Four days into our vacation I have already gone through the same number of books. If the stack I brought is to last until our trip back, I may have to slow my pace somewhat. It might slow down of itself, though, as the ones I’ve read so far were some of the more anticipated books that I brought.
I started with the final book in Lynn Flewelling‘s Tamir Triad; The Oracle’s Queen. If you enjoyed the first two, you will certainly enjoy this one as well. As in the previous books, Flewelling centres much of the story around the morally ambigious course of action that allowed Tobin/Tamir to be saved from her uncle’s efforts to kill off all female relatives. Not only does the sacrifice made weigh heavily on some of the central characters, but Tobin/Tamir finds it anything but easy to cope with her radically changed circumstances. The pacing is fairly slow, just as in the first two books, and a somewhat higher pace at the beginning (or a longer book) might have allowed for the only slightly weak point, the resolution of these problems, to have been less quickly dealt with. Things turn out the ‘right way’, but could have been allowed to play out more fully.
The second book I tackled (while still on that 12-hour car trip up to Sundsvall) was Sarah Monette‘s Melusine. It had caught my eye primarily due to a mention from Jacqueline Carey, and the premise sounded interesting enough. It is the story (told from two first-person point-of-views) of the former prostitute turned magician, Felix Harrowgate, and Mildmay the Fox, a cat-burglar. The two live in Melusine, a fascinating city full of secretive magicians, arrogant nobles and a very ... colourful underworld. Against his will, as his past catches up with him, Felix finds himself an instrument of destruction aimed at one of the groups of magicians in Melusine. Meanwhile, Mildmay is equally unwillingly drawn into a scheme that, eventually, will see him in the company of the broken and discredited Felix. As point-of-views the pair are very different, though they will find out that they have more than a few things in common, and the switching back and forth between the two makes for interesting variations in the storytelling. I’d say that the first two thirds of the book are quite strong, but the final third and the ending is a little weak. However, this is not the end of the story: the second part, The Virtu, is already out in hardcover and I am looking forward to reading it.
Another conclusion of a trilogy was up next, namely Sarah Ash‘s Children of the Serpent Gate, the final installment in The Tears of Artamon. Five demonic beings are now free in the world, searching for hosts that will allow them to achieve their unknown goal. Gavril Nagarian, the host of the being formerly known as the Drakhaoul, finds himself in a desperate struggle to save his beloved Kiukiu after she was almost lost in the spirit realm, and in the course of this he ends up making a highly unlikely alliance. Just as in the first two books, there are few easy answers to be had, and the story takes some of the characters in highly unexpected directions. Definitely a very good conclusion to a very good story.
Next I actually started on Scott Lynch‘s The Lies of Locke Lamora, but I must admit that I wasn’t too taken with it. When the time came to go down to the beach, I put it aside (mainly because I don’t like taking hardcovers to the beach, though) and instead I picked up Madeleine Robins’ Petty Treason, the second book about Sarah Tolerance. It was every bit as enjoyable as the first one, Point of Honour, and I was very said to read in her journal that they have not sold welll enough for there to be a third one. I guess they may have had a hard time to find their audience, given that they are a (delightful) mix of romance, mystery and alternative history.
Following this I will continue on The Lies of Locke Lamora, even though it feels like a bit too much of a ‘guys’ book for my tastes, and I imagine I’ll be doing another of these posts before the vacation is over, to report on that one and the rest of my remaining reads.