2013 books: 23-28

[the_siobhan]

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I grabbed this from Fiona's because I really liked the movie. It's a YA novel and because of that the language is simpler than what I would normally read, but it's still well-written and it dragged me right into the story. It's been a really long time since I ended up reading a book at the subway stop or precariously balancing on the bus, but this book managed it. If the rest of the series is this good I may have to hit the library just to finish it. Reading the actual text also made me scratch my head even more (if that's possible) about the people who got so upset about the casting of the Rue character. Her skin colour is one of the first things mentioned when she is introduced. Did they even read the freaking book?

If you haven't been exposed to the story, it's a dystopian future where the capital city sucks all the resources out of the subsurvient "districts" until the former is the centre of luxury and the latter starve. As punishment for a rebellion that was quashed 74 years earlier - and in which one of the original 13 districts was completely obliterated - each surviving district sends two yearly "tributes", a boy and a girl between 12 and 18, selected by lottery. These tributes fight each other to the death in a staged wilderness area and the battle is broadcasted to the entire nation, with the people of the capital making bets on the outcome.



  

The Silent Tower and The Silicon Mage by Barbara Hambly.

First of all, I hate the cover on that second book. Not the author's fault, I know.

More of Fiona's. I grabbed them when I saw the Hambly's name because I loved The Darwath Trilogy. I found it took a couple of chapters to get into this because it dumps you straight into the setting without any introduction and also because the language was a bit more "formal" in the way that we imagine people used to speak but probably didn't. Once I got into the rhythm of it however, I really enjoyed it.

The setting is a medieval world where magic exists and some people have the ability to use it. Not the kind of medieval with elves and unicorns, but the kind of medieval with the Inquisition and smallpox epidemics and pig shit in the streets. There are three main characters, a man who is a soldier, a woman who works in Silicon Valley and was kidnapped into this world and a powerful mage who suffers from some unspecified mental illness. And together they fight crime. Well, a crime. And commit a few in the process.

The story is actually a lot of fun, although I did find the description of the evil of the things/person they were fighting to be a bit overly dramatic at times. One of the things I found interesting is that of the three main characters the point-of-view of the writing was about 70% the computer programmer and about 30% the soldier. So although the mage was definitely a major driver for the story, everything you know about him is through the eyes of the other two primary characters. I found that interesting, especially since all three characters go though a lot of back-and-forth in guessing about each other's motives, but his is only hinted at through what the other characters can read from him.

As I said I picked it up because I loved the The Darwath Trilogy and the stories have a lot in common. I found the flow of the story a lot less smooth than I remembered, so I wondered if perhaps this was an earlier effort. But no, I checked when they were written and they were actually written later than the Darwath books.




    
The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, and The Armies of Daylight by Barbara Hambly.

...So of course I had to reread The Darwath Trilogy to see if maybe I'm not remembering those books clearly.

And I was right. I like them better.

There are a ton of commonalities. People from our world travelling into an alternate universe where technology has not advanced but where magic is possible. A terrible danger that threatens humanity. Lots of politics and in-fighting and people putting the pursuit of political power above the necessities of survival and putting everybody at risk. The basic unpleasantness of living in a place without central heating or indoor plumbing or antibiotics. But this story just seems to hang together better for me.

So I guess that's settled.

Comments

[jo]

I read the Hunger Games trilogy and they're all pretty good. If you like the series, you'd probably also like the series by Veronica Roth (Divergent, Insurgent and a TBA - the first one is being turned into a movie set to come out next year), and the Dust Lands series by Moira Young (Blood Red Road, Rebel Heart and TBA). They're sort of similar YA series - dystopian future settings, female lead characters, but still different from each other story-wise. I'm currently reading Rebel Heart and I'm thinking that the Moira Young books are my fave of the three series.

[greylock]

I haven't read the Hunger Games trilogy, but I've been told the second and third books feel tacked on to make a trilogy.
I have them and will read them all, but there you are.


I haven't read much Hambley since my teens, but I have very fond memories of her
Immortal Blood vampire novel.