Reading Wed- Thursday
Sep. 17th, 2015 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan. The first book in a new mystery series set in modern-day Mumbai. It opens on the day Inspector Chopra is retiring from the police force, which is also the day his long-missing religious uncle sends him a baby elephant to take care of. Given that Chopra lives in an apartment building and knows nothing about animals, this proves to be a problem. Meanwhile, he gets caught up in investigating the death of a young man who turned up on his last working day, since the new police chief seems determined to dismiss the death as a suicide.
I liked this book overall; it has a light, cheerful tone, an attention to the detective's family and friends, and a very slight hint of magical realism that reminds me of cozy mysteries like The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency or The Cat Who... books. Unfortunately this gentle quality crashes head-on into the darkness of the mystery itself (the final revelation involves the human trafficking of children, presumably for sex work), making it feel out of joint. It would have been a better fit if Chopra had solved a problem involving a cheating husband or missing car or something.
That's an easy thing to fix going forward, so I'll definitely be checking out the next book in the series when it comes out.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett. It's so hard to review Pratchett! It doesn't seem fair to just write a summary of the plot (especially since often the plot is the least important part of his books), but I don't want to just ramble about my feelings either.
Well, maybe I do want to. Just a bit.
I never liked Rincewind much as a character back when I started reading the Discworld series; I generally liked the wizards books least, and even within them I preferred Ridcully or the Bursar or the Librarian to Rincewind. But on this reread I've become really fond of him, and am looking forward to his appearances in future books.
It's always fascinating, to me, to see how much Pratchett has changed over the years, and what has stayed the same. The politics of Unseen University seem very different than they would be later, and trolls turn to stone in daylight! That never happens again, does it? And yet this description of the villain is so clearly Pratchett, so clearly his view of humanism that will show up again and again, that I was in awe while reading it:
Trymon had tried to contain the seven Spells in his mind and it had broken, and the Dungeon Dimensions had found their hole, all right. Silly to have imagined that the Things would have come marching out of a sort of rip in the sky, waving mandibles and tentacles. That was old-fashioned stuff, far too risky. Even nameless terrors learned to move with the times. All they really needed to enter was one head.
His eyes were empty holes.
Knowledge speared into Rincewind’s mind like a knife of ice. The Dungeon Dimensions would be a playgroup compared to what the Things could do in a universe of order. People were craving order, and order they would get—the order of the turning screw, the immutable law of straight lines and numbers. They would beg for the harrow…
Trymon was looking at him. Something was looking at him. And still the others hadn’t noticed. Could he even explain it? Trymon looked the same as he had always done, except for the eyes, and a slight sheen to his skin.
Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the gray world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn’t even notice them.
Ahhhh. How does he do that? That twist of words, that incredible horror in-between the humor, and that love for humanity under it. It's already amazing here, in such an early book.
What are you currently reading?
Drown by Junot Diaz. Another in my 'get all these books off my shelves' project. I'm not liking it as much as his The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, unfortunately.
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan. The first book in a new mystery series set in modern-day Mumbai. It opens on the day Inspector Chopra is retiring from the police force, which is also the day his long-missing religious uncle sends him a baby elephant to take care of. Given that Chopra lives in an apartment building and knows nothing about animals, this proves to be a problem. Meanwhile, he gets caught up in investigating the death of a young man who turned up on his last working day, since the new police chief seems determined to dismiss the death as a suicide.
I liked this book overall; it has a light, cheerful tone, an attention to the detective's family and friends, and a very slight hint of magical realism that reminds me of cozy mysteries like The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency or The Cat Who... books. Unfortunately this gentle quality crashes head-on into the darkness of the mystery itself (the final revelation involves the human trafficking of children, presumably for sex work), making it feel out of joint. It would have been a better fit if Chopra had solved a problem involving a cheating husband or missing car or something.
That's an easy thing to fix going forward, so I'll definitely be checking out the next book in the series when it comes out.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett. It's so hard to review Pratchett! It doesn't seem fair to just write a summary of the plot (especially since often the plot is the least important part of his books), but I don't want to just ramble about my feelings either.
Well, maybe I do want to. Just a bit.
I never liked Rincewind much as a character back when I started reading the Discworld series; I generally liked the wizards books least, and even within them I preferred Ridcully or the Bursar or the Librarian to Rincewind. But on this reread I've become really fond of him, and am looking forward to his appearances in future books.
It's always fascinating, to me, to see how much Pratchett has changed over the years, and what has stayed the same. The politics of Unseen University seem very different than they would be later, and trolls turn to stone in daylight! That never happens again, does it? And yet this description of the villain is so clearly Pratchett, so clearly his view of humanism that will show up again and again, that I was in awe while reading it:
Trymon had tried to contain the seven Spells in his mind and it had broken, and the Dungeon Dimensions had found their hole, all right. Silly to have imagined that the Things would have come marching out of a sort of rip in the sky, waving mandibles and tentacles. That was old-fashioned stuff, far too risky. Even nameless terrors learned to move with the times. All they really needed to enter was one head.
His eyes were empty holes.
Knowledge speared into Rincewind’s mind like a knife of ice. The Dungeon Dimensions would be a playgroup compared to what the Things could do in a universe of order. People were craving order, and order they would get—the order of the turning screw, the immutable law of straight lines and numbers. They would beg for the harrow…
Trymon was looking at him. Something was looking at him. And still the others hadn’t noticed. Could he even explain it? Trymon looked the same as he had always done, except for the eyes, and a slight sheen to his skin.
Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the gray world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn’t even notice them.
Ahhhh. How does he do that? That twist of words, that incredible horror in-between the humor, and that love for humanity under it. It's already amazing here, in such an early book.
What are you currently reading?
Drown by Junot Diaz. Another in my 'get all these books off my shelves' project. I'm not liking it as much as his The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, unfortunately.
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no subject
Date: 2015-09-17 06:43 pm (UTC)That *is* a really Pratchett quote for such an early book! The Auditors (and their ilk) don't work so well for me as villains/antagonists, even though I do understand where the horror of them is coming from, but even if that sort of thing is not to my personal taste, PTerry is amazingly good at conveying it so sharply.
The Wizards have always been my least favorite sub-series, too, and Rincewind far behind Ridcully and Ponder Stibbons when it comes to Wizard characters I like, so I haven't reread the early books either -- but I'm enjoying seeing the best bits in your write-ups :)
no subject
Date: 2015-09-17 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-18 06:14 pm (UTC)I also haven't read "This is How You Lose Her", but the reviews make it sound more like "Drown" than "Oscar", alas.
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Date: 2015-09-18 06:09 pm (UTC)Exactly! I do love the Auditors as villains, so I was excited to see version of them. I like it too, because they're relatively unusual in fantasy. You have a lot of ghastly Cthulhu monsters, but not so much these orderly horrors. Although Neil Gaiman has some of it, now that I'm thinking about it; there's a bit in Sandman where the devils all leave Hell, and there's a very similar reaction to "that was precisely because they valued souls very highly". I suppose that's why he and Pratchett were friends!
Aw, thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying them.
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Date: 2015-09-17 08:48 pm (UTC)ONE DAY I will read Terry Pratchett. It's going to happen! Maybe even this year!
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Date: 2015-09-18 06:02 pm (UTC)And haa. I'm still not sure I'd recommend these first two as a starting point, though I'm closer to it than I was a month ago.
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Date: 2015-09-17 09:15 pm (UTC)♥
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Date: 2015-09-18 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-18 02:27 pm (UTC)Sometimes I forget what a good writer Pratchett is, then I see a quote like this.
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Date: 2015-09-18 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-19 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-19 07:01 pm (UTC)