A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin

There is are reasons why I don't ordinarily read this sort of thing. They are unbelieveably long, have an incredible number of characters, have terrifically convoluted plots, and frequently (as in this case) have story lines which do not intersect the main plot at all. And, most annoying of all, the reader is blatantly set up to purchase the next book. That said, this is not bad of its type.

I'm sure someone has come up with a name for the sub-genre - maybe something like "massive multi-volume fantasy saga." I read quite cheerfully the first three volumes of Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" mmvfs, and could probably have continued - but I started thinking of all the things that I could be reading instead and gave it up. I spoke with a former student of mine today who is a voracious reader; during his tenure in my high school English class, I once loaned him a milk-crate full of books - which he read and returned in a week or two. He is waiting with bated breath for the last(?) volume of "The Wheel of Time." Come to think of it - I think he was the one who got me to read it in the first place. I trust his judgment as a reader - maybe he is willing to invest the time because he has so many years yet to be reading - and he may read faster than I do. I used to read faster than I do.

This one has not failed of any of the basic characteristics of the class. And in the end it resolved not even one of the running story lines. Point of view switches among no fewer than eight characters and most of the time each is carrying a story line that cannot be told by one of the others. The land now has three declared kings, and three of the major characters (if you count a wolf, and I do) are in limbo. Actually, that is one of my issues with this book: the wolves here have such enormous fantasy potential and although they are introduced early and carried throughout the story, they are nonentities.

One of the things that did intrigue me in this was something else that the author failed to develop - the climate of this planet. They are tied to a "year" calendar, but summer and winter last for several years each. Since the concept of year is tied to the cycle of seasons, this implies that the planetary rotation has changed/is changing. Maybe that is another thing he intends to address in later volumes.

Many plot elements were lifted straight out of Shakespeare and fantasy standards and then subjected to some rather heavy-handed resetting. I don't particularly object to the borrowing, but borrowed things should be treated with respect.

I try to read things that are recommended to me, particularly by students. I like to know what they are thinking and what motivates that thinking. I have learned a great deal by following that policy, even when I never read another book by the author. Cujo put me off Stephen King forever - not because it was bad - because it was way too plausible and persuasive. I consider it unlikely that I will return to this series, but I do know more about the young man who recommended it to me than I did before.

The Sharing Knife: Legacy by Lois McMaster Bujold

Not bad for a second in the series. Bujold seems to have avoided most of the issues that plague the second volumes of trilogies - of course this is a tetrology(?), so maybe the issues don't arise until the third book. You know what I mean - even Tolkien loses momentum in The Two Towers. This is overall at a slower pace than the first book. Actually, in many respects, it is a continuation - it picks up literally in the same minute that the first ends - of course, so does The Two Towers.

In Book 1, Beguilement, Bujold takes her mixed pair back to Fawn's farmer family and resolves those conflicts. In this one, they go back to Dag's people and find that the conflicts are beyond reconciliation. Bujold leaves us in no uncertainty about the contempt with which the Lakewalkers, the protectors of the world, regard those whom they protect.

Bujold has set up at least the next volume pretty well. With that out of the way, she can get on with what she does best - spinning tales about intriguing characters.

Shakespeare's Christmas by Charlaine Harris

I don't know why she called this one Shakespeare's Christmas. It didn't happen in Shakespeare - at all. It was probably because the Lily Bard stories have all included "Shakespeare" in the title and without this cue, how would the reader know what they were getting. Okay, not a big deal, really.

Actually, Lily has gone home to another small town in Arkansas for her sister's pre-Christmas wedding. Arkansas is well supplied with small towns, and several mentioned in this story are ones I actually know exist. I was a little surprised at how blatantly Harris telegraphs the central mystery in this one - practically neon sign and flashing lights. Still, it was a good story and a fair amount of action. AND neither Lily nor those near and dear end up in the hospital - a few bruises, but nothing to signify compared to the abuse the poor woman has endured in the two previous books - and in events which predate the actual series.

I do feel compelled to wonder about Harris's true southern credentials - based on my relatives and experience living in the land of the razorback - both Lily and her sister, Verena (now there's a good southern name) are almost hopelessly beyond bridal age. Even I married younger than that, and my Oklahoma and Arkansas kin had written me off as a hopeless old maid at something near 19. At near thirty, Verena should be slinking off quietly to the JP rather than holding a white-gowned extravanganza. Murders or no murders.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Like Alice, it's been a long, long time since I read this. And again I am amazed by the genius of the writer. I have read and reread it since I was very young - I was probably in single digits when I read it the first time and have never failed to cry over Beth's death and Jo's rejection of Laurie and to be charmed by Meg's romance, and amused by Jo's.

The amazing thing is that all of these characters seem so vital, so real, in spite of being surrounded by as incredible a weight of moralizing I have ever read. If the sermons were removed, the book would probably be reduced by half. And yet - who can forget the plays performed for an audience seated on their bed and the Pickwick Club. And then there are all of Marmee's gentle lectures and the object lessons that each of the girls picks up along the way. Perhaps Marmee's confessions of her own faults help lighten the lectures.

The least persuasive character is their father, who is endowed with saintly wisdom and virtue and apparently without fault or flaw. Did the Alcott girls actually see their father in that way, do you suppose? In many ways Papa March is supposed to be patterned on Bronson Alcott - Certainly in that he reduced the family to financial ruin.

The Sharing Knife: Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold

I was looking up some of the Vor books at my favorite book store and found this. I don't think I have ever read anything by Bujold except the Miles Vorkosigan books (assuming you count the Cordelia books in that category). Well, maybe one title seemed familiar - although I couldn't remember too many details of the story. There aren't very many of them, but they are there.

This is fantasy, the Vor are definitely science fiction. It is genuine fantasy, not pseudo science fantasy like McCaffrey's Pern books or Shinn's Samaria books which start as high fantasy and then run back to technology to justify everything. That isn't a put-down - I love those books and have reread them many times. There is something different about building a fantasy context and letting it stand on its own. Of course, I have only read the first one of these (there are four), so I may be leaping to a conclusion.

It is difficult to find a term to characterize this book - I was delighted to discover the term "cozy mystery" for that subgenre - and maybe such subdivisions exist for fantasy, but I haven't encountered them. Perhaps it would suffice to say that it is "gentle" fantasy - although there is plenty of gore and grim and fell monsters.

The setting is reminiscent of the rural midwest of about a century ago, with the addition of the "others," the lakewalkers, who have an ability in addition to the usual five senses which they call "groundsense" and appears to be an awareness of the "rightness" of things as well their location within a range that varies from one individual to another as hearing does. The lakewalkers are perhaps similar to the plains tribes, except that their mission is to eradicate an ancient evil which surfaces apparently at random threatening human settlements, not to mention the existence of life on earth in general.

In this story, a lakewalker rescues a "farmer" girl a) from a would-be rapist, b) from one of the primordial monsters, and c) from death of her injuries, and, predictably, they fall in love - with all the problems associated with cross-cultural alliances. I assume that their story continues in the next book, because they haven't quite crossed all the bridges yet.

Ghost in the Polka Dot Bikini by Sue Ann Jaffarian

I may have been wrong about the California sights. Although this was focused around a murder that took place on Catalina Island, there really wasn't much about the island itself - and actually very little of the story took place there.

It was entertaining. The ghost is a non-starlet from the sixties (1960s, as Emma informs her great-great-great granny), one of the flocks of beautiful girls who flock to Cali and hang around the fringes getting occasional bit parts. She seems unclear on the point of her death, even whether or not she is dead and certainly about how she got that way. Emma gets everything cleared up for her at the expense of a group of now aging movers and shakers in Hollywood circles.

A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow

See, a whole book on paper! Recommended by someone at school. I enjoyed it, even on paper. Didn't make me want to go to Alaska.

As suggested above, this is set in Alaska and the heroine/detective is an Aleut. The crimes here are definitely "frontier" crimes - things that happen where life is in the process of changing and the law is more of a suggestion than an imperative. A "them and us" crime prompted by the assault on the old ways by outsiders.

That said, I think in this story there wasn't sufficient evidence shared with the reader for me to be satisfied with the way Kate (Shugak, not Martinelli) springs the solution on us. Or maybe I was just having too much trouble with the print in a used mass market paperback. Anyway, it almost reminded me of the way that Agatha Christie's detectives would reveal the answer to admiring fans, although Agatha's parlor reveals were more comfortable than an abandoned mine in the middle of an Alaskan winter. I like Agatha's stuff - just every now and then I thought that she could have provided the reader with more hints about the direction that genius was taking.

I have a feeling that these may get better as the series goes on - and I think the rest of them are available electronically!