting, clawing together the papers that had somehow been scattered as she gesticulated.

Overall: 3 stars.

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Drums of Autumn - Diana Galbadon

I was introduced to the Outlander series late, first via the Showtime adaptation. After devouring the first half-season, I thought I should fill the void waiting for the next episode release with the books themselves. This is a really odd order for me, to watch the adaptation first and then go back and read the book, but for once, I'm really glad I did. Though some changes have been made in the adaptation process, I liked being able to picture the actors in their book roles. Caitrona Balfe and Sam Heughan are both incredibly good-looking and have great chemistry for their roles, and what more can I ask for in romantic historical fiction leads? I'm sure there was some upset among fans of the books with the casting--I mean, the first book was published in 1991 so there's been quite a bit of time to build a fan base--but I'm satisfied, so fig to that.

Not entirely sure if 35-year-old Sam is supposed to still be 22-year-old Jamie as he is in the books..

Summary:
Drums of Autumn is the fourth book in the Outlander series. In previous books, Claire has traveled through the stones for the third time, and have left Scotland behind to recover Jamie's kidnapped nephew Ian. They've traveled into the West Indies, naturally encountering many obstacles along the way, including a drunk "chinaman" (jesus even though that is period that makes my skin crawl), magic slaves, and the reappearance of Geilis Duncan. Book 4 opens in South Carolina, where throughout the course of the novel the Frasers establish their new home on what they dub Fraser's Ridge, hoping to finally have a permanent settlement. In the future, their daughter Brianna plots to travel back through the stones as well to finally meet her biological father and see her mother once more, but she is followed by her love Roger Wakefield, who is a descendent of Geilis Duncan and Jamie's uncle Dougal Mackenzie. Naturally, misunderstandings, danger, and hostilities with the military, pirates, and local tribes ensue.

Period costume porn. WHY ARE YOU TWO SO PRETTY.

As a reader:
There's a good reason that these books and the Starz adaptation are gaining in popularity. Diana Galbadon is adamant that she did not write these as romance, but the romance crowd is eating them up--and those of us who don't go in for your typical romance pulp find plenty to like here too. I care about these characters, enough to fume when they're doing something stupid and wilt when they're misunderstanding each other. At times this actually works against Galbadon, however--in the heightened sense of drama accompanying Roger's sojourn with the Mohawks, I found myself skimming parts to find out whether he was alive or dead. I wanted to know the next plot point so badly that I tended to skip any description and characterization in between. It's got the same quality that makes romance readers keep coming back: we're invested, we're addicted, and we need to know if they get together in the end.

As a writer:
I'm pretty dismissive of the romance genre (though more posts on that to come), not because it is a primarily female genre but because often the writing is just so. goddamn. bad. Maybe that's why Galbadon is so adamant that she's not writing romance: romance isn't regarded as literary. Whether or not that term can be applied to Outlander is debatable, but it is definitely above the romance genre in terms of technical writing skill. I use the term 'highly readable' as a compliment, in the sense that I don't stop and stumble over any of Galbadon's sentence structure, and that nothing jumps out as being a glaringly irritating idiosyncrasy such as I find in, let's say, Sarah Maclean.
Then there's the subgenre of historical romance. While I'm not incredibly well-read in the romance genre, the few that I have sampled that have fallen under the historical label have, let's say, sacrificed the historical-ness for the romance-ness, which completely ruins the entire book. Galbadon, on the other hand, has done a fantastic job constructing a historical setting that is believable. The difference? Research. Mountains and mountains of research. It's clear she's done it, and it shows. That's not to say she's perfect--there's been some corrections regarding her use of Gaelic and whatnot, but nothing so glaring that I think your average historical fiction fan would notice. Someone more immersed in Highland lore may feel differently, of course, which is always a hazard when an author tries to write of a culture that isn't their own. (Diana Galbadon is American, and, presumably, did not grow up in the 18th century.)
Galbadon makes good use of aphorisms in her work, almost tailor-made to be quoted in social media profiles and sighed over.

“forgiveness is not a single act, but a matter of constant practice”

“Your face is my heart Sassenach, and the love of you is my soul” 

“An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way; an American thinks a hundred years is a long time” 

“If ye have to ask yourself if you’re in love, laddie—then ye aren’t,”

Lastly, one description that I really enjoyed:

"...she jumped,giggled in a voice like honey poured out of a jug..."

Overall: 4 stars.

Amazon: Drums of Autumn

More reviews: Drums of Autumn on Librarything (average 4.23 stars)