The Duchess War, by Courtney Milan, and Jhereg, by Stephen Brust

[rowyn]

Apple did a "First in Series" book giveaway promotion (which I found out about because haikujaguar's Earthrise was featured). After much struggling to get iTunes to work with the iStore, I downloaded a bunch of free ebooks, most of which I suspect I will never read. But I'd been wanting to use my shiny new iPod as an ereader anyway, because it has about 10 times the battery life of my phone (my default ereader).

Then there was more struggling to get my iPod to sync with my computer. For some weeks now, my iPod had been complaining about memory problems every time I tried to update it, and refused to update. When I plugged it in to try to sync the new ebooks, it stopped working entirely. I walked through several diagnostic steps, including 'attempt a factory reset', and got to the step that said "try turning off your firewall, or using a different computer to do the factory reset".

Do you know how you factory-reset my Android? You hold down the power button while booting, and "factory reset" is one of the menu options.

Do you know how you factory-reset an iPod Touch 8? You plug it into a computer which must be running the latest version of iTunes, and must be connected to the Internet.

Apple, I am not impressed.

Rather than turning off my firewall or installing iTunes on Lut's computer, I waited until the next morning when Lut was awake. "Lut? My iPod bricked itself. Will you see if you can fix it?"

Lut: "Sure. I'll find a hammer."

Me: "Okay, thanks." *leaves for work*

Lut: *finds a hammer*

iPod: "NOT OKAY! Don't listen to that crazy woman! I'm fine! JUST GIMME A CHANCE, MAN."

Lut: *plugs in iPod to my computer*

IPod: "I'm updating! Look, see, everything's cool. Update-update-update! No idea what that chick's problem was, hahahaha oh god man whatever you want just please put that hammer away."

So when I got home, I enabled books to sync with the iPod, and was at last able to read my new stash.

I started with The Duchess War, another 19th-century England romance by Courtney Milan. I don't know what it is with 19th-century English dukes, man, but there's way more romances about them than there ever were dukes.

As with the previous three books I've read by Milan, this is a solid, enjoyable romance. Minnie, the female protagonist is imminently loveable: I adore her. She understands tactics. It's wonderful and refreshing. The male protagonist, Robert, is flatter by comparison, but still a good person with an appealing grasp of his own failings.

As with the three other Milan books I've read, both characters have the obligatory Tormented Past: the heroine is haunted by Scandal that will Destroy Her, while the hero was Emotionally Tortured by His Parents. You could say the exact same things about the protagonists in the previous three books I read by her. Milan, it's okay if you want to mix this up a little. Maybe in your next book, the man could be haunted by scandal and the woman be an abuse victim*!

* This may actually be the case, given the preview of one of the books that follows The Duchess War.

... actually, I am perfectly okay with protagonists that don't have a Tormented Past. I do not find Tormented Pasts add that much to a romance. Sure, everybody's got their problems and traumas, but they don't have to be things that shape every facet of their current lives.

Other than laying it on a bit thick with the Tormented Past thing, I had a good time with the story. The various characters have consistent, plausible motives for their actions, for good and ill, and both Tormented Pasts are plot-relevant, so I can't even say they're just tacked on for the angst of it.. The story as a whole hangs together well. I'll give it an 8 out of 10.

I also finished Stephen Brust's Jhereg recently. I've read this book three times now. The first time was when I was in high school. Years later, my college boyfriend extolled Brust's virtues to me, and I said, "I don't remember anything about Jhereg or its prequel except how he met his wife and that I didn't like the books much." So I re-read them.

A few years after that, I didn't remember anything about the books except how he met his wife and that I liked them.

I figured I'd give it another shot and see if I could retain anything that happened in the books this time.

Jhereg has an ineffable 80's fantasy feel to it. I don't know how to describe it, exactly. There's the hundreds-of-thousands-of-years of history. There's a certain lack of description: I felt like the characters were talking in a white room a lot of the time.

I do want to give the setting a shout-out for not having the "generic medieval Europe" fantasyland feel. There's a bit of the medieval Italian "in-fighting amongst rival houses" going on, but the setting is magic-rich and the magic is integrated into the society, and that colors the setting to make it unique. The two different magic systems do not have the rigor of, say, a Sanderson magic system, but they're distinct and well-drawn. The main character is an Easterner among Dragaerans, and the differences between the two races are reasonably well-handled. Dragaerans live for thousands of years, while Easterners have normal human lifespans. Logistically, this bugged me -- I feel like this would make the gulf between the two races vast and unbridgeable, and while it's significant in the story, it's understated. The Dragaerans don't really act like they have all the time in the world compared to the Easterners. Both races have an equal sense of urgency in the story.

There is a lot of plot in the book. The mystery is pretty good. There are a lot of characters, and most of them don't get much development. The climactic scene struck me as weak and didn't fit well with the rest of the story.

The main character is an assassin. Pretty much all the characters are kind of crappy people. Oddly, I think of myself as not minding protagonists who were lousy people when I was a kid and that it bothered me when I got older, which doesn't fit with the whole "liked it better in college than in high school" thing. I don't know where I stand on antiheroes nowadays.

I'm giving this a 6, but I may go ahead and re-read more at a later date anyway. For one, it feels like some of the book's weaknesses were first-novel problems, and I think Brust improved with age. Maybe I'll re-read The Phoenix Guards, Brust's homage to/fantasy rewrite of The Three Musketeers. I remember liking that one well.

Comments

[archangelbeth]

I strongly suspect -- from what spouse has said -- that the reason factory reset has to come via iTunes + Internet has to do with the fancydancy encryption stuff that goes on inside Apple stuff. (If you want me to make him tell me what's going on there, I totally can get him to go on about it, because Computer Security Geek.)


Most of what I remember about Jhereg is Loiosh. "Can I eat him, Boss?" ...hm. And the sea of chaos stuff, and playing games with souls, and Kragar being invisible even when he didn't want to be.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I think I read that series entirely for Loiosh. I certainly didn't like the books set in that world that didn't feature him. Like the Phoenix Guards. I barely managed to finish that book and remember nothing about it other than that I hated it.

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

I think if I had to pick out one scene from all the Vlad Taltos books that stood out, it would be where he broke into a building via the kitchen, and ran commentary on how to better organise the kitchen.

The series is... really kinda wird. It's out of order, and there are books that take place both before and after other books, because flashbacks. It does move away from the whole organised crime thing, and there are hints of some Epic plot, but it doesn't focus on that.
I mostly stuck around for the snark.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Re: Making convincing immortal characters -- that's something that's bugged me about a LOT of stories. Whenever an immortal being is mysterious and inscrutable ... yeah -- I can go along with that. I expect the (relatively) immortal being to have a very alien mindset compared to the greater urgency of a short-lived mortal. But once the immortal is the protagonist, or very closely related to the protagonist, and if the writer presents that character as too much like every other protagonist "except he's thousands of years old, dude!" I just can't take that as easily. I feel like there should be consequences for that difference in perspective. That "except" is a BIG exception, and it ought to affect a lot. Just imagine the impatience of an older, more experienced person with a teenager -- but multiply it several times over.

Here is the short-lived hot-headed mortal hero-wannabe, acting like this is the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVAR, to bring down this "wicked tyrant," never mind the bloodshed it will cause and the destruction to the status quo and time-tested institutions. *snort* Can't you see the BIG PICTURE?

Or, here is yet another young one (a mere 50 years old!) acting like he's made this great discovery, when we've been through that centuries ago. How quaint!

Or, perhaps an immortal actually ENJOYS the "life and vigor" of the "mortal races," and at first this immortal comes across as rather friendly and surprisingly patient compared to the typical immortal attitude ... until you discover that the immortal's interest is perhaps a little patronizing, as the motherly or fatherly figure sees you (despite being a fully grown adult) as a "child" by comparison.

I just think of my own progression, and my sense of time and scale, and what things were THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVAR when I was at various points in my life -- things that I effectively thought of as having "always" been around (something that had been true for 10 years, when I was only 7 years old), becoming a lot more temporal when I have a wider span of time in which to observe events. This is not to say that the excessively "long view" of things is somehow superior in all regards. I can imagine how taking TOO long of a view can mean failing to recognize that we still have to also live in the RIGHT NOW. ;)

[rowyn]

I made a D&D setting when I was a teen, where there were two civilizations side-by-side, one of sprites whose average lifespan was 50 years or so, and the other of elves who lived around 1500 years. Over the course of the last thousand years or so, the sprites had gone from a bunch of squabbling hunter-gatherer tribes to a united nation with sophisticated techno-magic in wide use by the general population. In that same time, the feudal, agrarian elven civilization had barely changed. The underlying premise was that members of both races were worked to make minor improvements within their own lifespan, but since the elves were so much longer lived, they were much more patient than the sprites. Individual elves tended to work on their own projects, at their own pace, and tended to be secretive and not want anyone else to get credit for their work. Sprites would've preferred to do the same, if they'd had all the time in the world, but since they didn't, they'd band together in teams and deal with squabbling and infighting. It was more stressful for all involved, but it also resulted in faster progress.

I don't know that this is particularly reasonable. But it was an attempt to acknowledge that a vast gulf in lifespan would affect the civilizations made.

Also, it always bothers me when a fictional civilization is technologically stagnant for long periods of time, with no apparent consideration for why. History should be full of Stuff Happening and change and upheaval. When everything's been the same for thousands of years (or more!) because "that's just the way it is", my suspension of disbelief is strained.

But honestly, it's really hard for me to imagine how living for thousands of years would impact an entire society, especially if that society coexists with a short-lived race. It's just a bizarre idea.

[alinsa.livejournal.com]

Do you know how you factory-reset an iPod Touch 8? You plug it into a computer which must be running the latest version of iTunes, and must be connected to the Internet.

I can shed a little light on why this behaves this way, though it won't make you any more impressed with Apple.

Basically, Apple doesn't like people installing older OSes on their devices, so firmware updates need a device-specific header attached to the firmware image before it'll load. When you go and hit 'restore', iTunes sends a request to Apple and goes "hey, I gots this iPod thing here with serial number XYZQ, can you send me the header for the latest firmware versoin?" ... it gets the latest firmware version, attaches the header, and loads the device.

If you try to use an older version of the firmware, and ask Apple for a header for that version, their servers tell iTunes to take a hike.

So, basically, you need the interwebs to get the little 4k header that tells your device its okay to install the firmware.

[rowyn]

... in fact, now I am even less impressed by Apple. Control freak company! D: