Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb. Book 12

This is a spoiler for anyone who hasn't read much of Robin Hobb. Which is probably just me.

I love Robin Hobb more and more every time I read another of her books. She is now in my top 5 list of people I would love to meet before I die.

This book only appeared on my bookshelf in the last 3 days, so it's a bit of a cheat from my bookshelf mission. But I honestly can't help myself. I'm on holidays so how am I expected to be able to resist her wondrous wiles? I absolutely and utterly cannot help myself. I'm captivated by her...I could write a song about how cool she is. Now that I've done some research, I'm even more blown away. I know this is a total RH love-in. I suspect it's just going to get worse so skip the next 2 paragraphs if you can't cope with the smalch. Actually, it's pretty much that all the way through, so read on at your peril.

Robin Hobb is the European Medieval Fantasy pen name for (fanfare) Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden (is it just me or is Astrid Lindholm suspiciously like Astrid Lindgren?). She writes under another pseudonym which is Megan Lindholm and covers contemporary sci fi.

MALR was born in California in 1952. She then spent a lot of time in Alaska. She married at eighteen and sold her first short story and began writing for children's magazines. It's kind of all been writing from there on. Her first Robin Hobb novel is apparently sitting at the 1 mill copies mark. She has a blog under the name Megan Lindholm: http://www.meganlindholm.com/ and another for Robin Hobb: http://www.robinhobb.com/ They kind of complement each other. She travels all over the world from what I can see.

What I really do like best about her is that she doesn't have a million degrees from what I can see. For such an astute writer who is capable of drawing what seem to be a million threads together in wonderful and perceptive ways, this is heartening to see.

There really isn't much more about her around. I guess if you want to know her daily musings, go check out her blogs.

This is the 6th book in her overarching European Medieval Fantasy genre.

I'm not entirely sure how to review this one since it's the last part of a series. It continues the Liveship Trilogy based around the Vestrit family fortunes and also continues a much larger thread of the 'Realm of the Elderlings' series.

It pulls together the far-flung members of the family and various others to shape the future of a changing world.

Malta Vestrit is a stunning character in this whole series. A once petulant and selfish brat, she pulls herself together into a worldchanger and Elderling Queen.

This book, as the name intimates, is based around ships. Ships that talk and think and feel and we now know were once a protective cocoon-wood for serpents that were 'mutating' into dragons. These were wrongfully destroyed by ignorant traders and the ships in this book are only now realising all that they could have been if not for humans.

The main boat is Paragon. A fascinating character - we don't know at the beginning why he is such a conflicted, distressed, angry and tempestuous being. We discover that he took on the young Kennit's death twice and absorbed all his childish anger and hate so that he could go out into the world and become a man. So Paragon is holding onto Kennit's rage and also has to deal with the fact that he is made from two separate dragon cocoons so there are 3 personalities raging within him.

His loyal companion throughout is Amber - who we have good reason to believe is The Fool from the Farseer Trilogy in a new aspect. She is still searching for her own heritage but it becomes clear she has her own internal vision she must follow if the entire land is to survive as it should.

Althea and Brashen are on Paragon with others and still quest after Vivacia who was stolen by Kennit.

Kennit, Etta, Wintrow and others are on board Vivacia, who early on in the piece discovers her heritage and turns into bitch queen boat for a while.

There are some fascinating twists and turns in this book and I couldn't shut the hell up with my oohs and ahhs as I realised what had just happened and what it meant for this character and that.

Robin Hobb's characterisations are her prime strength. This does not mean that her plot, narration, scene writing, exposition, etc. are not also all first class. But her characters shine. You can see them, hear them, experience what they feel about two lines after you first meet them.

Even the ones who wear veils! I am in awe of how much venom I will feel for a character, how much admiration or suspicion she can invoke in me for the people within her pages. I LOVE that a character like Malta who was a total pain in the arse in the first book and most of the second, began to show a hint here, a hint there that she was not to be lightly dismissed. Sure enough, she turns into one of the strongest characters in the series.

Then there's the dragons and the serpents. I felt pity and sorrow for the serpents, amusement at the arrogance and majesty of the dragon. Their integration into the story from an initial point where I didn't know why they were there was fascinating.

So by the end of this book, the two main ships, Vivacia and Paragon have come to accept their own past and futures. Paragon has a new face. Kennit carks it without having to give reparation to Althea or any of the others he trod on, Malta and Rheyn are on their way to becoming scaly Elderlings, Wintrow is a possibly missed opportunity for Amber but he's a bit of a hunk now, thank the gods that Kyle died a crappy death. For about five seconds in this book I felt sorry for him, but good old RH reminded me just in time of what a despicable pig he was. Althea and Brashen are now richer than rich which means a lot for the Vestrits and Bingtown.

There are a myriad of dragon mysteries that still await upriver and Amber is about to head on down to the next trilogy (well, that's my guess).

The last 100 pages of this book rocked. They drew a myriad disparate and what seemed unrelated storylines together seamlessly.

I am completely impressed by these books. I'm giving Ship of Destiny 9/10. The only reason it's not 10 is because my friend told me she likes the next series even better, so my hopes are high.

Solace & Grief, Foz Meadows. Book 11

There isn't much out there in the misty ether about Ms Foz Meadows. She likes cheese, webcomics and silly hats - her own words. She lives in Melbourne with a philosopher.

Further research shows she dislikes Rom-Coms and liquorice.

Solace and Grief is her first published tome.

It is touted as Book One of The Rare.

This is a good thing as I look forward to the second.

But before I get to the good bits, I do have a few bad bits.

Quick sum up.

Solace Morgan is a vampire. She doesn't discover this until she turns seventeen. She just kind of realises she must be a vampire. She runs away from the home she has been living in, meets up with a gang of misfits who turn out to have Tricks - they're almost a team of X-People. Solace has a past that she doesn't know about that begins to affect them all. They have lots of adventures, there is lots of teen lust, teen angst, and teen talk. There is a cliff-hanger, surprises, betrayals and magic.

Foz, you've got a great idea, interesting world setup, a good main character. BUT your story is choked by words, in particular, adverbs. I don't think there's a sentence in the book that doesn't contain one and many sentences contain several. They're getting in the way of action, plot, character development, and my understanding of what's going on.

Plus, there's a bit incongruity with Solace. She realises she's a vampire, but does nothing about it, doesn't think of the consequences, she decides she's a vampire and that's it. Nothing on trying to get hold of some blood or raw meat, no thoughts on what it would mean if she had to kill someone, nothing like that. If she knows so little about being a vampire, I'd expect her to do some research, thereby defining for the reader what a vampire is in this world. Nope, no research. So, then if she knows what a vampire is, why does she brush it off so lightly? Most readers of this genre are pretty vampire savvy nowadays. This must be acknowledged. And in my reading, this immediate acceptance and lack of curiosity doesn’t convince me in her characterisation. She's a teenager and she's a misfit, being a vampire would be one of the coolest things around. She joins a group of like-minded weirdos and spends her time not doing much at all, just deferring to everyone else in the group.

Of which there are not a few individuals. Foz tries to distinguish them, but she does this by telling us about them, instead of showing. You’re looking at a main cast of around 12 people – this is a hard thing to juggle in a YA-sized novel. They really need to act themselves more, show us what they’re all like, instead of being told.

Having said all that though, it really is a good read and I think it should do well with its target audience. There are some intriguing ideas in it and Sydney is used well as a location.

I loved some of the 'tricks' that the different characters had. Electra's ability to locate lost items and draw them to her for the group’s use is brilliant. It completely hits the spot. Manx as an aptly-named shape-shifter is also cool. Glide's ability to slip in and around alternate worlds is also fantastic and opens up just so many possibilities for future storylines. But these three are the only characters with tricks that I got a grip on. Electra herself as a characer was quite elusive. There is also Evan, who a friend pointed out, is kinda like the Xander of the group. He is, but not enough. He doesn't have enough heart.

A spectacularly brilliant character is The Duchess. She is wonderfully depicted in so many little mannerisms. More of the same please!

I think in a 10 out of 10 in the YA scale, this is sitting at around 5. I think if Foz tightened up her language, used less exposition and killed off some actually important characters instead of dragging in some unknowns and murdering them, she could pull the second book up to an 8ish.

If anyone else has read this, I'd love their thoughts...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson. Book 10

Yup, I've joined the legions of Stieglies.

Another Kindle purchase - since I'm holed up in bed with a rotten chest infection, I don't have much else to do but read and update these entries.

One weird thing about the Kindle is that although it tells me percentage-wise how far in I am to the novel, I have no idea in 'real' terms how much I've read. How big is this book??? If I'm confused 3% of the way in, how far in is that? I'm used to judging these things by the visual size of a book - I wonder if I'll have less of a problem with this the more I use it?

Mr Larsson. Sadly passed away in November 2004, leaving only 3 of his apparently planned 10 Millennium novels.

I just started reading Christopher Hitchens' article on Stieg, but it went into later plots and as I may well read the other two books in the trilogy, I had to stop, which is a pity as I do like a bit of the Hitch.

Boy oh boy, can you tell that Stieg was a bit of a political man from this book. He REALLY doesn't like Nazis - and with good reason (not that you need much of a reason other than knowing what they stand for). He'd been threatened by them personally, as has his partner.

How's this? Stieg's original name is Stig, but he changed it to avoid confusion with a friend of his, Stig Larsson, who was a popular author. I guess Stig's feeling a little bit embarrassed now, eh?

Stieg was a bit of an SF fan (a HUGE SF fan would be more appropriate), which doesn't really show through in this book - his knowledge of crime fiction definitely does and I'm wondering if one of the characters in this book isn't a small tribute to Dorothy L Sayer's, Harriet Vane character. He mentions Sayers in the book and having a central figure in the book who is not what she appears to be named Harriet Vanger seems just a little 'suss' to me.

He spent much of his time in political matters and started the more than worthwhile group, Swedish Expo Foundation, aimed at reducing the influence of racist white-power organisations among young people. It's apparently quite an open thing in Sweden.

The guy was passionate about humanity, that much is clear from his legacy.

He also felt strongly about violence towards women, which really shows through in this book.

The book's correct title is, Men Who Hate Women.

I have to say firstly, that I don't care much for the translation. Who, in this day and age, for a thoroughly modern book, uses the word 'anon'?? Come on! And not just once, but several times. This really makes me uncomfortable with how much of the original 'feel' of the novel is coming through. In an interview with Stieg's widow, she commented that the translated novel was also toned down a bit. Hmmm.

This book took quite a bit of getting into.

We were subjected to continuous repetition of family histories so that we were able to identify all the characters in the plot. This got fairly tedious and if it wasn't for that fact that I was too sick to do anything else but read, I would have put the book down.

I don't rate the male main character as much as I do Salander. She's a firecracker! A tiny little slip of a thing with a lot of depth.

It wasn't until halfway through that I began to want to know whodunnit. I do think I like that you have to wait until half-way into things for the two main characters to join forces. It did leave Salander a little out of things though. Stieg was busy setting up her background and personality, which in the long run is more important I guess since the books are about her (I don't know if Mikhael appears in the other two...), but it meant the main plot of the book didn't really get her attention until late into play.

But from halfway in, the book becomes a whirlwind of unanswered questions that need resolving.

I also like that, although pretty much everything gets tied up at the end, there is still the very much unanswered mystery of Salander herself. We find things out about her gradually, it's almost a strip-tease.

I think one of the reasons she is such a popular character amongst women is because she appears physically weak but intellectually, she's a bit of a frikken genius. (it's kind of like 'Good Will Hunting' syndrome for women) She's not classically attractive but she gets more than her fair share of sex. She's also socially disaffected which locks right in on Gen X and under. I found myself getting a bit annoyed at how much I was falling for this obviously 'marketed' character. But we barely know anything about her past, just vague references to 'the All Evil',and that's how it stays - a teaser for the next book.

She is introduced well. To the world, she's an idiot, but we soon discover she's far from it, but she presents this image on purpose. She's an entirely capable character. She cares for her ailing mother, she rides a motorbike she built from scratch (wish I'd done that with my Vespa, then I'd know how to fix it without the extortionate pricetag!), she's the best computer hacker in Sweden, she gets revenge on her own terms and saves the day - of course - I never doubted she would for one second.

And this book is very much about revenge. Mikhael wants revenge for the legal arse-whipping he got for being stooged by a dodgy finance mogul he was trying to expose. Sound confusing? Yes it is.

I'm enjoying being able to make notes wherever I want on my Kindle. I have noted at one point, early in, that I just have no idea what's going on or what these two guys are talking about and the reason behind it. It really does take a long time to get going. There are disparate threads everywhere, but eventually they come together.

He gets asked to spend a year researching the family tree of a rival financial giant but the real purpose of the research is to find out what happened to Harriet Vangard, the niece of the head of the Vangard Company. In return, the head of the Vangard family promises Mikhael the information he needs to bring down the dodgy financial mogul mentioned earlier. Sound intricate? Yes it is.

Salander works for a high-tech security firm. She investigates people and comes up with results better than anyone the company's owner, Armansky, has ever come across. This is actually a weak point within the novel. She comes up with info on people that no one knows and Armansky just doesn't know how she does it. Durr. Um, hacking anyone? So we still think she's just this amazing researcher who can find out stuff until about just under halfway into the book when Mikhael Blomqvist realises the only way she could have gotten a certain piece of info about him was by hacking. Yeah, I'm sorry but what else was she doing? It's just naive to pretend we hadn't figured that out the second Salander can provide private details about people that no one else had come up with. Come on! We know she's a computer whiz, of course the girl is hacking.

So that gripe aside, I love the relationships in this book. We've got people being honest and open about sex and what they want. Blomqvist has a friend who is married but she and he are completely open in their sexual relationship that has spanned decades. If anyone else doesn't like it, they can go jump. Nice work there and much needed for the US and Australian audiences, I think. People manage to just have sex in this book and they work through the emotional outcomes. There's no accusations and guilt and screaming - just talking about it all. That was great.

But - he really does get into a lot of raping and murder and incest and the like. Page turning and best-seller material that it is. Is that needed when you've got two such charismatic people as your leads? I might have to think about that further - I imagine that there is more of the same in the other two novels.

One other thing is Stieg's obvious preaching about violence towards women and the spread of Nazism. I am NOT saying both aren't disgusting and repulsive and that there needs to be more publicity about both. I'm saying that he gives stats on percentages of violence of men towards women but not of women towards women or women towards men.

There is a plethora of unsympathetic male characters and only one female (who dies).

Stieg really seems to like women as Blomqvist, the male lead is irresistible to the ladies.

Salander pretty much detests all men, except of course, the devilishly seductive Blomqvist. It's a huge theme in this book but I get the feeling he's only included it to balance out the violence and hatred he's allocated to the killers in the book.

This is turning into an epic.

It's a great page turner - after the halfway point. It's got elements of Christie and Sayers - Wiki likens Salander to 'Modesty Blaise', which I haven't read, but is now on my list. He also apparently based her a lot on Pippi Longstocking which I think is fair.

I do want to read more about what she does with her life, so there may be another Stieg appearing here in the next couple of months.

Diary of a Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith, Book 9

Another Kindle download!

What a name - Weedon. How many are there today? Would their nickname be 'Wee' or 'Weedy', I wonder... Does anyone out there know a Weedon? For that matter, who would keep that surname for long nowadays, as it is?

I seem to have a couple of oldies in my collection so far - but there are two newbies coming up. I've finally finished assignments for this semester. I haven't stopped reading, but I've been slack on the output.

The Grossmiths. Turns out Weedon's first name was William, but he preferred Weedon - um, I guess that sums him up, really. These two lads were quite the rounded types. Weedy was born 1854 - 1919, George got his shot from 1847-1912 and was a bit of a go-getter. He is listed as having been an English comedian, writer, composer, actor and singer. Take that, Russell Brand! George is also famous for having created some of the more memorable characters from the Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas. He's got a bit of a write-up in Wiki - go have a perooose, if you fancy.

Weedy pursued art for a while but was never really successful.

So the brothers collaborated on Diary of a Nobody. It was released in book form in 1892, having previously been a column in Punch. It has never been out of print since.

Diary of a Nobody is a landmark lampooning of middle-class English insecurity and morals of that time.

Charles Pooter, the 'author' is secure in his little world of domestic bliss, making the odd pun to impress his friends and wife, being suitably scandalised by his son who has been fired from a most sensible position and takes up with a local theatre group. He is incapable of recognising his wife's grievances against his middle-class rigidity.

(I have just discovered that my Kindle version does not include the original illustrations drawn by Weedy! At least offer the option for a fee?! Hmmm)

He is a clerk in a local firm and aspires to much more than he deserves in all his uptight repressiveness. His wife, Carrie, does have a word at him once or twice, which just slips off his back.

What really makes this book funny is how understated it is. Charles takes himself so seriously that he simply does not understand the remarks that people make towards him are often sarcastic. At one stage, some pages from his diary have been ripped out, we don't really know by whom, but he won't stop questioning everyone. He mentions at breakfast that he is hoping to have it published and is mystified by the amusement of his wife and son. Even when Carrie states that she doesn't think that could ever happen, he is offended and taken aback at such an opinion.

He disapproves of everyone he considers inferior to himself which leads to a few incidents he is drawn into by this snobbery. He is never at fault, much to the dismay of his all-too-human servants who cannot move without him correcting them. It appears that the two friends he has, Gowing and Cummings are particularly intruding and obnoxious, but Charles keeps them since they're the only fellows who will put up with him.

The son in this, Lupin, is a fascinating illustration of the youth of the time. He is in love, then out again, then in again. He doesn't want to work, he wants to act. His attitude is exactly that of a teenager/20-ish lad of today and Charles has just as much a battle to understand him as any parent of today. Lupin brings various unsavoury friends around, many of whom are actually quite fascinating, but Charles in all his snobbery misses this and can only concentrate on what 'class of fellow' they are.

He is money-conscious and class-conscious. He is a tight-wad towards his wife, but will think nothing of buying himself a whole new outfit for a holiday by the coast.

I guess this is best summed up as, 'the Non-Adventures of a Late-Victorian Middle-Class Snob'. It's also an interesting record of everyday life for people of the time.

I do love this book.

WARNING. Do not read on trains in case of fits of giggling and snorts of amusement.

Black Beauty, Anna Sewell, Book 8

This is the first book I read on my spanky new Kindle! I'm quite enjoying it, having read a couple more since then. I do love that I can grab a book out of thin air and it will simply appear. I'd have been ridiculed and burned at the stake for such fancy hardware only 20 years ago in the backwater of a town I grew up in!

Anna Sewell 1820 - 1878. Just from reading the book I would take a wild guess that she grew up with an alcoholic somewhere in the family. She really doesn't like them. Just a minute, she grew up a Quaker. She fell over at the age of 12 and due to lack of proper medical treatment, she was lame for the rest of her life. She got around in horse-drawn carriages - hence her love of horses and pleas for the humane treatment of animals.

She was sickly, it appears, for most of her life. She dictated Black Beauty to her mother from her bed over a 6 year period. It was published in 1877, when Anna was 57 years old. Black Beauty immediately did well and broke publishing records, at the time being the 'sixth best seller' in the English language. Go, you Beauty! Unfortunately for Anna, she died 5 months after publication.

It was intended to be only really for people who worked with horses, it was a plea to induce people to treat them with more understanding and kindness.

I really did like this book as a child, reading it now I'm not as big a fan, but it still plucked at the heartstrings one or two times.

Beauty is born into an idyllic and caring farm. Her mother is loving and the owner is humane to all animals under his care. The various servants around the place take care of animals and any mistreatment is punished. Sewell really pushes throughout the book that animals have no means to alter their living conditions if we have placed them in artificial ones. It is up to us to take care of their welfare.

For one reason after another, Beauty is successively sold into gradually worse conditions. His/Her innocence ( I recall that gender doesn't much come into it for horses) is replaced by wisdom and knowledge of the cruelty of man. I think about half of the wrongdoing towards horses in this book is caused by people who have been 'on the drink'. I wonder if a different attitude would have prevailed had this been written in continental Europe???

Anyway, the horses Beauty comes across all have their own stories to tell of life. I think only one horse that Beauty encounters doesn't have a past filled with cruelty or harshness. Ginger, who Beauty becomes quite good friends with, is known for her temper, but as she explains, she can't help it as she has only known cruelty from Man and why should she let herself be further exploited. The kindness of the place they are in does cool her attitude for a while. They are later sold together and she teaches Beauty how to 'buck' against their cruel conditions. They are soon separated and Beauty is exposed to much cruel treatment, in particular - the 'holding up' of horses' heads is discussed. The practice of keeping horses heads held right up so they look 'proud'. This damages their necks, windpipes and stamina. Beauty only has to put up with this briefly before moving on to a new owner, whose drunken stable hand whips the bejesus out of her causing her to stumble due to a missing shoe and ruins her knees. She is sold off to harsher treatment again and then onto a kind cabbie who is a good soul and has a loving wife and daughter. She encounters Ginger as well, who is looking the worse for wear and we are pretty sure we see her dead in a cart, taken through the streets of London. Beauty considers that this is a good thing, for Ginger is now in a better place than the 7 days a week hell she was in previous to this.

The cabbie takes a turn for the bad, and Beauty is sold to a 'hire horse' type place. It's the equivalent of our 'rent a car' yards. She is subjected to mercilesss treatment by those who hire her as they need to get the most value they can from her.

Eventually she collapses, is given a brief time to recover and sold. Turns out, she has been bought by a gent who was once a stable-hand years ago for Beauty and accidentally had given her pneumonia. He recognises her and vows to never sell her and she ends up in a nice little stable with a meadow nearby and some nice ladies to drive around occasionally. So it all ends up nice and cosy.

There are exhortations throughout to be kinder to animals and to see things from their point of view. I think it definitely influenced me when I was young and I do remember shedding a tear or two during my many readings of the book.

I don't know how well this is holding up now amongst the youngsters. Most of the 'occupations' Beauty finds herself are now all but obsolete. It still gets included in classics reprints, but it's not one that is spoken about much anymore, which is a pity as it really does help kids see things from the animal's point of view.

The cruelty in this is vivid, but dumbing it down as happens in most of today's children's books, does no one any favours whatsoever.

A good read.