Book Sale 2018, Part 2: My Son's Books

For the next couple of book sale posts, be prepared for more variety than usual. My son reads mostly fantasy, science fiction, and non-fiction. My husband reads all types of fiction, but also leans toward non-fiction.

This post showcases some of the books that my son found at the book sale, and there are a lot of gorgeous covers here.

Terms of Enlistment is military science fiction, and the first book in a six book series.

The Dragon Never Sleeps is a science fiction standalone book by Glen Cook, who is more well know for his fantasy series (the Garrett P.I series and the Black Company series are examples).

Blindsight is a hard science fiction novel about a First Contact situation, written by Canadian writer Peter Watts, published by Tor Books in 2006.

Archivist Wasp is set in a post-apocalyptic world, with a young female protagonist who is an Archivist. She hunts and studies ghosts and she has her position because she killed the previous person in the position. And every year other young girls try to do the same to her to get her job.
 

From the author's blog:

Meet Edinburgh Detective Inspector Liz Kavanaugh, head of the Innovative Crimes Investigation Unit, otherwise known as the Rule 34 Squad. They monitor the Internet for potential criminal activity, analyzing trends in the extreme fringes of explicit content.

I knew I had heard of Rule 34 before. Margot wrote a Spotlight on this book at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist...

Two fantasy novels:

Chasing the Moon is described at Tor.com as:

an unabashedly zany comedic fantasy that combines Douglas Adams-style humor and a protagonist who could be the sister of Bridget Jones with horror in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft.

The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams is described as noir urban fantasy. It is the first in a series and features an earthbound angel who helps souls get to heaven. It is not quite as long as some of his fantasy novels, and I think I am going to have to try it.

This book, The Manual of Detection, is very hard to describe. From what I can gather, it is a very unusual mystery, with elements of fantasy, science fiction, and literary fiction. From the back cover:

In an unnamed city always slick with rain, Charles Unwin toils as a clerk at a huge, imperious detective agency. But when the illustrious detective Travis Sivart turns up murdered, Unwin is suddenly promoted to detective and must solve the mystery himself, aided only by the Manual of Detection.

The Black Company: Glen Cook

The Black Company is the first book in a fantasy series by Glen Cook. Per Wikipedia...

The series follows an elite mercenary unit, The Black Company, last of the Free Companies of Khatovar, through roughly forty years of its approximately four hundred-year history. Cook mixes fantasy with military fiction in gritty, down-to-earth portrayals of the Company‘s chief personalities and its struggles.

The saga spans nine novels, plus one spin-off novel. The Black Company has a code, and although the company is hired out to whatever contractor can pay, once hired, they do not switch allegiances lightly. At the beginning of the first book, they are in a contract with the Syndic of Beryl, and continued association with him may mean the end of the company. The Syndic has been offered an alliance with the Lady, a very powerful wizard, but has refused. The Black Company then agrees to serve the Lady, who commands 10 lesser (but still very scary) wizards with varying powers. The rest of the book follows the Black Company as they fight for the Lady, and begin to wonder if the new situation is any better than before.

My thoughts on the book:

The first couple of chapters I was lost. There was a lot of fighting and a lot of talking and I did not know what was going on. The reader is immediately immersed in the world of the Black Company with little background provided. Through those two chapters dribs and drabs of some background are supplied, but I was still confused. In the end I decided that this element is related to the way that Cook builds his world. He doesn't use a lot of expository text to lead up the main story, but just throws you in there and lets you get it by osmosis, through actions and conversation in a way that seems normal, and doesn't break up the pacing of the story. I am assuming in subsequent books this isn't an issue.

What kept me reading? I found the story to be very well written and I began to get to know some of the characters. The narrator of the story is Croaker. He is the physician and the archivist of the Black Company. The history of the group is important to those who fight for it.

This is military fantasy. I have enjoyed military science fiction (which I find surprising), but I never really thought about military fantasy. The Black Company series is often cited as one of the first examples of "grimdark" fantasy, a forerunner to later examples such as novels by Joe Abercrombie, Mark Lawrence, or George R.R. Martin.

Others disagree. I don't know enough about the fantasy genre or its subgenres and I haven't read anything by the authors listed above. Grimdark fantasy appears to be an area where the definition is hotly debated. I found the topic so intriguing that I spent a good amount of time researching the definitions and the arguments for and against grimdark as a fantasy sub-genre.

This book is grim and it is dark, and I assume that the other novels in the series have these same characteristics. But there is not much graphic violence, and especially compared to contemporary grimdardk novels.  Yes, the main characters in this novel may be flawed, and they may be fighting battles for evil masters, but it is their good characteristics that shine through. They are concerned with the moral ambiguities of their actions. They are loyal to each other, and they are a family.

The Characters:

There are several aspects of this book that I loved. I loved Glen Cook's writing style, including the first person narration by Croaker, and the dry humor. Also very high on the list are the characters.

Croaker is the most important. The story is told as if this is the annals of the company as written by Croaker. This sounds like it would be very dry, but the story telling is very informal, as you expect with someone who doesn't have much time to write what has occurred, in between doctoring the wounded and the ill, and taking part in some of the missions. The Captain, the leader of the company, is not one of the more prominent characters, but he is important and you can sense that he feels a strong connection to all of the men under his command, yet knows that his responsibility is to make the best decisions for the company as a whole. One Eye is one of the minor wizards within the company; another is Silent, who may be my second favorite character after Croaker. He does not talk but Croaker often extracts advice and information from him by the strange method of communication they have. Raven is a new member of the company, who doesn't always fit in. He brings in a young girl, Darling, also mute, who was orphaned as the result of a battle; she becomes very important to the saga of the company.

So, all and all, I enjoyed the book and will continue the series. I have read and reviewed a fantasy / detective novel by Glen Cook, Sweet Silver Blues, the first book in the Garrett, P.I. series. That one was fine but I liked this one better.

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Publisher:   Tor, 1984. 
Length:       319 pages
Format:      Paperback
Series:       The Black Company, #1
Genre:        Fantasy
Source:      Borrowed this book from my son.

Sweet Silver Blues: Glen Cook

Sweet Silver Blues by Glen Cook  is a cross-genre book, combining fantasy and a detective novel. It is the first in a series of fourteen books, published between 1987 and 2013.  Cook has written many books in both the science fiction and fantasy genres, but he is most well known for his Black Company fantasy series.

In this novel, Garrett is approached by the family of an old friend of his, Denny Tate. The friend died of natural causes, but he has left a fortune to a woman unknown to his family. They want Garrett to find her and let her know of her inheritance. The catch is that she is in a war-torn area called the Cantard. Both Denny and Garrett served five years fighting in the Cantard and made it out alive. Garrett has no desire to return. And there is another catch: the woman he will be looking for was once his lover. Of course, he ends up making the trip, with some hired companions to help out. He will earn a huge fee if he succeeds, but it is mostly curiosity about how Denny acquired the fortune that drives his decision.

Garrett is a private detective along the lines of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, although he seems to me more an adventurer sort of like Travis McGee. Although that may be more true of this book than the later books in the series. He is working in a world not so different from our own, which has not reached our level of technological development and which includes fantasy elements. His world is inhabited by elves, dwarves, vampires, grolls (a mixture of human, troll, and other things) and even stranger beings.

The reviews I read seem to be mixed on whether the blending of hard-boiled detective fiction and fantasy works in this case. I fall somewhere in the middle. I did not like this one as much as some other books that blend fantasy and detective fiction, yet it was very entertaining and I do want to come back for more.

These are the reasons I am going to read more of the series: (A) I have an omnibus with the next two books in the series; (B) I find the premise interesting and I expect improvements in later books; (C) I have read comparisons to the Nero Wolfe series. I did not notice anything like that in this first book, but now I am curious. [I have now read several comments in reviews about the Nero Wolfe connection, so it must be obvious to others. I do prefer homages that don't hit you in the head with the similarities, so I guess he did it right.]

This was the first book I read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge. I am currently reading The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett and I am loving it.

See reviews at Battered, Tattered, Yellowed, & Creased and at Black Gate.


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Publisher:   Published in the omnibus ed. Introducing Garrett, P.I., by ROC, 2011. 
                    (Sweet Silver Blues orig. pub. 1987.)
Length:       220 pages

Series:       Garrett, P.I. #1
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:      The city of TunFaire, in a fantasy universe.
Genre:        Fantasy / Mystery
Source:      I purchased this book.