also

[piranha]

sick. i know who gave it to me -- the woman in the store who was coughing and sneezing left and right without so much as a hand in front of her mouth. i gave her a wide berth, but she insisted on walking up to me and yakking. i was this close to handing her a handkerchief -- except i didn't have one. wear a face mask, you damn disease vector, you!

so, sore throat, fever, sinus headache, runny nose. joy. the only good thing is that i bought a lot of books that i can now plow through. finished both jumper and his majesty's dragon within the last day.

nano reviews:

jumper (by steven gould) -- wonderful escape/revenge coming of age fantasy. not a single stupid teenager in sight either. i like it when a book doesn't make me roll my eyes at the idiocy of the people involved. davy discovers he can teleport when his abusive father hits him once too often. it helps that davy is precocious because that way the plentiful angst didn't overwhelm this reader. it also helps that i was abused and somewhat precocious, and sought escape in books, like davy -- instant identification. and yes, i fantasized that i could teleport. it's such an old trope, but i thought it was well used here, bringing up a lot of the ethical questions that come with such power.

his majesty's dragon (by naomi novik) -- dragons! excellent dragons, as a matter of fact. i want a dragon just like temeraire, *sigh*. i have a big, soft spot for dragons. unfortunately i do not have a soft spot for the napoleonic wars or military SFF in general, and therefore the last part of the book was distasteful for me to plow through; i skipped the gruesome details of battle (not particularly gruesome really, just that i don't want to read about creatures i like getting sliced open; i have a squick about humans using animals for war). but the earlier parts were fun, and she's got the "master and commander" style lingo down pat. russ, are the next two volumes full of military battle stuff? if so, i'll pass, if not i might give them a try. not sure.

this is one of those books that has great seeds but didn't develop as i wanted it -- i would have liked a lot more "precocious dragon grows up intellectually" instead of "precocious dragon grows up physically and practices aerial maneuvres". i can definitely see why some fanficcers say "to hell with canon"; i've immediately wanted to take the world and the dragons and do my own thing with them, which doesn't happen often.

and now back to bed and catherine asaro.

Comments

[eagle]

Throne of Jade has some combat, but not a lot, and is mostly about politics. It's not as objectionable on that score. Black Powder War has very little war for the first half of the book and then a lot for the last half of the book.

Unfortunately, dragon growing up mentally mostly doesn't happen; what little there was of that happened in the first book, and Temeraire has felt frozen at the same mental age (apart from some adolescent bits that I didn't care for) for the next two books.

Temeraire is really a scene-stealer and a ton of fun in the first book, but the next two may be disappointments.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

it actually sounds like i might like the second one better than you did, but the third one not at all. *urk*. So Sad. such nice dragons!

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I wasn't abused, at least not in any similar way to how Davy was, but man did this book give me the kind of angst I at one point craved. (And still do occasionally.) And yes, i appreciated that no one was excessively stupid.

There's a sequel to Jumper. (I think it's called Reflex. *checks* Yah, Reflex. I've heard good reviews of it.)

[ckd]

Yes, Reflex, which continues with the not-stupid-characters. Recommended.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i've since read a couple of reviews that don't like the book for some of the very reasons i like it -- they don't believe that a 17 year old and his older college student girl friend could be so smart. of course i have known people in real life who are sensible, even if angsty at that age. maybe they haven't. i admit, it makes me jump to immediate negative conclusions about the reviewer. *wry grin*.

i completely despise it if a writer advances plot by means of having people be consistently stupid or having lousy communications. yes, i know some do that in real life. but i like my fiction to not hinge on it.

[geekchick]

his majesty's dragon

Ooh, thanks. I saw it reviewed in, I think, last Sunday's Book World in the Post and thought I might toss it onto the Amazon wish list to pick up later.

Disease vector

[ailbhe]

I had a *guest in my home* doing that. An adult guest, I mean; toddlers obviously do it all the time. And then I ended up pregnant and on strong antibiotics for a week. I really will say something next time. I must learn to defend my own boundaries better, and having my lunch coughed on is a boundary.

Re: Disease vector

[ailbhe]

In this house, we cough and sneeze with our *elbows* in front of our mouths if we have no tissues. That way our hands are clean when we go to touch a doorhandle etc. Plus elbows have more fabric on them most of the year and form a bigger barrier between the sneeze and the rest of the world.

Re: Disease vector

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a good idea! Thanks.

Re: Disease vector

[ailbhe]

Learned from ai731 who learned it in school in Canada, I believe. It really is useful.

Re: Disease vector

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Also useful if one's hands are full.

Re: Disease vector

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i use my left hand for icky stuff, and my right hand for non-icky. elbows are a good idea too, though; i've used those at times when i had my hands full.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Seems to me that these dragons could easily refuse to fight -- and some do, they're just mostly off-stage, at breeding grounds an the like. So the dragons in battle are there by choice, at least as much as the humans are -- upbringing and social ties influence both, but no one could make a reluctant dragon fight, and they're intelligent enough to know what they risk -- OK maybe not Volly, but he doesn't fight, either. :)

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

it seems mostly a matter of genetics and conditioning -- they seem certainly made for fighting, and then they're taken from the egg and told that this is their duty. the ones who're at breeding grounds are there not by choice, but because they can't be handled, no? i also expect that there are wild dragons somewhere. in any case it's pretty obvious that laurence has a concept of duty that he never even questions, and i was hoping temeraire might, being as he's smarter than laurence, but not yet. and maybe naomi doesn't want to write about that, *heh*.

in any case, i don't like reading about or watching battles, even if they're done really well -- i can watch air fights of planes, as long as i can block out that pilots might be burning on those that get shot down. that's certainly not naomi's fault, it's just one of my major squicks.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I agree that there's conditioning, but I don't think the dragons get more conditioning than the humans in the military do.

"Can't be handled" -- wouldn't that include "refusing to fight"? And the traitor's dragon is sent there, too; there seem to be a variety of reasons. Temeraire does seem to have quibbles with the notion of "duty" but so far, mostly accepts Laurence's word on it -- much like a child, in that way. He does assert himself in some ways though. (I don't want to be more specific because I may confuse events early in the second book with events in the first one.)

T may be smarter than L in some ways, but he's less mature, mentally, and hasn't developed his critical thinking skills fully.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

"Can't be handled" -- wouldn't that include "refusing to fight"

yes, theoretically, but i don't recall it being explicitly mentioned. the only reason mentioned is that there's no handler available/acceptable. and the imprinting seems to be so strong that even an abused dragon will bond so much to its handler that nothing can overcome that. so i don't know whether it makes sense to speculate that dragons have a choice (i think making the imprinting this strong is a mistake, but hey, it's not my world).

could of course also be that, while the imprinting is strong, there is simply no support for a dragon who gets out of line among L's group (such as nobody kicking some sense into rankin), and we just haven't seen what could happen. maybe not all dragons are sheeple. :)

[nolly.livejournal.com]

T and L do have that conversation, at least the first round of it, about 2/3 of the way through boook 2. Also, wild dragons outside Europe have been mentioned, but have not yet played a direct role.

Which Asaro?

[mechaman.livejournal.com]

The new fantasy line, or the Skolian epic?

Re: Which Asaro?

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

skolian. i've just about had it with that, though; it's been deteriorating badly.