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I am having a death to mornings morning, so here is my happy depth-free book list from February.

The Riddle-Master of Hed (Patricia McKillip): As previously discussed in this journal, not really my thing. I like the very end, where Morgon's shout cracks the doors with the force of his despair, and I liked the vestas, but that's about all that really resonated. I think I may be approaching this wrong, without the appropriate storytelling background to appreciate what McKillip is trying to do, but I can't care enough to try to find that angle. There are images I liked, and themes I should have liked, but I didn't find the book resonating strongly.

Regenesis (the good bits version) (C. J. Cherryh): Once upon a time there was an azi designated Grant ALX Warrick and he was pretty freaking awesome. He was the sort of awesome where you suspect that somewhere, someone is drawing hearts and stars around his name, because Grant is a calming influence on crazy people. By which I mean pretty much everyone in Reseune.

I always want Cherryh to make up more worldbuilding at the levels of philosophy and fake science, so I am not as happy with Regenesis as with Cyteen or even Hellburner, because there's less arguing about how people think and interact. I'm also not fond of the superpowered 17-year-olds. Yes, there's a recurring theme that younger people are underutilized in a universe with awesome life-extension drugs; no, Maddy Strassen would not be running a fashion store at 17.

Merchanter's Luck (C. J. Cherryh): I didn't mean to reread this, it just sort of happened. I remember the places I have been while reading ML better than I remember the book - it's slight in word count and in impact.

The Thief (Megan Whalen Turner): YA fantasy novel about an imprisoned thief challenged to steal a long-lost object with religious and political significance. This was merely okay until the twist near the end of the novel, and the twist made me think the sequel would be worth reading.

Julie & Julia (Julie Powell): The only part of this book that spoke to me was on page 262.

It seemed that someone had alerted Mr. Kline about the heretical content of my blog. . . "Are you unhappy here?" he asked. "No! No, sir. I just - well, I am a secretary, Mr. Kline. Sometimes it's frustrating."
"You're an asset to the organization, Julie. You just need to try to find a way to channel that negative energy."

...channel that negative energy?

And I cackled, there at SFO, tired and a little hysterical, thirteen hours before opening my work inbox and finding a "you have DNA extractions!" email. Not, you know, "welcome back, you have..." just, you know, a stack of work. That really hit me in bad ways. I had a good job: I like most of my coworkers most of the time, and I like most of the work most of the time, and the times that I don't, well, some of the people who get on your last nerve are the people who cover holes you can't even see, and there is no way to get around pain in the typing joints SOX-compliant paperwork. But at a certain point, it is time to run away from home. Julie had a lousy job, and I have a lousy hometown complex, and I've been at my job for two years. It was the only moment when I was in full sympathy, and really realized that Julie was halfway coping with her life by cooking in the way I halfway cope by having speculative fiction-inspired IM conversations that devolve into desultory arguments about who can fight Ari Emory. (Well, anyone can try to fight Ari, but most people get cold-cocked in the first round. There's a possibility Benton Frasier would make it to a second round on a crazy luck roll. Kanye West does not. Every Mercedes Lackey character ever gets pwnd, execept maybe Savil, because I like her best. Miles Vorkosigan versus Ari Emory is a psych-out for the ages. Possibly it ends in some azified Vorish DNA and a project for Justin and Grant. Aaaaaand downhill slides like that are why I am quitting my job and moving.)

Other than that, well: I hate New York City, and I hate people who don't do research before starting a project like driving to DC to deliver unto the Smithsonian and Julia Child's kitchen a pound of butter. So I made the Eyebrows of Native Scorn when Powell and her husband tried to find parking on the Mall on a Saturday, then tried to find a grocery store within walking distance of the Mall. I suspect I would've liked Powell's blog much better than her post-blog book deal. I like cooking, but I have very limited tolerance for people who can't be bothered to use Metro.

On a related note, I was recently at the American History museum, and there was an empty one-pound butter box at the Julia Child exhibit. I may have had a moment of cognitive dissonance.

Gods and Pawns (Kage Baker): Collection of short stories set in Baker's Company universe. "To the Land Beyond the Sunset" is Lewis and Mendoza in South America, with typically Mendoza results. "The Catch" deals with one of the Company's immortal failures. "The Angel in the Darkness" is about one of Porfirio's relatives in LA, in a bad spot, and the long thin shadow of immortal machinations. "Standing in His Light" is about art manipulation. "A Night on the Barbary Coast" is Joseph and Mendoza in their most dad-and-daughter style, a lichen, San Francisco in the gold rush, and a Company mandate. "Welcome to Olympus, Mr. Hearst" prefigures Project Adonai. "Hellfire at Twilight" is Lewis and intoxication. The humor and random combinations of historical trivia and stock character types that I like in Baker's writing are present in all of these, but no one story stood out above the others. Kage Baker recently passed away, so it's kind of nice to reread her stories and know something of her continues to impact the world.

Hellburner (C. J. Cherryh): It's The Right Stuff but in space. It's my favorite sort of popcorn book. Hellburner was published around the same time as Chanur's Legacy: both novels are fairly minor books in the Union-Alliance timeline, but they're both very tightly plotted and can be handed to innocent bystanders without warning for psychological damage. Sometimes they're even funny. ("Don't kill me, Ben, but... what time is it?" This is hilarious in context, I promise.) But Hellburner just makes me happy: it starts in tragedy and ends in victory, and in between there's the right amounts of emotional angst and made-up engineering. In the long run everyone's in trouble, but in the short term most of the protagonists get what they want. It's practically a warm and fuzzy Cherryh novel, if you ignore the sabotage subplot and some of the political gamesmanship.

Numbers games: 7 total. 4 reread, 3 new; 6 fiction (1 short story collection), 1 nonfiction.

In June, I read a heap of new novels, a nice change from rereading pieces of old favorites. Almost everything was of fair to good quality, which was a nice change from the large number of "eh" novels I read in May.

The Riddle-Master Trilogy, Patricia McKillip:
The Riddle-Master of Hed
Heir of Sea and Fire
Harpist in the Wind
Read these in one large gulp at the end of May/early June. I think. This was my first time reading the trilogy; I suspect I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I'd read it when I was younger. As it stands, I want to natter on about its similaries and differences to Le Guin's original Earthsea trilogy, with an occasional side slant to Duane's Door series for style comparisons. Watch this journal for further developments.

A Wizard Abroad Alone, Diane Duane [Edited 08/07/2003 to correct my fingers' hardwiring; thank you Sam L.] : The latest in the Young Wizards series. Came out last October, but life in the form of classes kept me from the library for a long time. Duane doesn't go anywhere significantly new thematically, but does write an enjoyable romp in the established YW canon. One aspect of the book bugged me a lot, but I need to check some facts and hash out the autism thing with herewiss13 before posting any definitive statements (read: publicly shove my foot in my mouth).

Night Work, Laurie R. King: The one novel in one of King's series I hadn't read. The intersection of religion, feminism and murder was reminiscent of A Monstrous Regiment of Women, which either says something about the author or about the endurance of some themes throughout the twentieth century, take your pick. This and Monstrous Regiment might make an interesting paired reading for that reason.

Green Rider, Kristen Britain: Written up seperately. Short version: if you think Mercedes Lackey and Robert Jordan ought to collaberate, this may be the book for you.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: I came, I read, I owe norabombay for letting me have first crack at her copy. Still haven't posted my own emotional fangirl response, but the short version is, I'm definitely keen to see what happens in book six.

The Sherwood Ring, Elizabeth Marie Pope: Have you ever read a book that you're reasonably certain would have had you on the edge of your seat earlier in life? When I was ten or twelve I would have adored this book. Unfortunately, it's ten years later, and I merely liked it a lot. It was very interesting to read a book written in the '50's set in a house deliberately preserved in the colonial era; it gave the story a more historical bent than I suspect the author intended. Also, I think I found a fandom tie-in, though; certain wine glasses from The Sherwood Ring may have migrated to fic author E. H. Smith's Harry Potter/Vorkosigan crossover "Without Enchantment." (Note: second in a trilogy. Fortunately, all three are available on Fictionalley or the Sugar Quill. And if anyone is aware of any other fics by Ms. Smith, I'd be ecstatic if you sent me the URL. She's a great writer, in my opinion.) I like The Perilous Gard more than The Sherwood Ring, but definitely want both on my shelves, and wish Pope had written more before passing away in 1992.

The Moon's Shadow, Catherine Asaro: Jaibriol Qox the Third assumes his forefathers' throne in the wake of the devastating Radiance War. Political maneuvering ensues. M'sS is a middle-of-the-road novel in her Skolia series, focusing on political fallout from the recent war and shaping the groundwork for the uneasy detente/cold war in Catch the Lightning, set fifty years later. The romantic and cutting edge science that have pervaded Asaro's novels are a bit subdued in this novel, but are still very present. Asaro does slide in some nifty science metaphor stuff, not unlike the romance/quantum bonding metaphor in The Quantum Rose. A moon's shadow on a planet is an eclipse, of course, but somehow I didn't make the connection until Asaro pointed it out in the author's afterward. At which point a planet with a complex moon system and a tradition of naming those moons after the Emperor's consort goes all sorts of interesting places. The Radiant Seas remains my uncontested favorite Asaro novel, but The Moon's Shadow is worth reading if you're fond of Catherine Asaro's novels.

I'm hoping July will continue the trend of good fiction, especially since I have a long list of Hugo nominees I haven't touched yet. And I think I really need to read some books not written by women. Nothing wrong with female writers, but I seem to be reading a lot of them at the moment, and not nearly as many men.