I Am Completely Serious

That is what you do.

Thus Was Adonis Murdered, The Shortest Way to Hades, The Sirens Sang of Murder, and The Sybil in Her Grave, by Sarah Caudwell

These are a series of mysteries which all begin with one of four young lawyers getting involved with a murder, typically by way of a client's novel tax avoidance arrangements. (Caudwell was herself a tax lawyer.) The narrator is a pompous law professor named Hilary Tamar, who usually ends up solving the mysteries for the young lawyers, and prefers to be referred to as a scholar rather than a detective.

The four young lawyers who get in trouble behave a lot like the four kids who get in trouble in the Young Readers novels of yore. You couldn't quite match them up one-to-one to the Boxcar Children, but it's that kind of dynamic, albeit with the addition of ill-advised sexual encounters, alcohol, and tax law. At least two-thirds of each novel is epistolary, consisting of letters from the lawyers and their friends and clients to each other.

I've noticed that when people review books by Sarah Caudwell, they tend to do it with heavy use of quotes; they have a very distinctive voice. Here:

She had impressed on Julia her duty to write daily, for the edification and amusement of those left in Lincoln's Inn.

"You have made it clear, I hope," said Ragwort, "that the letters should be suitable to be read in mixed company and the activities described of unquestionable decorum?"

"Not precisely," said Selena. "I said that what we hoped for was a picaresque series of attempted seductions. I told her we would not insist, however, on their uniform success. I said that on the contrary we might think it inartistic."

They pretty much sound like that all the time.

The first three are fairly light most of the time, with occasional descents into some unsettling psychological territory towards the end, which always feels unexpected. The fourth, written shortly before Caudwell's death and I think published posthumously, starts out dark and claustrophobic and stays that way. Hilary and the young lawyers, apparently not being well-equipped for this atmosphere, are only tangentially involved in most of it, and the book consists mostly of letters from the aunt of one of the lawyers.

Kushiel's Mercy, by Jacqueline Carey (Imriel trilogy, book 3)

Everyone got brainwashed in this book! It's not the conflict I was expecting for the end of this series? I guess it worked, but I honestly would've preferred the plot she made us think she was going for, where Imriel's got to outwit Melisande and turn her in and everyone's just very upset about the whole thing. This felt like kind of a cheat sometimes.

I think it would spice up Imriel and Sidonie's relationship if, every couple of years, they get brainwashed and have to find one another and fall in love again to save the world. It'd be sort of like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, except in fake-magical-bondage-France.

Point of Honour, by Madeleine Robins

In a slightly-alternate-universe Regency England, Sarah Tolerance, a young woman of noble birth disowned by her family for running away with her now-deceased fencing instructor, makes a living as a private detective. The powerful, handsome, and obviously-hiding-something Count Verseillon approaches her to ask that she find an Italian fan his father once gave away to his mistress. She realizes that there must be something more serious about her search when the people she involves in it begin to be murdered.

I feel like this book is basically Madeleine Robins repeating over and over, "Regency romances need to get their act together." She does not seem to approve of many of the tropes.

You can identify which characters are Carey's favorites because people always end up forming small religious movements around them. Objects of worship have included (spoilers for 1-5) ( Read more... )

( For some reason I was looking at the Japanese covers for Jacqueline Carey books. )

( Amazon recommends Mercedes Lackey's Mage Storms series to people looking at Jacqueline Carey books. )

( In Japan, as elsewhere, the Vorkosigan books appear to be cursed with awful covers. )

And OH GOD

the Japanese title for Brothers in Arms? It's Shinai naru clone. This literally means Beloved Clone. You can use "shinai naru" for letters or messages, like "dear," so maybe it doesn't come off quite so strongly, but 1) you only do it on personal correspondence to people you actually like, and 2) there ought to be an "e" tacked onto the end if that's what they were going for, anyway.

1) THAT IS KIND OF A SPOILER, YOU GUYS.

2) It is also hilarious.

3) Disappointingly, Mirror Dance does not get a similar interesting change in title.

Why do I always forget how much I love Jacqueline Carey between books? Because I totally love Jacqueline Carey.

Moirin is a young Maghuin Donn (pesudo-ancient Welsh?) sorceress raised by her mother in the wilderness, who has spent most of her life largely apart from ordinary people. She discovers that her father, whom she never knew, was a man from Terre d’Ange (psuedo-medieval France), and that some of her magical gifts seem to have come from him. Following a personal tragedy that makes it impossible for her to remain at her home, she decides to travel to Terre d’Ange and seek him out. This being a Jacqueline Carey book, melodramatic bisexual antics ensue.

In this book Carey continues doing well most of the things she generally does well - great dialog and prose, strong female characters in roles of political power, and good sex scenes. It doesn’t, however, work as well for me as any of the earlier entries in the Kushiel series (bearing in mind I haven’t read the third Imriel book yet).

The problem is that I was never really convinced that Moirin was in any danger. I think this is because of the relative weakness of the villains. There are three of them: one is largely off-screen and has extremely shallowly explored motivations; another is largely off-screen, and possesses motivations which can be described accurately as “Muahaha!”; and the third is on-screen, but is only a threat because Moirin herself actively continues seeking him/her out after she’s realized he/she is dangerous. And there are moments where this is compelling - but then we get to the book’s half-way point, and Moirin leaves the country and thus the problem. I guess we’ll come back to this later in the series? Moirin keeps saying stuff like “I sensed that my destiny was still entangled with Villain’s. This would not be the last I heard of him/her.” So I guess we will.

This book doesn’t really stand alone as well as Carey’s series books usually do. In general, she closes some sort of emotional arc in each book. In this one, the emotional arc is a complete cliffhanger. I was not expecting that! It was kind of annoying.

In general, though, it’s by Jacqueline Carey, and thus is superior epic fantasy/comedy of manners/porn that you should read.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)