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I loved this book.  The two page prologue sets the stage very well.  It tells us that Earth learned of an alien planet and, for reasons only hinted at in the prologue, a Jesuit delegation is the first to travel to that planet.  The end of the prologue says, “They meant no harm.”  Which of course tells the reader that things don’t go well!  And at that point I was hooked. 

In the first chapter, our main character Emilio Sandoz has returned from the mission to the alien planet alone.  He’s broken physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  We alternate between that time period and the past, beginning just before the characters learned about the alien world.  We know from the beginning that awful things have happened, and we slowly zero in on those events from both ends of the timeline until finally, by the end, we have all the answers.  Non-linear story formats often work well for me, and this one particularly kept me hanging on every word.  I enjoyed both timelines equally.

It’s good that I didn’t know anything at all about this before I started reading it, or I might have been more reluctant to try it and I might have missed out.  Our main character is a Jesuit priest, so religion is a big part of this book.  Religion evokes strong opinions, whether in favor of it or against it, and authors often can’t resist trying to sway people to their own views.  When that happens, the book feels preachy and trite and is often full of tiresome “debates” between characters.  Even books that align with my own views are annoying to me if the author is too repetitive or obvious about it.

This book wasn’t like that, though; it was done really well.  The characters are who they are, and they believe what they believe.  I never felt like the author was trying to convince me of any particular viewpoint.  I didn’t have to agree with the characters’ interpretation of events in order for the story to feel meaningful and believable.  I could be an outside observer, invested in and sympathetic with the characters, but considering things from many perspectives without feeling like the author wanted me to settle on one particular perspective.  I was very invested in both the characters and the story.

There is quite a bit of humor in this book, particularly in the “past” portions.  I don’t know if I’d call this a dark or depressing book exactly, but it does go to some dark places, and you know from the very beginning that things aren’t going to end well.  I knew the best I could hope for was a bittersweet and hopeful ending.  I think if I hadn’t been prepared, if I’d been blindsided by how everything turned out with the mission, I would have rated this book lower.  Instead, the book became more about figuring out how things went wrong, and what exactly happened, and learning how this vibrant character we saw in the chapters from the past came to be in the wrecked state we saw in the chapters from the future.

I wasn’t completely without complaint.  There were some things that seemed a bit logically flawed to me, and one character (Anne) who occasionally rang false for me, but I enjoyed the general story so much that I was able to overlook any niggling annoyances.  There’s no question that I’ll be jumping straight into the sequel, although not without some fear.

Weaveworld is a standalone fantasy written in the late 80’s, set in the “real world” at around the time it was written.  We follow two main characters, Cal and Suzanna.  In the beginning, Cal gets a glimpse of a secret world hidden in the weave of a carpet, and longs to visit it.  At around the same time, Suzanna is urgently summoned by her grandmother, whom she barely knows.  Her grandmother is the last remaining guardian of that secret world, but naturally she’s too ill by the time Suzanna arrives to give her any useful information.

The story caught my interest right at the beginning.  It was a bit cheesy and melodramatic at times, with a definite 80’s vibe, but it was interesting.  However, I started to lose interest after the first third or so, and from there it fluctuated.  I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get to spend more time exploring the mysteries of this secret world and its inhabitants; I was particularly interested in that.  Another problem I had was that there is a lot of hopelessness that permeates the second half, to the point that I almost didn’t care what happened by the end.  The story did pick up for me some toward the end, but I think the first part was my favorite.

There are some horror elements, but mostly I would just consider it a fantasy story.  The horror elements were more gruesome than creepy, and a bit over-the-top at times.  The cheese factor was pretty high, at least in the beginning.  After a while, I’m not sure if it was toned down or if I just got used to it.  As one example, the term used for a power possessed by some women in the story is the menstruum.  Yes, really.

So I guess I have mixed feelings.  I did like the characters, and I enjoyed the imagination and potential of the story, and I thought it was told pretty well.  On the other hand, I was sometimes bored by the direction it took and I rolled my eyes at some of the cheesiness.

Next Book

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.  This is another book I’m going into blind, knowing nothing at all about it except that it’s apparently science fiction of some sort.

Well, that’s it.  The last book in the Temeraire series!  I thought the ending was satisfying.  It wasn’t particularly surprising, maybe, but I was happy with how things ended up and I enjoyed the last book as much as I had enjoyed the previous books.  The rest of this review consists of general, spoiler-free comments on the series as a whole.

I really enjoyed the whole series even though, in retrospect, it lacked some of the things that are most likely to earn my enthusiasm for a book.  In particular, Novik used a straight-forward and consistent story-telling style.  There were surprises here and there, but this isn’t a twisty story with an intricate plot that keeps you confused and anxious to learn what the heck is going on.  I do normally prefer a twistier story, but it held my interest well anyway.  I would be surprised though if somebody who isn’t crazy for the books from the beginning were to change their mind if they tried to keep reading.  The things that made the series enjoyable for me from the start are mostly the same things that sustained my interest through to the end.

Novik writes action scenes well, and she also does very well with making characters likeable and sympathetic.  She writes the interactions between characters well too.  I was happy that there wasn’t much romance in the series; I think that would have taken away from the more interesting relationships and been more a source of annoyance than anything.  There isn’t anything too deep here, but I liked the theme of duty versus morality that showed up throughout the series, forcing our characters to decide which should take precedence when those two things were in conflict and to deal with the consequences of their choices.  Even though the series is set during a war, it has a fairly light tone.  Bad and discouraging things happen, but there’s also a decent amount of humor and optimism. 

I plan to keep an eye out for future books the author publishes, and I’ll read the new anthology (Golden Age and Other Stories) sooner or later.  Right now I only see a $25 hardcover available for pre-order so I’ll either borrow it from the library if it’s available, or I’ll purchase it when there’s a reasonably-priced Kindle edition available.

Next Book

A standalone fantasy book from the 80’s called Weaveworld by Clive Barker.  This is one of those books on my list that I bought on sale a while back and know absolutely nothing about, so I look forward to being surprised.  Hopefully in a pleasant way, but we’ll see. :)

Blood of Tyrants is the eighth and penultimate book in the Temeraire series.  I enjoyed it equally as much as the previous books, although a little more unevenly.  I was fully engrossed for the first 75% or so, but I occasionally felt restless toward the end.

Some of the early events, though occasionally frustrating, really highlighted Laurence’s character growth throughout the series, and Temeraire’s too.  I was also happy to see my favorite secondary character show back up.

This book doesn’t exactly end on a cliff hanger, but it did feel a little less wrapped-up than the previous books, setting the stage for the final events coming up next.  I look forward to finding out how the series ends.

Next Book

League of Dragons by Naomi Novik, the last book in the Temeraire series, not counting the anthology due out next month.

This is the seventh book in the Temeraire series.  I enjoyed it a lot, on about the same level as the previous books, and definitely more than the sixth one.  Unlike the last book, there weren’t as many unlikeable characters and I think that helped.  I don’t have too much else to write about -- just a couple comments within the spoiler tags.

Even though it took me 9 days to read this, it was only a reflection of my work schedule and not of my enjoyment of the book.  I was on a business trip for a little over a week, with many 16-18 hour work days.  I read most of this book within three days; the rest of the days involved reading the same paragraphs over and over with my eyes while my brain thought about work until I gave up the attempt. :)

Next Book

Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik, the next book in the Temeraire series.

I liked and disliked different aspects of this book.  This is a detective noir-type story, set in an alternate version of Alaska where most of the Jews were resettled after World War II and have built a Yiddish community.  Despite the alternate history setting, this doesn’t have any science fiction elements.  The alternate history aspect is just there, without explanation.  The story opens up with the main character, Detective Meyer Landsman, discovering that somebody has been murdered in the same hotel where he lives.

As you might guess, the book is heavily focused on Jewish culture.  I enjoyed that, just as I usually enjoy books that feature a culture outside my personal experience, but I didn’t understand a lot of what was being said in the beginning.  There’s a glossary in the back of the book but, by the time I thought to look for it, I was a third of the way into the book and had already figured most of it out for myself long ago.  The dictionary on my Kindle was less helpful than usual because most of the words I had trouble with were Yiddish and/or used in a slang context.  The translator function has no idea what to do with Yiddish.  At one point, my dictionary told me a word being used to mean policeman (latke) was a potato pancake.  This may be technically accurate, but I find that policemen and pancakes typically do not do the same types of things in books, and there can be confusion if one mixes the two up.

I don’t read many detective noir books, so I’m far from an expert, but this one seemed to have a lot of the overused themes I associate with them:  Our main character is, predictably, told not to investigate this particular murder.  He of course continues to investigate it anyway.  He makes stupid decisions and puts himself in danger that could have been avoided.  He has a lot of personal baggage and a drinking problem.  A lot of seemingly-unrelated events “coincidentally” all turn out to be related.  And the book has so much tobacco in it that somebody who purchased the physical book could probably roll up the pages and smoke them.

The story had a slow start, and not just because of the initial terminology confusion.  Most of the information was relevant eventually, but there was a lot of back story provided in the beginning about characters I didn’t much care about.  This book is more character-driven than plot-driven, and I often enjoy those types of books, but I wasn’t that crazy for these characters.  Some of them did grow on me, but I was never that invested.  The main character in particular was a type I have trouble appreciating, and the general atmosphere in his head, where we live throughout the book, is pretty bleak.

Despite all my negative comments, I did enjoy the story pretty well.  Every time I picked it up, my attention would wander and I had trouble getting back into it.  Before long, however, I’d find myself several pages further along and caught up in the story again.  There’s a good deal of sarcastic humor, and I particularly enjoyed that.

Next Book

Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik, the 7^th book in the Temeraire series. 

Tongues of Serpents is the sixth book in the Temeraire series.  For me, this was the weakest in the series so far.  It wasn’t a bad book, and there wasn’t any particular aspect of it that I disliked, but it didn’t hold my attention as well as the previous books.  I think one big reason was because I disliked so many of the secondary characters.  There were still some good secondary characters around, but they didn’t get that much page time. 

But just because I liked this book less, doesn’t mean I disliked it.  There were still plenty of great moments, and this book had an interesting setting that I enjoyed reading about.  The middle part held my interest quite well and several sections had me anxious to learn what would happen next.  There was also a new character introduced who was fun to read about. 

I have a few more spoiler-ish comments within the spoiler tags:

Next Book

A standalone book called The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon.  I’ve never read anything by Chabon and, happily, I don’t know anything at all about the book.  It was on a list that many of my reading selections come from, and it went on sale not too long ago, so I slotted it into the schedule as one of my series-break books.  After this, I plan to finish up the last three Temeraire books.

Victory of Eagles is the fifth book in the Temeraire series.  I really enjoyed this one, at least as much as the first book.  Unlike the fourth book, there weren’t any niggling annoyances to distract me from a story that I had been otherwise enjoying.  There was a small change in the storytelling format that I particularly loved. 

I’m going to put the rest of my review within spoiler tags so I can freely discuss some things in more detail.

Next Book

Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik, the sixth book in the Temeraire series.

Going just by the story, the characters, and my general entertainment throughout most of this book, I would have rated this at five stars.  I’m giving it 4.5 stars, the same as the last two books, but I’m rounding down to 4 on Goodreads whereas I rounded the previous two up to 5.  The reason I'm rating it so much lower, in spite of enjoying it so much, is that there were a couple things that particularly annoyed me, one being what I consider to be a major story discrepancy.  More details are in the spoiler tags further below.

Aside from that, I thought the story was very entertaining.  I enjoyed it at least as much as the first book, and slightly more than the second and third.  I was especially engrossed by the end, and I’m eager to start reading the next book.  Unlike the previous books, this one ended with quite a cliff hanger and I look forward to finding out how Laurence and Temeraire will get themselves out of their current predicament.

The rest of my comments include some spoilers for this book and also for the previous three, so I’ll put them in spoiler tags:

Next Book

Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik, the fifth book in the Temeraire series.

Zodiac is the first book I’ve read by Neal Stephenson, an author I see mentioned fairly often, often with mixed reviews. My own reaction to this particular book is a little mixed. 

The title, Zodiac, refers to a type of motorized raft the characters used. The story is set in Boston and is told from the first-person perspective of a character who tries to catch, publicize, and prevent corporations from dumping toxic chemicals into the Boston Harbor.  Naturally the big, powerful corporation people aren’t happy and don’t take his interference lying down. 

The book is probably better classified as a Thriller than as Science Fiction. There was at least one small science fiction element but, for the most part, it seemed entirely based on technology and scientific knowledge from the 1980’s, when the book was published.  There’s a decent amount of science, usually explained well enough for the layman to understand, and I never felt like I was reading infodumps.  I learned some things, and I liked that. 

On the other hand, the story itself just wasn’t that appealing to me. Since the book is more story-driven than character-driven, it was hard to be too enthusiastic about it if I wasn’t enthusiastic about the story itself.  I liked the main character well enough, but I never felt attached, and I didn’t feel much interest in the other characters at all. 

As far as entertainment level, this was pretty middle-of-the-road for me. There were parts when I did feel more eager to learn what would happen next but, mostly, I didn’t feel any compulsion to keep reading when I had other things to do.  Fortunately, this was a pretty short book.  If it had been stretched out into a longer book, I might have had more trouble making it to the end.

Next Book

I’ll be continuing on to the fourth Temeraire book with Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik.

Black Powder War is the third book in the Temeraire series.  I enjoyed this one at about the same level as the previous two books. I was particularly happy when the story didn’t quite go in the direction I had expected it to based on the end of the last book, as described in more detail in the below spoiler.

I continue to enjoy the characters, and there were a couple new characters in this book that I enjoyed and hope to see again.  I have a comment about them in spoiler tags below which really isn’t a spoiler in itself, but I mention their names since my comment is about their names.  That, combined with my earlier sentence, makes it obvious they’re still alive at the end of the book.  With so many people I know reading this series, I want to be extra cautious.

I did enjoy this quite a bit and I still look forward to continuing the series.  There were a couple of times, maybe, when things started to feel a little sluggish, but it never lasted long before something happened to catch my interest again.  I also thought the ending was more satisfying than in the previous book.  I could find a thing or two to nit-pick about, but it felt like it flowed more naturally out of the events of the story and it was also entertaining.

Next Book

(Since late last year, I’ve been including this section in my reading journal thread on LibraryThing at the bottom of each new review I post.  Usually it isn’t this long; often it’s just a sentence stating which book I plan to read next.  I originally started including it on LT because people following my reading journal won’t see a notification about the next book I add to my shelf, unlike here on BL and on Goodreads, and that’s something I personally enjoy seeing from people I follow.  I’ve found that this section often generates some discussion on LT, which is impossible here on BL since you can’t comment on people’s shelving updates.  Also, sometimes I have more to say like I do today, but I feel funny about putting up a separate post for something that will be of little interest to most people so I just leave it off altogether when I post here.  For those reasons, I’ve decided to start including this section here on BL too.)

Zodiac by Neal Stephenson.  I’ve heard a lot about this author, and I’ve seen a lot of mixed reviews about his various books, but this will be my first time reading anything by him.  I’ve been trying to get around to him for quite a while.

I've been planning for a while to read this book now, after the third Temeraire book, and I have another standalone planned for after the sixth book also, to break things up a bit.  I started to waver on this plan when I realized this book would probably fall during my upcoming business trip.  Temeraire might be a safer bet for keeping me entertained during the flights, since I already know I enjoy it.  I decided to stick with my original plan, mostly because my flight schedule this week is ridiculous.  If my book happens to put me to sleep, when I don’t normally sleep well on planes to begin with, that will only be to my advantage because I’ll need the sleep.

Speaking of travel, I’ll likely be reading more slowly and posting less over the next month or two.  I have the trip this coming week, then I’m up for the on-call rotation the week after.  It falls on quarter end which is always a little chaotic, so I’ll likely be working a lot during the evenings also.  Then I’ll be traveling a minimum of two weeks in July to support a project.  I expect I’ll still be around reading what other people are posting, and posting the occasional review myself, but I’ll probably be even quieter than usual -- and probably even less coherent because I’m going to be tired. :)

This is the second book in the Temeraire series.  The first book in a series has an advantage, at least in my case.  If it’s written well, and especially if it takes a different approach than anything I’ve read before, its “newness factor” gives it an edge.  The second book is a better test of whether I’ll be able to sustain my interest in the series. 

I really enjoyed this book.  I’m especially still enjoying the characters.  Also, something about Novik’s writing style just holds my interest well.  I haven’t found this series to be particularly “twisty” or surprising so far, but I still get wrapped up in the story even when I’m not on the edge of my seat wondering what will happen next. 

This book has some similarities, structure-wise, with the first book.  It tells a complete story, with the main problems wrapped up by the end.  Also, just like in the first book, we’re given a big hint about what direction the larger story will take in the next book.  Another similarity is that the second half is quite a bit more action-heavy than the first half, and I enjoyed both halves.

I did think the ending was too abrupt.  As I approached the end, I decided the problems at hand would surely be carried over to the next book because it didn’t seem like there was enough time left to resolve them.  Instead, everything was wrapped up really fast.  The earlier parts of the book covered events in far more detail, so I think that made the fast ending seem more jarring.  I liked the way things ended, I just wish it had been drawn out a little more, with some more details and events to help me buy into it better.  Some major spoilers to try to explain my issues are below within the spoiler tags.

In summary, I enjoyed it a lot, but maybe a tiny bit less than the first book.  I’m headed straight into the third book. :)

This was a light-hearted and fun short story that the author says takes place between books 1 and 2 of the Temeraire series.  Temeraire and Maximus want breakfast, but the people who feed them haven’t come to work yet and they don’t want to wake up their tired crews so they try to get it themselves.  Minor chaos ensues.

I doubt this would be very entertaining if one isn’t already familiar with the characters, but I enjoyed it.  It can be read for free here.

Until early last year when I read and loved Uprooted, also written by Novik, I’d only been mildly interested in reading this series.  The synopsis didn’t sound all that interesting to me, and I’d seen mixed reviews for it on my feed.  Even after enjoying Uprooted so much, I wasn’t sure if that would have much bearing on things since this series was written many years earlier and has a completely different type of story.  I enjoyed this book far more than I had expected or hoped.  It caught my interest in the very beginning and held it straight through to the end. 

The story is set in an alternate version of our Napoleonic Wars, where dragons are used in battle, told from the perspective of characters on the British side.  That premise didn’t sound very interesting to me, but Novik writes characters and camaraderie very well and she also writes action scenes well.  Contrary to my fears, the book was much more than just a string of battles.  In fact, the bulk of the action doesn’t really start until over halfway through.  The first half is more about setting the stage, introducing the reader to the characters and to how things work.  I enjoyed both halves equally.  This book doesn’t really have any sort of cliff hanger at all.  It would work perfectly well as a standalone, but I definitely plan to head straight into the next book. 

The story centers around two characters, the human Laurence and his dragon Temeraire.  Laurence is a captain in the British Navy and has never remotely considered joining the Aerial Corps as a dragon handler, but his life takes a surprising turn at the beginning of the book.  Conveniently, we get to learn about how everything works through his inexperienced eyes, and I really enjoyed that part.  Laurence and Temeraire are both great characters, and I also liked several of the secondary characters although we didn’t get to know them quite as well.  Laurence is a bit stiff and duty-bound, but I really liked him and found him easy to root for.  He usually made rational decisions, and he tried to do things for the right reasons.

The language that Novik used worked well for me also.  Keeping in mind that I am not remotely an expert on the classics, nor a history buff, the language in the book seemed to have enough archaic terms and phrasings to feel authentic to me, and I didn’t notice any major anachronisms.  If I have one complaint, and it’s really a minor one, it would be that the book really doesn’t give much of a view of life outside of the military environment.  It also would have been interesting to see things from the perspective of other countries.  I’m not sure how that really would have fit into this story though, and it was entertaining as it was.  Maybe some of the later books will expand the setting a little bit. 

There seem to be a lot of people I’m following who are reading this series right now.  To those people, I apologize in advance because I’m going to ignore any future posts about the series while I’m reading it, unless the post is for one of the books I’ve already read.  Once I’m familiar with the characters and setting of a series, I find it much too easy to extrapolate future events based on even vague comments, so I plan to play it safe.  As usual, I’ll be going back to read reviews from people I follow after I finish each book, even the reviews I’ve already seen previously.

I started reading this book on January 2 of this year and I’ve been slowly, slowly working my way through it.  It’s 752 pages and contains 211 stories.  I think, if I had tried to read this book all at once, I probably would have given up on it.  As it is, I’m not sure finishing it is the wisest thing I’ve ever done.  It was entertaining at first, but it grew increasingly repetitive and tiresome.  It was tolerable in small portions, though.  It also made pretty good bedtime reading.  I usually started off reading my regular book before bed but, if I wasn’t feeling tired as bedtime approached, I’d pull up this one and read a couple stories.  More often than not, I was feeling quite sleepy after that. :)

The repetition cannot be understated.  There were some stories that were nearly identical, with small changes to the details.  In other cases, part of one story was cobbled together with part of another story to make a new story.  In yet other cases, the story was more changed, but the underlying plot elements were very similar to that of other stories.  As far as general themes and character types went, those were repeated constantly.  Similar stories tended to be grouped together, which made the repetition that much more obvious. 

I’m probably making it sound a little worse than it actually was.  There were some entertaining stories and some funny stories.  It was particularly interesting to see older versions of some of the modernized fairy tales that are well-known today. A few of the stories were so bizarre that I just started at my Kindle in puzzlement for a while before shrugging and moving on. 

The stories are over 200 years old, and they very much reflect the morals and attitudes from that time.  In particular, there is an awful lot of racism.  Although I never lost sight of the fact that this was a product of the times in which the stories originated, I think the repetition made it more difficult for me to just acknowledge it and then move on. 

I would like to leave you with a handful of the oft-repeated lessons that I “learned” from this collection:

• Pretty girls are always pure of heart.
• Ugly girls are always wicked.
• Princes are randomly wandering around all over the place, particularly in the forest, and they’ll marry the first pretty girl they see.  Immediately.
• Your chances of being married by a prince are greatly increased if you’re poor or if you’ve been mistreated by your family.
• If you’re one of three brothers and you’re not the youngest, you’re arrogant and you’ll likely fail miserably at everything you do because you’re rude to people.
• If you’re one of three brothers and you are the youngest, your family will think you’re stupid and make fun of you.  On the bright side, you’ll likely obtain a kingdom or at least great wealth just by accurately and politely answering nosy questions from random people you meet.
• There’s no need to plan ahead for any quest or trip you take.  Just take off when the mood strikes, and you’ll meet creatures along the way who happen to have exactly what you need, sometimes before you even know you need it.
• If things aren’t going well on your quest, just stand around and look despondent.  If you’re a girl, maybe shed a tear or two.  Somebody is bound to show up and do all of your work for you.

Vici is a short story that serves as a prequel to the Temeraire series.  It can be read for free here.  In the beginning, we meet a man named Antony who is being sentenced for his crimes.  He’s given the option to have an honorable death by trying, and surely failing, to kill a dangerous dragon in the area.

It was a pretty cute story, and it made me laugh in several places.  Since this is my first exposure to the Temeraire series, I don’t know if any of the characters in this story are in the main series.  My guess, based on what very little I know about the series, is that this story takes place quite a bit before the main story and is meant more as an explanation for how things came to be the way they are.  Either way, I’ll find out very soon since I hope to start the first book later today.