Reading Wednesday
Nov. 16th, 2016 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
A Very Pukka Murder by Arjun Gaind. A mystery novel, the first in a planned series, set in a Princely State in India in 1909. When the English Resident is found murdered by poison on New Year's Day, the Maharaja Sikander Singh decides to investigate it himself – but soon discovers that the problem is too many suspects, as nearly everyone had reason to want the Resident dead. But that's just fine with Sikander, as he likes nothing better than a really complicated puzzle.
Let me step back for a moment to explain the setting, as I'm not sure how well-known it is. In 1857, India officially became a colony of Britain, but there were exceptions: states that remained technically independent and continued to be ruled by their hereditary leaders. These became known as the Princely States; some of the best known are Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Travancore. Because they were surrounded on all sides by British India, tended to be small, and were hemmed in by increasingly restrictive treaties (such as, for example, forbidding them to maintain armies or produce weapons), their actual independence was extremely semi-.
In addition, the Princely States had to maintain a British Resident, who would live in the state's capital and was technically responsible for the alliance between British India and the state, but who was often resented and said to take on a much greater role, essentially usurping all government functions and leaving the local rulers with nothing to do. As a result of this, the cliche of the ruler of a Princely State is one of decadence and ennui, as he wastes large amounts of money pursuing affairs with European women, gambling, or in weird art projects, anything to distract himself from boredom. As you may imagine, this is not really all that accurate of a picture, but it's the stereotype Sikander is playing on, and so I mention it.
"Pukka", by the way, means "good", "real", "proper"; a pukka house is one built of brick and stone instead of hastily-thrown up shack. And so a pukka murder is one that's well-done and hard to solve.
Anyway, back to the book! The whole tone is a bit melodramatic, in the style of a early 1900s adventure novel, which I didn't see as a fault. Sikander is vastly intelligent with imposing features; bad guys are craven and ugly; women are beautiful temptresses, if somewhat flighty; Sikhs and Gurkhas are huge and martial; servants are cringing and stupid. There's even the requisite scene where Sikander gathers everyone together at the end and explains how he figured out who did it! (Not the butler, alas.) It's not exactly deep, but it can be a lot of fun if you're in the mood for it. And I mostly was, though I have to confess I was left with a bad taste in my mouth regarding the treatment of women (very James-Bond-esque) and Sikander's reaction when a character was revealed to be secretly gay. I suppose it's all fairly accurate to the time period, but it wasn't the sort of thing I wanted in my light reading, at least not this week.
I found it fairly easy to predict who would turn out to be the murderer, but that didn't reduce my pleasure in following along with Sikander's investigation, which mostly consisted of a series of interviews with various people. It was a thorough depiction of how society functioned in this place and time, particularly in regards to British-Indian relations. It's a nice enough book and a great idea for a series, but unfortunately for me the problems overshadowed most of its good qualities.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The Siren Depths by Martha Wells. #3 in the Books of the Raksura series, and definitely my favorite (so far!). Moon and the rest of the court of Indigo Cloud have settled down after the adventures of the previous two books, and Moon and his mate Jade are focused on finally producing children – though it seems to be taking longer than it should, long enough that Moon fears he's infertile and therefore Jade will choose a new mate. This is further complicated when word comes that Moon's long-lost biological family have finally been discovered... and they want Moon back. With no other choice, Jade and the rest of Indigo Cloud agree to send Moon to this new, distant court, where he must once again survive alone, adapt to new customs, and hope that someone wants him. Plus there's a battle with the Fell, the evil warrior race with mysterious ties to the Raksura, because of course there is.
If I'd asked for more emotion in the previous books, this one absolutely provided it. There's Moon afraid to be alone, Moon missing the relationships he built while at Indigo Cloud, and an abundance of excitement and happiness as well. I loved all the emotional H/C. The plot was also much more of a page-turner in this book than the others, and I had trouble putting it down; the final confrontation in particular was genuinely scary.
These books are fantasy, but I was struck while reading this one how much they feel like science-fiction, particularly anthropological SF by writers like Le Guin or Cherryh; there's just so much attention to building the cultures of multiple different species, with all the rules and history and exceptions that entails, and then further complicating it by having different groups interact. It's fantasy written by someone who really loves ethnography. This little scene, as Moon tells about his travels, made me laugh out loud:
So he told them about the Deshar in the hanging city of Zenna, and their elaborate social customs that made passing through the place so difficult for visitors. Predictably, everyone wanted to hear more about the Deshar’s attitudes about sex, which were as baffling to the other Raksura as they had been to Moon at the time.
“So if they have sex without this ceremony first, they can’t have it again?” Bone said, scratching the scar around his neck thoughtfully. He was clearly having trouble following this strange brand of logic.
Moon tried to explain. “Sort of. You can only have sex with your permanent mate, and you can’t have a permanent mate without the ceremony, and if you have sex before the ceremony, nobody wants to be your permanent mate.”
Bark frowned. “But do they have to have a permanent mate?” Except for queens and consorts, Raksura usually didn’t.
“If they want babies. If you have a baby with anybody but a permanent mate, it’s bad. For you and the baby.” The idea that offspring might be unwanted was hard for Raksura to understand as well. Queens and Arbora only clutched when they wanted to, and there were always teachers to take care of the babies or fledglings.
“But how do the others know if someone’s had sex?” Chime protested. “How can they tell? If they have sex without the ceremony, shouldn’t they just keep quiet about it?”
“Do they change color when they have sex?” Balm asked thoughtfully.
“No. They just seemed to know.” Moon admitted, “I never figured that part out.”
And in this book, as in the previous ones, this is further extended into some absolutely gorgeous and imaginative set-pieces: a city tunneled throughout a statue built into the side of a cliff, an enormous underwater palace, hundreds of human-sized creatures swarming inside a huge biological sac.
A great read. I am loving this series, and thank you to everyone who recommended it to me!
What are you currently reading?
Hillstation by Robin Mukherjee, which I think is trying for a charming fairy-tale feel to the writing, but which is unfortunately coming across as twee and childish instead.
A Very Pukka Murder by Arjun Gaind. A mystery novel, the first in a planned series, set in a Princely State in India in 1909. When the English Resident is found murdered by poison on New Year's Day, the Maharaja Sikander Singh decides to investigate it himself – but soon discovers that the problem is too many suspects, as nearly everyone had reason to want the Resident dead. But that's just fine with Sikander, as he likes nothing better than a really complicated puzzle.
Let me step back for a moment to explain the setting, as I'm not sure how well-known it is. In 1857, India officially became a colony of Britain, but there were exceptions: states that remained technically independent and continued to be ruled by their hereditary leaders. These became known as the Princely States; some of the best known are Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Travancore. Because they were surrounded on all sides by British India, tended to be small, and were hemmed in by increasingly restrictive treaties (such as, for example, forbidding them to maintain armies or produce weapons), their actual independence was extremely semi-.
In addition, the Princely States had to maintain a British Resident, who would live in the state's capital and was technically responsible for the alliance between British India and the state, but who was often resented and said to take on a much greater role, essentially usurping all government functions and leaving the local rulers with nothing to do. As a result of this, the cliche of the ruler of a Princely State is one of decadence and ennui, as he wastes large amounts of money pursuing affairs with European women, gambling, or in weird art projects, anything to distract himself from boredom. As you may imagine, this is not really all that accurate of a picture, but it's the stereotype Sikander is playing on, and so I mention it.
"Pukka", by the way, means "good", "real", "proper"; a pukka house is one built of brick and stone instead of hastily-thrown up shack. And so a pukka murder is one that's well-done and hard to solve.
Anyway, back to the book! The whole tone is a bit melodramatic, in the style of a early 1900s adventure novel, which I didn't see as a fault. Sikander is vastly intelligent with imposing features; bad guys are craven and ugly; women are beautiful temptresses, if somewhat flighty; Sikhs and Gurkhas are huge and martial; servants are cringing and stupid. There's even the requisite scene where Sikander gathers everyone together at the end and explains how he figured out who did it! (Not the butler, alas.) It's not exactly deep, but it can be a lot of fun if you're in the mood for it. And I mostly was, though I have to confess I was left with a bad taste in my mouth regarding the treatment of women (very James-Bond-esque) and Sikander's reaction when a character was revealed to be secretly gay. I suppose it's all fairly accurate to the time period, but it wasn't the sort of thing I wanted in my light reading, at least not this week.
I found it fairly easy to predict who would turn out to be the murderer, but that didn't reduce my pleasure in following along with Sikander's investigation, which mostly consisted of a series of interviews with various people. It was a thorough depiction of how society functioned in this place and time, particularly in regards to British-Indian relations. It's a nice enough book and a great idea for a series, but unfortunately for me the problems overshadowed most of its good qualities.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The Siren Depths by Martha Wells. #3 in the Books of the Raksura series, and definitely my favorite (so far!). Moon and the rest of the court of Indigo Cloud have settled down after the adventures of the previous two books, and Moon and his mate Jade are focused on finally producing children – though it seems to be taking longer than it should, long enough that Moon fears he's infertile and therefore Jade will choose a new mate. This is further complicated when word comes that Moon's long-lost biological family have finally been discovered... and they want Moon back. With no other choice, Jade and the rest of Indigo Cloud agree to send Moon to this new, distant court, where he must once again survive alone, adapt to new customs, and hope that someone wants him. Plus there's a battle with the Fell, the evil warrior race with mysterious ties to the Raksura, because of course there is.
If I'd asked for more emotion in the previous books, this one absolutely provided it. There's Moon afraid to be alone, Moon missing the relationships he built while at Indigo Cloud, and an abundance of excitement and happiness as well. I loved all the emotional H/C. The plot was also much more of a page-turner in this book than the others, and I had trouble putting it down; the final confrontation in particular was genuinely scary.
These books are fantasy, but I was struck while reading this one how much they feel like science-fiction, particularly anthropological SF by writers like Le Guin or Cherryh; there's just so much attention to building the cultures of multiple different species, with all the rules and history and exceptions that entails, and then further complicating it by having different groups interact. It's fantasy written by someone who really loves ethnography. This little scene, as Moon tells about his travels, made me laugh out loud:
So he told them about the Deshar in the hanging city of Zenna, and their elaborate social customs that made passing through the place so difficult for visitors. Predictably, everyone wanted to hear more about the Deshar’s attitudes about sex, which were as baffling to the other Raksura as they had been to Moon at the time.
“So if they have sex without this ceremony first, they can’t have it again?” Bone said, scratching the scar around his neck thoughtfully. He was clearly having trouble following this strange brand of logic.
Moon tried to explain. “Sort of. You can only have sex with your permanent mate, and you can’t have a permanent mate without the ceremony, and if you have sex before the ceremony, nobody wants to be your permanent mate.”
Bark frowned. “But do they have to have a permanent mate?” Except for queens and consorts, Raksura usually didn’t.
“If they want babies. If you have a baby with anybody but a permanent mate, it’s bad. For you and the baby.” The idea that offspring might be unwanted was hard for Raksura to understand as well. Queens and Arbora only clutched when they wanted to, and there were always teachers to take care of the babies or fledglings.
“But how do the others know if someone’s had sex?” Chime protested. “How can they tell? If they have sex without the ceremony, shouldn’t they just keep quiet about it?”
“Do they change color when they have sex?” Balm asked thoughtfully.
“No. They just seemed to know.” Moon admitted, “I never figured that part out.”
And in this book, as in the previous ones, this is further extended into some absolutely gorgeous and imaginative set-pieces: a city tunneled throughout a statue built into the side of a cliff, an enormous underwater palace, hundreds of human-sized creatures swarming inside a huge biological sac.
A great read. I am loving this series, and thank you to everyone who recommended it to me!
What are you currently reading?
Hillstation by Robin Mukherjee, which I think is trying for a charming fairy-tale feel to the writing, but which is unfortunately coming across as twee and childish instead.
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Date: 2016-11-17 08:23 pm (UTC)