What I’ve read lately

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge is “a novel of the near future.” It’s also conveniently set in San Diego, in the vicinity of UCSD. It’s ostensibly about an old poet who is cured of Alzheimer’s and has to retake high school, but it’s really about the near future of security in a ubicomp world where everyday life is overlaid with private and shared versions of reality, where kids make use of this to be far far smarter than adults know how to cope with, and where meme imposition (“YGBM” or “you gotta believe me”) is the new WMD. It’s fast moving, and has a bunch of appealing characters; basically, classic cyberpunk brought up to date with the absolute latest.

The Thirteenth House is Sharon Shinn‘s sequel to Mystic and Rider, which debuted a new universe for her. The universe is mostly generic, alas, unlike the world of her excellent juvies, but the story is compelling. In the first volume, we were introduced to a mismatched band of adventurers who do tasks for their aging king, and love unwisely along the way. In the second one, we switch to a different adventurer in the band, while moving the story forward. As a result, people who were previously uninteresting become more so. Shinn’s ffection for out-and-out love stories is evident, but not overwhelming, and in the meantime, the politics of Gillengaria have become much more interesting.

The Ragwitch is an older book by Garth Nix, who penned the wonderful Abhorsen Trilogy. If you read this, try to ignore the fact that the first chapter is truly badly written for some reason. The use of language gets better after that first bit, and then you’re thrust into what can only be called an old-fashioned fantasy tale full of interesting monsters, magical magic, and of course, a dash of redemption of evil. It definitely has an old-fashioned flavor about it, somehow flavored of fantasies of the 50s.

Specials by Scott Westerfeld completes his “Uglies” trilogy, which I have referenced before. In a world where certain adults — the Specials — refashion both the bodies and the psyches of their young in order to keep them from further destroying the world, Tally Youngblood is someone who has been citizen, rebel, empty-headed party goer and now secret police in a cadre called “Cutters” — yes, teens who cut themselves in order to stay “icy” and clearminded. The analogies to teen culture are not at all heavy-handed, and as its Westerfeld’s wont, he leaves you without platitudes, without easy answers, and without a clean happy ending. This trilogy is worth reading if you can bring yourself to read books intended for teens.

Dante’s Equation is by Jane Jensen, best known for writing and designing the “Gabriel Knight” games. I know Jane slightly, from a game design workshop we are both in. The book begins with the flavor of one of those thrillers where historical secrets lead to international espionage, like Dan Brown or something, but it quickly moves into speculative territory, when “Bible Code” turns out to reveal aspects of higher mathematics and physics that lead to a physical definition of good and evil — and the doorway to other universes where the balance is different: more evil or more good in the fbaric of the universe. A broad and compelling cast of characters and multiple interesting alternate universes result in a really good read.

Isabel Allende, writing Zorro : A Novel. I couldn’t resist. I have been a fan of Allende’s ever since I wrote a paper on her Cuentos de Eva Luna, (English language edition here), a set of magical-realist stories that struck me as very similar in flavor to Charles de Lint’s short work. Apparently the Zorro IP holders approached her to write this book, and she brings to it all of her typical style and wit, making Zorro himself a deeply flawed and highly entertaining character, half in love with his own legend and all the way noble. This is an origin story, carrying us from his parents’ meeting through his first Californian adventure, and it just works, as both adventure tale and as literature. If you’ve ever dismissed Zorro as schlock, this is the place to start relearning him.

If John Varley‘s Red Thunder was clearly another Heinlein homage for the author, a retelling of his stories of building spaceships in backyards, Red Lightning is something a bit more: a book with echoes of 9/11, of New Orleans and Katrina, a book where disaster isn’t something to be met with quite the same light heart. Oh, it’s still about Martians struggling for independence, and features fun sci-fi stuff like jetskis that you ride down from orbit, but it’s got a serious heart. Varley’s stuff is, in the end, one of the ways by which you rediscover why you loved SF in the first place, and having a core of seriousness does it no harm at all.

Gone is the latest Alex Delaware novel by Jonathan Kellerman, who has an irresistible temptation to make the ultimate villains in his books by improbably large conspiracies of child molesters, and the like (I kid you not, one book ended up with a tribe of forgotten albino refugees hidden under a tropical island, abused by a mad scientist). For books that are mostly realistic depictions of the psychology of murderers, written by a psychologist, this is more than a bit jarring. Here the subject is actors and narcissism, and the crazier flights of fancy are held back somewhat — the villains in this one only have one multiple room underground hideaway, which for a Delware book, is positively tame. The reason to read these is never the plot, it’s the interplay between Delaware and his cop partner Milo, and the ongoing and tangled romance with Robin, the luthier. On those fronts, it doesn’t disappoint.