Doctors and Dragons

Books read this week: The Great Hunt 6/10 (Robert Jordan), Confessions of a GP 6/10 (Benjamin Daniels)

The Great Hunt is the second in Robert Jordan's gigantic Wheel of Time series. It's a marked improvement on the first book, as it reads much less like a cheap knock-off of the Lord of the Rings. The characterisation is still a bit lack-lustre, but the plot rolls on quickly enough, and it's interesting enough that I'm willing to start the third book. I also found the description of the damane in the book genuinely disturbing; something of an achievement (and it also makes the people responsible much less sympathetic and more evil than the nebulous Satan-analogue  who is the Big Bad of the series, but doesn't really appear to do much but loom ominously).

That said, I'm not sure how I'm going to get on with the larger cosmology of the Wheel of Time as the series develops; I'm not generally a fan of the idea of cyclical time, of presdestination, or, frankly, of destiny in general; I'm very strongly of the opinion that the world is what we make it; appeals to destiny always seem like a cop-out to me. The only treatment of prophecy in fiction I actually enjoy is Babylon 5, and that's because (due to time travel) it's not prophecy, so much as memory.

First appearances to the contrary Confessions of a GP isn't low-grade 70s porn; it's a fragmentary book, which reads like a series of blog posts, by a locum GP. It's fairly interesting and very entertaining fluff. The main take home message (for me, at least) is simple: targets work. They are something of a blunt instrument, people don't like them, and they complain about them, but if you want to make something better you have to be able to measure how good things are now, and how much better they get. The other thing message I took away is that the BMA is the best trade union in Britain at the moment. If only they would take non-medical members....

I'll be on holiday for the next couple of weeks, so the blog will be on hiatus until I get back.

Fragments

Books read this week: Fragile Things 8/10 (Neil Gaiman), Smoke and Mirrors 7/10 (Neil Gaiman), Winterfair Gifts 7/10 (Lois McMaster Bujold)

Fragile Things and Smoke and Mirrors are short story and poetry collections by Neil Gaiman. I am very fond of short stories; they are a style I think unfortunately neglected today - partly due to the lack of large, respectable periodicals that publish fiction (like the magazines that published the Sherlock Holmes stories, or Vanity Fair chapter by chapter). I'm fairly hopeful that this is going to change with the advent of the Kindle however; microstories for micropayments is I think a very valid business model. That said, the restricted nature of the short story format can be constricting, and not every author can manage it.

Gaiman can, of course (it's Neil Gaiman - what did you expect?), but good as these stories are, they're not his best work; I feel that he does best on a large canvas, and with more space to develop his mythology. That said, I do wonder how these short stories compare in length of text with his graphic novels; those pretty pictures take up a lot of space, but then again a picture is worth a thousand words (and they usually don't take up that much space), so I guess my point still stands. I also enjoyed the first anthology (Fragile Things) rather more than the second, but I don't know whether that's because Smoke and Mirrors is a worse book, because I'd hit Gaiman overload or because a combination of a hangover and sunburn had ruined my mood. A few particular favourites; "A Study In Emerald" (Holmes meets Cthulhu), "October in the Chair", "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire", "Closing Time", "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar", "Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot" . All but the last two are from the Fragile Things.  There is a tremendous range and variety of subject matter here; I was very much reminded of the failing artist in the Sandman who, having kidnapped and raped a muse, is cursed by Dream with continuous inspiration,  and is left unable to do anything but spout off ideas for stories, novels and movies (and, if I recall correctly, ends up in a straight jacket).

Winterfair Gifts is a fairly recent entry in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga - a fairly lighthearted but always entertaining sci-fi series. It is also a perfect example of how the Kindle will change the way in which we consume literature; it's a novella - far too short to be economically sold in print (especially given that, good as the Vorkosigan saga is, the books aren't major blockbusters; I'd guess the ratio of price to book length for something like Harry Potter could be somewhat higher), but of course that's not a problem if you have a Kindle, so I pay a couple of quid, and get an hour or so's entertainment from the story. Long term, hopefully this type of model will lead to more diversity in the length of fiction on offer (in both directions, actually - I know there have been problems with the Song of Ice and Fire because George RR Martin keeps handing over manuscripts too long to be bound; again, not a problem with the Kindle). And now that's been said, I'm off to spend some quality time with my Precious Kindle.

The Centre Cannot Hold

Books read this week: A Storm of Swords (Parts I and II) 8/10 (George R R Martin), A Feast for Crows 8/10 George R R Martin)

A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows are the third and fourth volumes in the Song of Ice and Fire series, and they are just as good as the first two; the fifth volume comes out in a week or so, and I am very much looking forward to it.

I said that the plot of A Clash of Kings could be summarised as It Gets Worse. The plot of A Storm of Swords can be summarised as: you thought the worst was over? Fuck me were you wrong. A Feast for Crows is slightly more cheerful - although possibly because things had reached a point where they could only get better, really (well, without the total and eternal triumph of the antagonists). The book itself takes an interesting new approach; Martin has sent off (or killed off) the majority of his usual viewpoint characters, so there is a slew of new characters for Martin to slay. It means I don't get to see some of my favourite characters until book 5 (Tyrion FTW!) but I do get to spend some time with other entertaining characters, like  Cat of the Canals (who is slowly turning into a mixture of Hit Girl and Wednesday Addams) and Littlefinger. Littlefinger is amazingly excellent - he has just the right combination of evil, charm and brains that one sees in the very best productions of Richard III. Whether he's casually pushing his homicidal wife out of a window and blaming the minstrel, or musing on how he knew Cersei would be a bad queen, but he never thought she'd be that bad, so he'll have to move up his timetable he is always entertaining, and always underestimated; the section where he's given the most impregnable castle in the Kingdom because "he's just a genius, a financial wizard and a master manipulator - what harm could he possibly do?" is up there with Cersei's "give the Church a private army - yes that's an excellent idea. What could possibly go wrong?" as one of the funniest moments in the series.

I expect things to look up in the next book, mainly because all the stupider members of House Stark have been culled by now; also, although they share with their historical counterparts the Percies a knack for picking the wrong side in civil wars (I don't think England has ever had a civil war where the Percies picked the winning side) it has to be said that the Percy family are still Dukes of Northumberland today. I also expect that by the end of the series there won't be a Frey or a Bolton left alive (nobody likes a traitor. And killing people at a wedding is a big no-no, for pretty much all medieval societies).

The series as a whole provides perfect, well researched examples of How Not To Be A King. Pretty much everything Machiavelli tells you not to do? Someone does it here. To do well, a medieval king had to be many things; loved, feared, respected, impartial, courageous, intelligent and solvent. Lacking any of the seven could be disastrous; this is something Ned Stark is smart enough to see in the first book (and I think he is one of the smartest characters in the series, although, much like John of Gaunt in Richard II, his death at an early stage in the proceedings is dramatically necessary). None of the rulers in the rest of the series so far can manage the heptet and so they are all doomed. Some (like Cersei) lack all seven - they're proper fucked (which is another of Cersei's problems - and exactly why she shouldn't have handed soldiers over to the church). I have to admit, it took me an embarrassingly long time to make the tansy=abortifactant link in A Storm of Swords, although I did make it before Martin started dropping his painfully obvious hints - something he seems to have got worse at as the series goes along. Bran's fall in Game of Thrones is shocking because it is so unexpected - whereas there is so much foreboding before the Red Wedding (and so many clues dropped) that all that's missing really is a soothsayer screaming "beware the ides of March!". This reduces the impact of the betrayal, because we all (except the characters, because they are literally too dumb to live) know that it is coming.

I am very much looking forward to the fifth volume, and to catching up with some of my favourite characters (although I shall miss Littlefinger very much - so very stylish and so very evil).