Saltation by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Saltation may refer to:

* Saltation (biology), an evolutionary hypothesis emphasizing sudden and drastic change
* Saltation (geology), a process of particle transport by fluids.
* Saltation (Software Engineering), the antithesis of Continuous Integration
* Saltation (novel), a novel set in Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's Liaden universe.

Or, according to the headnote in Saltation (novel), a novel set in Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's Liaden universe: that which proceeds by leaps rather than by smooth and orderly progression.

Okay, that established, I'm still not entirely certain how it applies to this novel and I wish I had some inkling of the etymology. I suppose in the case of the book title it refers to the headlong development of Theo, introduced in Fledgling. With Mouse and Dragon, these go a fair way to round out the story between the "happily ever after" of Scout's Progress and Conflict of Honors in which the children are all grown up and the previous generation is dead or missing. Actually, it overlaps Agent of Change, Carpe Diem, and Plan B. It ends with a repeat of the final scene from Plan B, told this time from Theo's POV. And I still think it is a set-up for another story. Theo's situation is certainly not resolved at that point.

Also, minimal research has shown that Lee and Miller have quite a number of other pieces set in this universe. Probably most of them are short stories, but I expect that I will devote some time to digging them out. Some of them are likely included in the Omnibus volumes - so maybe they are already available.

Now, I really must reread Wuthering Heights.

Fledgling by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

I must have really been tired last night. I finished this and went off to bed without logging it. Perhaps this one felt a little heavy-handed compared to the rest of the Liaden books - or maybe it was just the first day of classes after Spring Break or the fact that it was initially written as a serial on the authors' blog. I will doubtless read it again and I can try to decide then.

Although this is set in the Liaden universe and there are several Liaden characters, most notably Daav yosPhelium, the Delm of Korval (in self-imposed exile), the action goes nowhere near Liad. The story centers on Theo, Daav's half terran daughter, who appears briefly at the very end of I Dare to set up a possible continuation of the series.

It is an interesting run at creating a matriarchy as well as a world which has academia as its dominant societal feature. The repressive female-dominated religion doesn't quite come off, somehow. The marriage customs are intriguing. Marriage as an institution for the production and rearing of children does not exist. A woman takes a partner as she wishes and may "set him aside" at any time she chooses. The man may decline the offer, however. In fact, there are suggestions that a man may instigate such a relationship. Childbearing is quite apart from these arrangements. A woman decides when she is ready to have a child and selects the sperm donor. The child is considered to belong to the mother entirely. It is suggested that the biological father is traditionally unaware of his role, after all, raising and supporting the child is none of his business. Daav, of course, has broken local custom and persuaded Theo's mother to at least obliquely tell him that he is indeed Theo's father.

Folly by Laurie R. King

This goes a long way toward making up for earlier disappointments. Different author, of course, but a stand-alone from the writer of series mysteries. Also granting that I have never managed to get too far into one of King's Sherlock Holmes books - but I'll try them again one of these days.

This one could be related to one of King's Kate Martinelli books. I spent most (all) of the book convinced that Rae was the eccentric aunt of Kate's partner Lee who lures her to her isolated island to recover from her injuries received in the first Martinelli book. I even went back into the Martinelli books to find the reference to the woman by name - and it wasn't her. Still, I think that Aunt Agatha must have preyed on King's mind until she wrote a story about a half-mad woman who saved her own life and sanity by going to live on an island in the San Juan chain.

Wonderful book. A beautifully twisted story of dysfunctional families, repetitive history, and murder. King's insight into depression is very convincing, and her attachment to the Puget Sound area is becoming more apparent all the time. Although Martinelli is set in San Francisco, the third book takes place largely in Washington state. Also, this is the second of her books in which an artist is featured - and the work described in persuasive detail. Wrap all that with intriguing characters and a satisfying plot and conclusion - what more could one ask?

Artistic License by Julie Hyzy

I have enjoyed Hyzy's "cozy" mysteries and even more her earlier legitimate mysteries. Artistic License was her first novel. This book is disappointing in so many ways that I'm not sure I can fairly catalog them. I was hard put to actually finish it. Only the thought that I could then say what I thought of it here kept me reading.

Even granting that it was actually romantic suspense rather than mystery, it was banal and predictable. The main character is annoying and stupid - and given to whiny dependence on others. This is particularly striking, I suppose, because I just finished reading True Grit in which the heroine is a stubborn fourteen year old who never lets anyone put anything over on her.

Although it is possible for the reader to guess the main plot "twists" from the first chapter, it isn't necessary because there are neon lights at every corner telling you what to expect. Frankly, after reading this I am surprised that anyone gave Hyzy a second chance. I'm glad someone did - because she certainly got better.

True Grit by Charles Portis

It has been years since I read this. Pretty good - maybe I remember the movie better than the book, though. So now I need to see the movie again. The old one. With John Wayne.

This is our book club book for next month and the hostess gave us some questions for consideration. So I thought I would consider a few of them here.

Do you think True Grit is typical of the western genre? Why/why not.
No, but what would I know because I have never read westerns. Well, a couple of Zane Greys and maybe a Louis L'Amour. But, with the exception of Betty Zane I don't recall any "feisty women." And the lawmen in this book were certainly not portrayed as pillars of respectability and virtue.

How does Mattie compare to Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games?
Now that is an interesting question --
Both of their mothers had essentially resigned their roles as the head of household to their daughters, leaving them as the primary support of the family as young teenagers. The situation of Mattie's family is far less dire than that of Katniss's family. In The Hunger Games, the family lives a marginal existence until Katniss wins the Games; the Rosses are actually fairly comfortable even after the murder of the father. Katniss is much more a victim of circumstance than Mattie. She is manipulated by things beyond her control. Even when she embraces the Mockingjay image, she has little or no choice in the matter. Mattie takes charge and controls her circumstances. She manipulates a couple of men who are accustomed to having things their own way into doing things that she wants and pretty much her way - at least into taking her along on the trip - because as she has made it clear she doesn't particularly trust either one of them.

What elements do you think have made this novel so beloved and successful?
I don't know. I liked the book, but I am not likely to read copies of it to shreds as I have books that I truly love. Mattie is a wonderful character - maybe that's it. I enjoyed the voice Portis gave her - it reminded me of my grandmother, because, after all, we are hearing Mattie as an old woman telling the story.

Much has been made of Charles Portis' ear for dialog. Do you agree? What are some examples?
There were definitely places when the dialogue made me laugh out loud, usually when Mattie scored on one or both of the men ("officers" as she refers to them).

I was disappointed that he didn't allow Mattie to see Rooster that one last time. It seemed unfair to send her off on her own again just to arrive and find that he was very recently dead. But I suppose in the greater scheme of things that is a minor point. I might have preferred to have the story end at the end of the story instead of wrapping up the next 25 years.

Lastly, the title: I expect that the reader is expected to observe that, while Mattie goes out seeking a man with "true grit" to pursue her case, she is the one who truly displays that elusive quality.

Mouse and Dragon by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

Another Liaden book!! It may require me to go back and reread the lot. This one falls after Scout's Progress, and continues the story of Daav and Aelliana - which is picked up again a generation later in I Dare. And I have at least one more in my queue, too.

It is solid, fits right into the series - and even though we know that Aelliana is going to die - because we have already read the next generation stories, we know it is all right because we have also read I Dare. Sometimes it is nice to know how they get from Point A to Point B.

I don't know what it is about the Liaden books. They seem almost YA in their directness and narrative simplicity, but the characters are totally compelling and I have read them repeatedly. When I finish a read through, I am tempted to go back and start again at the beginning. There are other books that I love and have read many times, but few that I am willing to reread back to back, not even the Vorkosigan books, or The Lord of the Rings, or Dune, or even Arrows of the Queen. And that has been the one I go back to when I am tired, depressed, or brain-dead and want something comfortable and familiar with a good ending. It could be that I go back to that one on bad days because I can read it in the bathtub - I have never read any of the Liaden stories on paper, only electronically. Are e-readers waterproof yet?

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Thanks, Justin, I really enjoyed this. It didn't take nearly as long to read as I thought it would because I found it quite difficult to stop reading - thank goodness I waited until Spring Break to start. Of course, this is only volume one in this mmvfs (massive multi volume fantasy saga), subtitled "Day One." That refers to the structure of the story. The hero is telling his story to a scribe and they've only been at it for one day. Since he demanded three days of the scribe's time, one must assume that the plan is for three volumes.

One of the reasons that I found this more to my liking than the George RR Martin book was that it was far more focused. We follow the one character relentlessly, practically breath by breath - after about 800 pages he is still only sixteen or seventeen - rather than skipping around to share the story line with other casts of characters.

The story is consistent, the characters are persuasive, and the setting is appealing. And some elements are totally unexpected. What more can you ask from a mmvfs?

Deadly Blessings by Julie Hyzy

This was a good bit more intense than the others of Hyzy's that I have read. The setting - as opposed to the White House kitchen or a museum/mansion - is Chicago, and the heroine is an investigative reporter. She stumbles on a now familiar story of young eastern European girls being imported to work as prostitutes and follows it nearly to her own death.

Apparently this series did not do well, because Hyzy seems to have abandoned it in 2008 after the first of the White House books won several awards. I think it's a shame. I enjoyed her other books, but this felt less "gimmicky" and more like serious detective fiction.

There is a class of detective fiction that I used to call "the incidental detective" story. I suppose Miss Marple is the quintessential example of the incidental detective. She just happens to be on the scene and puts together the solution. Both of Hyzy's other series are of this type. Although technically Alex St.James is not specifically a detective, she is an investigator by trade and the fits more naturally into the setting. She is an appealing character and I am sorry that she only lasts three books.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Okay, I finished it. I sincerely hope that the next choice for the "BookEnds" is more enjoyable. Now I can begin Spring Break with a clear conscience without the task of reading this hanging over my head.

Perhaps its sole saving grace (can it be called a saving grace if it was insufficient to actually save it?) were the endless references to SF/Fantasy novels, writers, and characters. They were well-enough embedded and sufficiently apropos to make it quite clear that the writer himself was as big a SF dork as his character. And maybe this is just bad temper because the kidlets in the book club were so whiny about the last book which required them to think a little bit, but I'll wager that only one other member of the group will recognize any of those references except the Tolkien ones - and maybe not all of those - since I'll bet they saw the movies, but I doubt if they have read the books.

Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos

Interesting that a woman with a Greek name should invest the time and energy in creating a small Welsh town in the flats of Nebraska. Or maybe Nebraska isn't as flat as I thought, I did drive across it once in early winter - December of 1969, to be precise. I remember it as being utterly flat (and white at the time) as far as I could see in any direction. The highway was dead straight, the sky was the same color or uncolor as everything else, and the only interruption in all of the flat whiteness was the occasional overpass where the local road crossed over the interstate. I found it quite terrifying.

Oh yes, the book. I bought it on impulse - never let it be said that those endless emails from Amazon are not effective. I probably would never have seen it in a real book store because I don't usually cruise the shelves where this sort of thing lives. Although, I probably would have picked it up for the title if I had happened to see it.

It is a little bit mystical, a little bit family saga, a little (very little) bit mystery and I like very much that Kallos felt no need to rationalize everything. If you are going to be mystical, be mystical and don't apologize for it. The family consists of three adult children whose mother "went up" and never came back down in a tornado, their father, and their father's long-time mistress. We discover the mother bit by bit through the story, mainly through excerpts from her journal which also disappeared at the time of the tornado. The three children are all disfunctional and fundamentally solitary - without apparent means for correcting their deficits, and end up in situations which have the potential to "cure" them. It also kept me reading way too late on a Tuesday night, but I haven't decided whether or not to recommend it. I suppose I could say "if you like this sort of thing" but I can't quite decide what sort of thing it is.

Breakup by Dana Stabenow

So - I skipped all the ones that weren't available for Kindle and a couple of years of history of Niniltna and Kate Shugak. Kate is still with (in a 200 miles of Alaskan outback sort of way) the same guy that she had settled on in the first book although he makes no actual appearance in this one beyond a couple of phone calls. Her grandmother has died and left the mantle of tribal sage slowly drifting down to Kate's shoulders. Mutt, the 140 pound half wolf, is still with her, and she is still pretty unsettled about what she is going to when she grows up - or gets over having her throat cut (before book one) - whichever comes first.

The "breakup" has nothing to do with her relationship with Jack - it refers to that season in the frozen far far northern wastelands when winter gives over to spring and (specifically) the ice on the frozen rivers breaks up. From what I have read elsewhere - and "Northern Exposure" it is quite sudden and very dramatic. Here the entire period surrounding the actual break up is tagged with the name and it is generally recognized to be the crazy season.

In the first few hours of the story, Kate is chased by an enraged grizzly, has an airplane engine fall from a passing 747 and land on her truck, and must take cover from an enraged housewife who is chasing her husband with a gun. And that is only the first few hours - the pace picks up after that calm beginning.

I think Stabenow has gotten it together in this series. Keep in mind, of course, that I skipped five of them, so I don't know how long it took for this to happen - or possibly this one is a fluke - but I will definitely try another one, just to know for sure.

Mr. Monster by Dan Wells

John, boy sociopath, has, like Dexter, found a justifiable excuse for exercising his compulsion to kill. He has learns that the demon of the last book was not alone and his mission is to kill them. He has already contacted the next.

Wells credits his publisher with the idea of taking this to a series. It certainly strikes a different note in YA fiction. This book is in many respects stronger than the first, John has loosed his personal demons in killing the original demon and finds that they are not willing to go back in the box. The battle between John and his other self, Mr. Monster, is the real meat of the story.

Night Work by Laurie R. King

This one does actually take place in San Francisco. It measures up to the previous books in the series, except in one small point - I figured out who the murderers were before I was a quarter of the way in. A little disappointing. She did string a couple of very attractive red herrings across the path, but they weren't quite persuasive enough to change my mind. On the other hand, although I did figure out who the killers were, I didn't figure out the side mystery.

The theme of this one is the abuse of women, grim enough a topic for this series. King gives us a group of women who identify themselves as the Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement who take elaborate and hysterically funny action against abusers who are unpunishable under the law - for example, one is duct taped to a picture window nude, of course, with his equipment painted bright purple. We also get a team of vigilantes who deal with abusers more permanently.

An update on the continuing characters - Kate's partner and his new wife are expecting. Their friend Roz and her partner are expecting. And Kate and her partner are going to try to be expecting, too. The next one should be ankle-deep in diapers.

I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells

I am always honored when someone asks me to read a book that has particular significance for them. This was one such, and again I am impressed by the choice. Yes, it is YA but that doesn't mean that it is somehow less than adult fiction - wherever that line falls, and what ever that distinction means. In many ways, I think YA is more difficult to write than conventional fiction. For one thing, adults are writing to address an audience of which they are not members - always a good trick. In order to succeed, they must tap into not just the interests of "another generation" but be able to grasp their view of the world - and their fears.

This book certainly reaches into those dark corners of uncertainty and apprehension - the fear of being different - and the certain knowledge that one is different. John has devised methods keeping his head down and not appearing as "the weird kid," but he has also recognized in himself the potential to be a killer. The steps he takes to control himself are explicit and he is in control until a geniune monster appears in their community and begins killing. He recognizes the monster partly because of who he is and partly because of what he is - and he finds that he must release his own internal monster if he is going to confront the other.

I found some facets of the narrative particularly fascinating - the monster that John must deal with is indeed a monster, a non-human monster. I kept waiting for John to "wake up" or recognize that he was creating the monster images himself, but monster it is and monster it remains. By virtue of many years of SF, I would interpret the monster as some sort of alien life-form which - you know the rest - but Wells does not present any explanation for it besides John's identification of it as a demon.

And a curious note - Wells has the human form of the demon quote Blake's "Tyger, Tyger" to John at one point, and it repeats the opening line to him as it dies. I'm guessing that perhaps Wells himself is something of a mystic, hence the interest in the writing of one of the most mystical of poets - and his website is www.fearfulsymmetry.net. So maybe the demon is actually a literal demon of the writer's intention.

Shakespeare's Trollop by Charlaine Harris

I thought I deserved this after slogging through a couple of rather massive numbers that I did not particularly enjoy.

Harris is in great form. Shockingly, the first victim is one of the characters featured in the series from the very beginning. The second was unfamiliar to me, but if Lily keeps losing clients at this rate and in this way, no one in town is going to hire her to clean for them. Maybe she could move here, I'd hire her. After all, if her clients are murdered, she always finds out who did it.

And things are getting serious with boyfriend, Jack. The next book will probably tell whether Harris is tired of bringing in new men for Lily and lets him stay or runs him out of town and cuts Lily loose again.

When Organizing isn't Enough by Julie Morgenstern

The subtitle is "Shed your stuff and change your life." I have not embarked upon her program - I like to read through and get a global picture before I dive into something like this. She has a lot of good things to say, and I may undertake some form of the plan at some point.

This could be called The Zen of Organizing Your Life. It calls for a great deal of introspection and logically is an extention - or a combination - of her various books on organization, which are entitled Something from the Inside Out - organization, time-management, etc. Her contention is that imposing organization is not likely to be effective. One must discover and pursue what they will gain by the process and go from there.

I did not read this all today - it has been my bathroom reading for several weeks. I may start the Dalai Lama's book next.

Nemesis by Jo Nesbo

This one was recommended by friend, who was so taken by it that she brought it to me as soon as she finished it. Unfortunately, it didn't do it for me. It stood very poorly beside the Stieg Larsson books - of course, this guy is Norwegian rather than Swedish, maybe that's the difference. I found it formulaic and predictable, even though they had to solve the same crime three or four times. The idea has great potential - a psychotic woman takes revenge on three men who have (in her mind) done her wrong, by setting all three of them up for her own murder. Then there is the bank robbery/murder running along, too. And I don't think they got around to solving the cop's murder - although he informs the reader of the circumstances and who done it. Oh, and did I mention the psycho sadist cop?

Never mind. If it weren't for this blog, I probably wouldn't have bothered to finish it. It took too long, and I didn't find the time particularly well spent.