Reading Wednesday
Jun. 24th, 2015 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sally_mariaI'm afraid this isn't something I've been able to post on regularly, as much of my thirst for text is satisfied by many wonderful fanfiction writers, but I've read two books I very much enjoyed in the last week, and so wanted to write about them.
I'd heard a lot of good things about The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, and had a long weekend, so I thought it was worth trying. I'm very glad I did - I've been turned off a lot of modern fantasy by unlikeable characters and the unnecessary confusion between realism and nastiness. (Grimdark is so not my thing.) So I was thrilled to find a story with a hero I could really like, and a universe in which that didn't immediately mark him as weak, stupid or a helpless victim.
"The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an "accident," he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir."
The world the author creates is not the standard European medieval fantasy universe, but has something of the 19th century, while not being tied to it. We only see a small part of the world, but she does a very good job of making that part convincing, and as if the rest is there, just not relevant to the story she is telling.
The author has said that it is a one-off, not the first part of a series, as is so often the case with fantasy these days, and the story reaches a very good climax - but I would be very happy to read more about this world, and the characters who inhabit it.
The second is Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles by Bernard Cornwell It's the first non-fiction book by the author, of Sharpe fame, and very well done, I felt.
It's not a scholarly book, no notes and references, just a bibliography, but it feels well researched, with plenty of use of original reports, letters and diaries.
I've been interested in Wellington and the British part in the later Napoleonic wars since reading The Spanish Bride and An Infamous Army as a teenager, and this isn't the first account of Waterloo I've read, but it's probably the clearest, to my non-expert mind - perhaps at least partly because the author is at pains to point out that we can never know exactly what happened, when eye-witness accounts differ, and national and professional pride is on the line.
Even my paperback copy includes a large number of colour plates of paintings and maps, of the participants and the area of all the battles of those four days. I'd certainly recommend it to the interested reader - it's an easy read, as you might expect from an experienced fiction writer, but still packs in a lot of information. He does the best job I've ever seen of explaining the basics of the tactics of the era - the "stone, paper, scissors", as he describes it, of cavalry, infantry and artillery. But he also never forgets that he is writing about men fighting for their lives, not just toy soldiers on a diagram.
I may well look into other, more scholarly, takes on the battles and the surrounding events, but I think this serves as an excellent introduction.
I'd heard a lot of good things about The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, and had a long weekend, so I thought it was worth trying. I'm very glad I did - I've been turned off a lot of modern fantasy by unlikeable characters and the unnecessary confusion between realism and nastiness. (Grimdark is so not my thing.) So I was thrilled to find a story with a hero I could really like, and a universe in which that didn't immediately mark him as weak, stupid or a helpless victim.
"The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an "accident," he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir."
The world the author creates is not the standard European medieval fantasy universe, but has something of the 19th century, while not being tied to it. We only see a small part of the world, but she does a very good job of making that part convincing, and as if the rest is there, just not relevant to the story she is telling.
The author has said that it is a one-off, not the first part of a series, as is so often the case with fantasy these days, and the story reaches a very good climax - but I would be very happy to read more about this world, and the characters who inhabit it.
The second is Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles by Bernard Cornwell It's the first non-fiction book by the author, of Sharpe fame, and very well done, I felt.
It's not a scholarly book, no notes and references, just a bibliography, but it feels well researched, with plenty of use of original reports, letters and diaries.
I've been interested in Wellington and the British part in the later Napoleonic wars since reading The Spanish Bride and An Infamous Army as a teenager, and this isn't the first account of Waterloo I've read, but it's probably the clearest, to my non-expert mind - perhaps at least partly because the author is at pains to point out that we can never know exactly what happened, when eye-witness accounts differ, and national and professional pride is on the line.
Even my paperback copy includes a large number of colour plates of paintings and maps, of the participants and the area of all the battles of those four days. I'd certainly recommend it to the interested reader - it's an easy read, as you might expect from an experienced fiction writer, but still packs in a lot of information. He does the best job I've ever seen of explaining the basics of the tactics of the era - the "stone, paper, scissors", as he describes it, of cavalry, infantry and artillery. But he also never forgets that he is writing about men fighting for their lives, not just toy soldiers on a diagram.
I may well look into other, more scholarly, takes on the battles and the surrounding events, but I think this serves as an excellent introduction.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-25 07:26 pm (UTC)If you felt able to rec any of those, I for one would be interested :-)
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Date: 2015-06-25 07:39 pm (UTC)I'd be happy to point to a few of the things I've thought were good recently, though.
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Date: 2015-06-25 05:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-25 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-26 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-25 06:14 am (UTC)I will also put the Waterloo on my list. This also seems a good time to re-read my other Waterloo books.
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Date: 2015-06-25 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-25 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-28 09:53 am (UTC)http://www.locusmag.com/News/2015/06/2015-locus-awards-winners/
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Date: 2015-07-02 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-02 07:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-02 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-02 07:59 pm (UTC)