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white_hartThree reviews in one post, because I've been on holiday in the land of super-slow rural broadband without a device with an actual keyboard and couldn't be bothered to review as I went along...
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Patrick O'Brian's The Ionian Mission sees Jack Aubrey assigned to command an aging ship of the line on the Toulon blockade. It's light on the kind of action and adventure that marked Aubrey's early career, and the earlier books in the series, as the blockade offers little opportunity for prize-taking and discovery; instead, the crew are forced to turn to more artistic pursuits to while away their time, forming a choir and rehearsing a performance, while the officer contingent turns out to contain several budding poets (whose words are in fact those of actual naval officers of the period), leading to a poetry competition which is one of O'Brian's loveliest comic set-pieces. This period of inactivity also provides plenty of opportunity for Jack to reflect on his domestic troubles and to worry that his luck and gift for leadership have deserted him. The tedium of the blockade is in sharp contrast to the last third of the book, when Jack and Stephen are sent on a secret mission to Greece, bringing plenty of action and intrigue to round things off. Just as much fun as the rest of the series so far.
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A Fisherman of the Inland Sea is a collection of eight of Ursula Le Guin's short stories, originally published between the early 1980s and early 1990s. The first five stories are all standalones; two short humorous stories ('The First Contact with the Gorgonids' and 'The Ascent of the North Face'), two longer, more thoughful stories ('Newton's Sleep' and 'The Rock that Changed Things') and one short but serious vignette ('The Kerastion'). I enjoyed all of these, particularly 'Newton's Sleep', but the real meat of the collection is the final three stories, which are all set in Le Guin's Hainish continuity and centre round the development of the instantaneous-travel "churten" drive. Le Guin being Le Guin, the technology may be the reason for the stories but it's never their focus; the stories are about the intersection of different cultures, about communication and the lack of communication, about the narratives we choose to make of our lives and how those intersect with the narratives of other people's lives (and what happens when they don't), and about how the things we think we want aren't always the things that will make us happy. Le Guin's writing is always beautiful, of course, and although this collection probably doesn't attain the heights of The Wind's Twelve Quarters or The Compass Rose, it was still a delight to read.
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In the Teeth of the Evidence is a collection of short stories by Dorothy L Sayers. The cover features Lord Peter Wimsey's name prominently (and the edition I had has the same Elizabeth George introduction as the recent editions of the Wimsey novels), but in fact only two of the stories feature Wimsey. Several more feature the travelling salesman Montague Egg (whose frequent references to the Salesman's Handbook set me musing about a Ferengi detective who frequently refers to the Laws of Acquisition), and about half of the stories are standalones, several quite creepy and Gothic in tone and including a couple which definitely verge on the supernatural. I prefer my detective fiction novel-length really, but this was quite good fun.
***
Patrick O'Brian's The Ionian Mission sees Jack Aubrey assigned to command an aging ship of the line on the Toulon blockade. It's light on the kind of action and adventure that marked Aubrey's early career, and the earlier books in the series, as the blockade offers little opportunity for prize-taking and discovery; instead, the crew are forced to turn to more artistic pursuits to while away their time, forming a choir and rehearsing a performance, while the officer contingent turns out to contain several budding poets (whose words are in fact those of actual naval officers of the period), leading to a poetry competition which is one of O'Brian's loveliest comic set-pieces. This period of inactivity also provides plenty of opportunity for Jack to reflect on his domestic troubles and to worry that his luck and gift for leadership have deserted him. The tedium of the blockade is in sharp contrast to the last third of the book, when Jack and Stephen are sent on a secret mission to Greece, bringing plenty of action and intrigue to round things off. Just as much fun as the rest of the series so far.
***
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea is a collection of eight of Ursula Le Guin's short stories, originally published between the early 1980s and early 1990s. The first five stories are all standalones; two short humorous stories ('The First Contact with the Gorgonids' and 'The Ascent of the North Face'), two longer, more thoughful stories ('Newton's Sleep' and 'The Rock that Changed Things') and one short but serious vignette ('The Kerastion'). I enjoyed all of these, particularly 'Newton's Sleep', but the real meat of the collection is the final three stories, which are all set in Le Guin's Hainish continuity and centre round the development of the instantaneous-travel "churten" drive. Le Guin being Le Guin, the technology may be the reason for the stories but it's never their focus; the stories are about the intersection of different cultures, about communication and the lack of communication, about the narratives we choose to make of our lives and how those intersect with the narratives of other people's lives (and what happens when they don't), and about how the things we think we want aren't always the things that will make us happy. Le Guin's writing is always beautiful, of course, and although this collection probably doesn't attain the heights of The Wind's Twelve Quarters or The Compass Rose, it was still a delight to read.
***
In the Teeth of the Evidence is a collection of short stories by Dorothy L Sayers. The cover features Lord Peter Wimsey's name prominently (and the edition I had has the same Elizabeth George introduction as the recent editions of the Wimsey novels), but in fact only two of the stories feature Wimsey. Several more feature the travelling salesman Montague Egg (whose frequent references to the Salesman's Handbook set me musing about a Ferengi detective who frequently refers to the Laws of Acquisition), and about half of the stories are standalones, several quite creepy and Gothic in tone and including a couple which definitely verge on the supernatural. I prefer my detective fiction novel-length really, but this was quite good fun.
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Date: 2018-03-30 08:17 pm (UTC)That's a brilliant idea!
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Date: 2018-03-31 08:27 am (UTC)